MAY 24, 2009 SUNDAY

Today we awoke with great hope and anticipation that Charles Aboussou, Emeka Okoro and Cornelia would come to Church today and that later on in the afternoon we’d have the opportunity to teach the “Plan of Salvation” to Emeka. As it turned out Charles and Emeka didn’t come to church and we weren’t able to teach Emeka in the afternoon. Cornelia came as did Angela Campbell and her three kids.

We arrived for our 8:00 correlation meeting and discussed everything we wrote on our report that needed to be brought to the attention of the council. We arranged help for Heather Scheidegger to get help in correcting some errors in her family history records. We also arranged help for the Rodrigues family to move into our ward. We were able to get an English “Joseph Smith” manual for Angela. We made them aware that the last two people baptized hadn’t received their baptism or confirmation certificates and were assured someone would correct that oversight. Following the meeting was a combined Relief Society/Melchizedek Priesthood meeting taught by the Stake RS President. The subject was on financial matters and budgeting. It was a little different in that she went over a budget sheet where she had listed required expenses as spelled out in Swiss law. Every Swiss is required to have and pay for health insurance (and it’s not cheap) even though they have socialized medicine.

Sacrament Meeting was inspirational and thought provoking. One of the main speakers was Sibyle Oberli whom we thought to be less-active. We don’t know her too well, so we could be mistaken, although we don’t see her at Church all too often. Her talk was on faith and she gave several examples and stories that illustrated faith very well. We talked to her after and she was way nice and invited us over sometime. There were many investigators at Church today and we were busy greeting and talking to them after the meeting was over. We also had a lot of members we wanted visit with to see how they were doing and to arrange the family history and moving of the Rodrigues family etc. Charlotte wanted to talk to us about our next great adventure on Monday’s P-day. We finally made our way home escorted by Elders Harris and Nilsson who wanted to burn another CD in preparation for the next zone conference. While they were here, we fixed them a hamburger for lunch as well as some ice cream and strawberries. While they were doing that, Diana washed and prepared the fruit for the refreshments for the music activity this afternoon at 3:30. This is usually a well attended activity, but today there weren’t many. George was there as usual because he is the main attraction. Everyone loves to hear him play the piano and the favorite songs of those who come. He seems to know all the songs off by heart. Besides us the other ones there were Urs Wichtermann, Solange Baptiste, Patricia Rames and her little daughter, Neide, Elders Harris & Nilsson and a friend of Patricia. We had fun together with George playing, Neide and Elder Nilsson singing solos, and all of us singing church hymns. As 5:00 rolled around, we tried to call Angela to confirm our appointment with Emeka, but got no answer. We left a message for her to call us. She didn’t call so we’ll have to call her to get Emeka’s phone number.

We came home for awhile and then went to visit Margarita Maurer who is in the hospital getting ready for another operation on her knee. This is the second time for this knee because the first time they missed something. She went through a lot of pain with the physical therapy from last time only to discover there was a problem that wouldn’t let it heal. It is amazing to us that most places don’t have air conditioning, including this hospital. It was sweltering in her room and no way to relieve the heat. We feel sorry for her to have to stay there. On the way home Elder Norris called to get our report for the week. We had to put him off until we reached home because we needed our report to review with him. And that is where our day ends.