All these photos are near or at Braunwald. I know you'd probably like to see something different, but we've been too busy to take any more photos.


Church bells at Braunwald.

MAY 30, 2009 SATURDAY

We started today with nothing that was absolutely scheduled for a particular time, but we had some things we wanted to accomplish. We wanted to go look at Cornelia’s shop, take Rachel Mascaro a birthday gift/card, call Angela to see if we could find someway to contact her husband Emeka, and go to Greifen Lake for the ward outing. Yesterday was Ashley’s birthday, but she was gone all day with her mother to a theme park like Lagoon so we couldn’t take her a present yesterday. We wanted to call her today to wish her a happy birthday, but no one answered the phone. Angela didn’t answer her phone either so we left another message for her to call us. While we were doing our usual morning studying etc., Sister Rodrigues called and asked if we could help them this afternoon to put some wardrobes back together. We set the time for 4:00 this afternoon. Then Elder Nilsson called to see if we had any ice cubes because they needed some for a spiritual thought tonight at the Wichtermanns. We didn’t, but we told them we’d put a tray in the freezer and they could come by and pick it up at 5:45. Their appointment was at 6:00. We also needed to go to the store to get some eggs, sugar, butter etc. for the brownies we were asked to bring to Ashley’s baptism tomorrow.

The first thing we did was go to Schwamendingen, get on bus 62 and ride it to the end which is near Cornelia’s place of business. We walked to her shop, but she wasn’t there so we didn’t get a look inside today. We turned around and went back home to get the present for Rachel that I had forgotten to bring along. We stopped at Migros to buy the things we needed and then went on home. I decided to change my pants into my black P-day pants because we’d never make it back in time to change and then get to the Rodrigues’s by 4:00. After changing and getting the gift we got on the tram and traveled to Stettbach, waited 20 minutes for our train and then went to the Schwerzenbach Bahnhof and took the bus to Volketswil Dorf. We got off the bus and mistakenly took the long way around, but finally found Rachel’s apartment. No one answered the doorbell, so we called them. We found out they were in Zollikofen and had just attended the temple wedding of a friend. Diana talked to Rachel for awhile and then wished her a happy birthday. Diana told her to look in their mailbox when they got home because that’s where we put her gift. We hurried on back to the bus stop and got there just in time to catch the returning bus to the train station. We caught the train to Stettbach, rode the tram to Schwamendingen, changed to tram 9 to go to the Rodrigueses. By the time we got there we were about 15 minutes late, but in this case, better late than never.

The people who were in the apartment previously had put in new wood flooring, not the hardwood, but the laminated kind that floats on a foam pad. They hadn’t installed the baseboards so Julio had me help him with that first. He was drilling holes in the walls, inserting plastic anchors and then screwing the baseboards to the wall. It didn’t seem the right way to do it, but that’s the way the other rooms were done, so we continued on until we ran out of screws. When we had to cut a piece to finish one wall, he brought out a serrated bread knife with which to cut the baseboard. If you want to know how hard that is, try it some time. Finally he brought out another knife and a hammer and just whacked it a good one and it broke apart, fortunately in a straight line. I would have loved to of had my own tools here to do this kind of work. We ran out of screws, so we had to stop that and switch to putting a huge wardrobe together. First, we had to bring it up from the basement. Did we tell you before that members, or anyone else we want to visit, are always on the top floor, usually without elevators. Today was no exception. Up five flights of stairs; down five flights of stairs, etc. etc. Finally all parts were in the apartment and then the adventure began. Not having seen the wardrobe before, we relied mostly on Julio to take the lead. Needless to say after we put it together, we had to take it apart because we had forgotten some shelves that had to be in place as it went together and not after it was done. The same for the doors; we put the doors on and discovered we had some in the wrong place so they didn’t shut very good. We eventually got them in the right place. We knew we’d never be home to get the ice cubes for Elder Harris, but he called and said they tried the ice cube thing and it didn’t work so they didn’t need them after all. That meant we could stay longer to help the Rodrigueses. We didn’t leave until 8:00, but were grateful we could be of service to them. Our bones, muscles and feet were tired, but it was a good tired. They still don’t have their beds up or things put away, but at least they have one wardrobe standing so they can start to get a little bit organized. We’ve probably said this before, but the apartments over here don’t have built in closets; they are stand alone wardrobes. They still need a lot of help to get everything set up, so we offered to help again on Monday which is our normal P-day. This Monday is Pfingsten so all of the stores and everything else are closed for the holiday. We’ll help them on Monday and take another day for our P-day.

We came on home and Diana spent the next few hours making brownies while I straighten up the living room, took out the garbage and wrote our journal entry. Elder Harris called us this morning and asked us if it would be okay to bring some investigators over to our place for lunch between the end of Sacrament Meeting and the beginning of the baptism service. We told them it would be okay, but there’s only an hour so we don’t see how there’ll be enough time. We’ve got some sandwich stuff ready for them because there’ll be no time for cooking. We hope it all works out.