First two photos near Braunwald; Picnicing were E. Nilsson, Charlotte, Diana, E. Harris in Braunwald.

MAY 26. 2009 TUESDAY

The day, a beautiful sunshiny warm day, just began and then it was over. We had a full day planned and we knew we weren’t going to have much down time. We started by going to our district meeting this morning. These generally last two hours which are planned out by the district leader. Everyone gets an assignment and in this way we teach and support each other. Diana’s assignment was to choose the closing song and give the prayer. Mine was to spend ten minutes teaching about doctrine and principles. Elder Carrier had the game today and it was pretty fun. He made a list of 30 random items and when he called out an item, the first team to have the item and place it on the designated spot, won a point.

After the meeting was over we went quickly home, dropped off the stuff we normally take to the meeting, and then left to visit Margarita Maurer in the hospital. It took at least an hour to get there by tram. If it were possible to make instant connections when we have to change trams, it wouldn’t be so bad, but normally we have to wait. We had a nice visit with Margarita. It seems her operation went about as well as expected and she’ll go back home tomorrow. Her room was still sweltering so Diana gave her a hand fan that would help her keep cool. We also gave her the small book, “True to the Faith,” in German so she would have something to read. We thought maybe she would read the short explanations of gospel principles contained in the book. After an hour we excused ourselves and hurried back home to pick up a gift/card for Tamara Daehler who has a birthday today. The weather forecast predicted a cold front with rain for later today and tomorrow. On the way home we saw clouds building so when we left to go visit Tamara, we made sure we had an umbrella. When we left our apartment, the wind picked up, blowing everything around including us. After leaving the tram and getting on the bus at Stettbach we encountered a severe thunderstorm which pelted the bus (and everything else) with large hailstones and rain. Torrents and torrents came down making it impossible to hear inside the bus and flooding the streets outside. We decided we didn’t want to try and walk through the deluge so we called Tamara, wished her a happy birthday, and agreed to give her the gift next Sunday at Church. We switched buses at Bahnhof Bad and went back to Stettbach. We thought we had plenty of time to make it back to Schwamendingen, buy some bread, go home and then get to Church for our 5:00 appointment to cut Marcello’s hair. However, all plans are not to be. For some reason our tram wasn’t running; some problem delayed it. We waited for about a half an hour before one arrived. We did have time to quickly go to COOP and buy some bread (and strawberries that were half price) and then we went home.

Diana decide to stay home while I went to the stake center to meet Marcello and cut his hair. Since our set-to a few weeks ago, he’s been a lot nicer to his mom, Neide, and respectful to me. He’s still meeting with the missionaries and says he wants to get baptized. He asked about the Church’s stand on tattooing which gave me a chance to talk to him about our bodies being sacred and a temple for our spirits. When I was finished with him, Diana arrived about the same time as the Wichtermanns to begin getting things ready for Institute. This time we helped make a large quantity of Birchermuesli. We peeled and grated a lot of apples to go in it. It turned out delicious, but I think my version is much better that this one. Diana doesn’t like yogurt so she was content to just eat bread after the classes were over.

Cows with bells taken while riding in a buggy in Braunwald.