Missionaries playing game at zone conf.; typical Swiss scenery near Interlaken.










April 2, 2009 THURSDAY

This morning we got up early again to get ready to go to Schwenningen, Germany, for our zone conference. The AP’s were going to pick us and the ZL’s up at 7:15 at the Stettbach Bahnhof. Before we left home we checked the emails for any important messages and found one from Roxsan with our 2008 tax summary sheets she had prepared for our tax preparer. We found a couple of items that we had questions about so we quickly wrote an email back to Roxsan with those questions.

We met the ZL’s and then were picked up by the AP’s and off we went on the hour and forty-five minute drive to Schwenningen. There were nine of us in the car after we were picked up including those already mentioned plus our DL & companion and Elder Koerlin who was by himself. His companion rode up with Pres. Matern. We listened to a tape on the way up by John Bytheway entitled, “The Righteous Warriors.” It was an excellent talk on the lessons learned from the war chapters in the BM and how they relate to us today. We liked it so much that we are going to ask our kids each to buy a CD and we’ll pay for it if they promise to listen to it as a family.
Our assignments were to lead the repeating of D&C Section 4 and the paragraph out of the Preach My Gospel about our goal as missionaries. We both thought we had to say it by ourselves first from memory and then all the missionaries would repeat it in unison. We worked hard at making sure we had memorized our parts, but we found out before we got there that all we had to do is start saying it and the others would quickly join in. Diana wanted to say the first word and the next person would say the second word and so on until the whole section had been said. Elder Pine asked Pres. Matern if she could do it that way but he said she couldn’t do it like that because he said it would take too long. He did say it was a good idea, but it came too late to be included in this conference.

The conferences are always good with a lot of workshops on ways to do missionary work, as well as a section by Pres. Matern about obedience to mission rules as a way to invite the Spirit as we do our work. He also went over the missionary guidelines for spending the money they get from the Church. It’s only to be used for mission related expenses such as food, dry cleaning etc. and not for personal items such a buying clothes, P-day travel and other personal expenses. If they don’t need their complete monthly allotment, they should turn it back to the Mission home at the end of the month. It was a little different from how we thought it was.

Lunch is always prepared by members from the area where the zone conference is held and it’s always good. Diana had the traditional hamburger/tomato sauce over noodles while I had salmon cream sauce over my noodles. Diana said hers was very good and I wanted more, but better sense got the best of me. Diana also had a salad made out of different colors of sweet peppers, corn and a few other things that were really good. I did make a pig out of myself with the salads and had three bowls of two different types of cucumber salad and later, one like Diana had. There were extras but Diana was satisfied with one. They had a kind of a cake thing for dessert with whipped cream out of a can for a topping. Everything was really good, but before the conference was over Diana began having stomach pains. She stuck it out until the prayer was said and even helped clean up until she couldn’t find anything else to do, but then she had to find a classroom and lie down until we had to go.

The nine of us piled in the van, but this time Elder Koerlin drove us to Singen which was on our way home. We met there with Pres. Matern and others to drop some missionaries off and to rearrange who rode with whom. Sister Matern rode by Diana the rest of the way and this time Elder Pine drove. He’s been itching to drive forever and he finally talked Elder Evans into letting him, maybe because Sister Matern was in the car and would hold him in check. He hasn’t driven very much, even when he was home in England because they have mass transit there too. Elder Pine’s driving left something to be desired, but we arrived home safely enough, just a bit frazzled. Sister Matern speaks English and Diana was able to carry on a conversation with her in German/English which was nice. But She had one big problem, and that was her stomach ache; it kept getting worse and worse. It was all she could do to put on a brave face and not let on, but she managed until we got home. She doesn’t think it was the food, but maybe the 24 hour flu or something. When she went to Naeide’s school the other day to be her model, her instructor was coughing all the time. We have made arrangements to go to the temple tomorrow so we hope she’s better by in the morning. So off to bed we go and pray she recovers quickly.