: Elders Harris & Pine, Solang, Patricia (hidden) Elder Evans, George Wimalasuriya, Charlotte in front; M: Christ healing the blind; R: Faith.










APRIL 14, 2009 TUESDAY

This morning began with district meeting at the Church here in Schwamendingen. There were two object lessons given that we wanted to write in our journal so as not to forget them. The first is related to our missionary work and illustrates the principle of teach-to-find as outlined in the Preach My Gospel book. The teach to find method is like a sandwich made of a slice of bread on the bottom and a slice of bread on the top. In between are condiments, lettuce, ham, turkey and cheese. The way you put the sandwich together is first a slice of bread (teach a principle), bear testimony (slice of ham), bear testimony (slice of turkey), and last another slice of bread (a different principle of the gospel). The condiments (mustard & mayonaise) and lettuce go anywhere to improve the sandwich. The way this works is the first missionary approaches a person and begins with teaching a principle and then bearing testimony. His companion then bears testimony again and then teaches another principle. You add substance to the principles by adding the condiments and lettuce to the sandwich (explain the principle in more detail). Once you get through making one sandwich, you can add another to it and make a Dagwood sandwich. The way the sisters emphasized this teach-to-find principle was to give each element of the sandwich a number; bread #1, ham #2 etc. Each person had a dice and needed to roll a #1 first to start your sandwich. The others could come in any order except the last one had to be the number for the 2nd piece of bread to finish the sandwich. The first one done with a complete sandwich was the winner.

The other principle that was taught was tithing. When teaching an investigator, open a bag of M&M’s and count ten into his hand. Ask him to give you one back while explaining that tithing is one tenth and he still has nine left in his hand. Then after reading the scripture about the windows of heaven being opened and blessing being poured out such that one can’t receive them all, ask him to put his two hands together. Once he has done that, pour the rest of the contents of the bag into his hands and there should be enough that he can’t hold them all and they spill over the top.

After district meeting was over we chose the names of three people to look for this afternoon, Kaylina Graf, Sybil Oberli and Werner Buehlmann. We’ve tried Werner many times before and thought we’d try him again because Kaylina lives near him. He wasn’t home again. Kaylina is a new person off our member list that had been crossed off by the earlier missionaries as having moved. Diana got the feeling we ought to check it out for ourselves, so we did, and found she still lives there, but was not home today. At least we know she lives there, so we’ll keep trying until we catch her home. We met Sybil in Church last Sunday, but didn’t have a chance to visit with her so we wanted to get to know her a little better. She wasn’t home, but we got to talk to her mother for a minute. She said she’d be home on Saturday.

Cornelia called this morning during district meeting and invited us to dinner tonight at 5:30. We already had an appointment with Charlotte at 5:00 to continue the German/English learning with Diana. I made the decision and Diana laater agreed it would be better to continue our fellowshipping of Cornelia than to do the language thing. After we left Sybil’s home we had time to go back home for a minute and then go to Charlotte’s for about 20 minutes. We tried to call Charlotte a couple of times throughout the day to change the time or cancel, but she never answered her phone. She is great and didn’t feel slighted when we had to leave so quick. Rather than using the few minutes to do language, she showed us photos of the Matterhorn and the schedule she had organized to go there next Monday. She is just so excited to show us as much of Switzerland as she can. She also told us she was having a dinner on Saturday evening and asked us if we were coming. We told her we didn’t know about it and so she invited us on the spot. She then counted seats to make sure there was enough room for us, and there was. We asked her if she could afford to sponsor all of these meals because it’s not cheap. She said if she ran out of money, she would go out on the street and sing for donations. We at least talked her into letting us bring a salad.

Cornelia had a simple, but delicious bologna vegetable salad prepared for us and we supplied the dessert. We had a good visit and found that she only had a very basic understanding of the Church doctrines. She agreed to let us teach her, not only to help her understand the gospel better, but to give us practice in teaching the lessons. We stayed there as long as we could and then went on our way to Institute. It’s always good to be with the youth as they meet and participate in the classes. We enjoy talking to them and the adults that are there during the social (with food) after the classes are over.

One more thing needs to be included in this entry. Sister Daniela Martin called us to see if we could organize as many missionaries as possible for next Tuesday to help her clean out her mother’s apartment. Her mother died a month ago and she says everything has to go. She ordered two dumpsters already for next Tuesday at 8:00 am and needs help loading them. The only problem is our district meetings are always on Tuesday. We called our district leader tonight and asked him if it would be possible to move the meeting to another day in order to help Sister Martin. He said he would try. Daniela said her brother, who is a non-member, will be there and it will be a good opportunity to try to fellowship him. We’ll see what happens.