L: Elders Harris, Larson and Pine; M: Elder Larson; L: Diana, Elders Harris and Pine.


18 MARCH 2009 WEDNESDAY

This morning was wash day so I got up early, put the wash in the washer at 7:00 and then took off on my morning walk/hike. It takes about 10 minutes to walk to the woods south of our apartment. I hiked up until I got near the top and went east and came down of the other side of Zurich University and back through the campus. My goal was to take a photo of the blue cow to put with my photo collection of cow statues. That done I walked down until I could catch the tram at Milchbuch and ride back to Schoerlistrasse in time to take the batch out of the washer. This whole excursion took a little over an hour to accomplish and it’s a nice little hike. While I did this, Diana showered and worked around our apartment as well as did her morning reading. We did another batch of washing while the first batch was drying. We did our ironing also before our lunch appointment with Naeide.

Naeide invited us to lunch yesterday and threatened she would never come to our place again unless we came to hers. So what could we do but go? She invited Elders Ehlen & Hoffmann also and it was kind of a going away party for Elder Hoffmann who is being transferred tomorrow. It’s always pleasant to visit with Naeide and it’s fun to hear her talk mixing three different languages, German, Portuguese and English, into a language all her own. She prepared a Brazilian meal of beans over rice, a vegetable salad, roasted chicken. First the rice goes on the plate, then the beans, then the vegetables and finally the chicken. It was all really good. For dessert she made a Brazilian pastry something like little eclairs with a chocolate sauce poured over them. Wonderfully delicious.

When you go to Naeide’s, you automatically plan to stay for several hours. It’s impossible to get away any sooner without hurting her feelings. The last hour was taken up by discussing Lehi’s dream of the Tree of Life. She’s only been a member a few months, but has made tremendous progress. She’s also the best member missionary we have. She has invited Darletta Mettler’s daughter, Sharlenn, to come to conference. Her latest effort involves an Italian man who sometimes comes to our FHE. He speaks very little German, but enough to get by. He came last Monday and he told us he’s going back to Italy the end of May to live. Naeide took the opportunity to ask him if she could teach him about the Church in Italian. He told her he would be glad to have her teach him. Naeide said she’s going to have to work fast to get him baptized before he leaves, but she wants him to have an automatic ward family for when he gets to Italy so he doesn’t have to be alone.

After we left Naeide’s we went home for a second and then Elders Ehlen and Hoffmann came with us to visit Suwang in the hospital. Suwang belongs to the Altstetten Ward and Elders E&H are assigned to that ward. Suwang was glad to see us all and Halina was there as well. We had a nice visit for an hour or so and then the Elders had to go. We stayed a while longer and then left also so we could try and make one contact today. We traveled into Schwamendingen on the tram and then walked to Kornelia’s home. We talked to her over the speaker last week and she told us to try and catch her this week. We rang the doorbell and, wonder of wonders, she clicked us in. We thought she would do the same thing she did a couple of months ago and just not answer her doorbell. We climbed five flights of stairs to get to her apartment and, when she saw us, we weren’t who she expected. After her surprise wore off she explained she was expecting visitors and thought we were them. She was good enough to make an actual appointment with us for next Wednesday. We told her we were really pleased to have finally met her and she seemed like a right nice lady.

Since we were already in Schwamendingen, we went to the little store to stock up on some more of those little 5-for-a-franc airplanes we use for bouquets etc. We also bought some heavy glasses to use for vases that were only fifty cents apiece. Sherman sent us an email with an article describing how bad caffeine was for us which included caffeine in chocolate. Right after that he sent us another email on how to cook a chocolate cake in a mug in three minutes. We don’t know what he was trying to tell us, but we decided we’ll try the recipe. We’ll use the heavy ceramic glasses for the three minute cakes too.

We were really tired from the long day yesterday and getting up early this morning so we called it a day. We are going to do a display at the Buelach Bahnhof Saturday so we need to practice approaching people and getting them to stop long enough to hear our message. One more thing, we got a notice in the mail to pick up a package from home tomorrow. We are excited to see what that is. See the deer running in the clip below. Look for the white tail.