My plants that I bring in every night so they don't freeze.

MAY 6, 2009 WEDNESDAY

Today was wash day, whites, so that’s what we did the first thing. About noon Elders Jensen and Pine came by unannounced which is unusual. Normally they call and warn us. They wanted to print off a conference talk for a lesson with Charlotte this afternoon. As soon as they left we left ourselves to go see if we could find some of our less-actives home. When we got off the bus in Dubendorf, we saw a second hand store and decided to go in and look around. It was a small shop crammed full of fun stuff as well as junk. We saw some neat old copper pans and pots that would have been fun to have in our candy shop at home. Our attention focused on some souvenir spoons like Marilyn likes to collect. Two were from Switzerland, one from New York, one from Sweden, one from the Netherlands, one from Lebanon, one from Sverige (don’t know where that is), one that looks like it could be from Holland and four from Amsterdam. They are all pretty unique. We got them all for 25sfr. which is about $20. We also bought a lizard carved into a root of some kind for $2.00 and she threw in a couple of cute green frog candles for free. We haggled a little bit to get the price down and when she threw in the candles for free, we told her we had something for her too. We gave her a BoM and explained what we were doing in Switzerland and asked if we could come talk to her about the book and our church. She said her husband would not be very understanding if she invited us over, so we’ll check back sometime and see if she has read any of the BoM.

We continued on to Sis. Wachters but they weren’t home so we left them a note and an invitation to come to Church next Sunday for Mother’s Day. We wrote that we were unhappy they didn’t come to Church on Easter Sunday like they promised.

Next we walked the twenty minutes to Kaylina Graf who we hadn’t met yet. We found Kaylina home and spoke with her for about an hour on the door. She is a Canadian/Swiss and speaks fairly good English. She said when she was younger she went to Church in the Schwamendingen Ward and was baptized at 8 years of age. She was active in Church until she “was old enough to have her own mind.” Her mother made her go to Church and she finally rebelled and quit going about 20 years ago. She has no interest in becoming active again or in belonging to any church. She said her husband to be was Muslim and she didn’t care for that religion either although she sometimes went with him there. She was surprised her membership was still on the records of the Church and said nobody had been to contact her since she left 20 years ago. We were the first. We find that very sad when people wander away and no one goes after them. We asked about her mother and she told us she had three different strokes and now lives in a care center and is unable to speak or understand. We taught Kaylina the 1st lesson from Preach My Gospel and bore testimony of Joseph Smith, the restored Gospel of Christ and the Book of Mormon. As we left we told her we would probably check back before our mission was over just to say hello and she said that would be okay.

Next we went to visit Werner Buehlmann to see if we could finally catch him home. Again he was not there, but we saw the building manager who told us Werner had left several months ago and was now currently in an old folks home although Werner’s name was still on the mailbox and the doorbell. Maybe they expect him back sometime. We traveled back to Schwamendingen, got off and went to the little store we were at yesterday and bought another couple of five liter bottles of punch, one peach and one lemonade. He tried to charge us more for it today than yesterday, but we had our receipt and got it for the same price.

We went on back home for a rest and something to eat, after which we planned to go to Kloten and visit Suki and maybe a couple of other people. I had forgotten our cell phone when we went out today so we checked it to see if we had any activity on it. Elder Ehlen had texted two messages: one was for any stories on humility; and two, did we have any good stories for Mother’s Day. Elder Ehlen likes to print a short inspirational story and put them in all the song books in his ward to give the members something to lift their spirits. He did this in our ward while he served with us here. Does anyone have such a story that might be helpful for him?

As we were thinking about leaving Elder Harris called and asked us if they could come over and use our computer to email a couple of contacts they had made in Oerlikon to set up appointments with them. By the time they were done with that and left, we looked at the time and it was 6:00. We hadn’t realized it was so late so we called the Elders who had just left and asked them if they would like some pizza for dinner. It didn’t take them long to come back. Diana cooked them some mushroom and rice soup while I jazzed up the frozen pizza. For dessert it was vanilla ice cream and fresh strawberries on top. By the time they left it was too late to go to Kloten which is about an hour away by train. We decided to do our finances for last month, catch up on the member list and the weekly report and write our journal entry. The last thing was a call from our district leader, Elder Norris, making his mid-week check to see if we were still alive.

As promised here are our goals for this transfer period.
1. Give one lesson with a member present.
2. Give six lessons to less-active or newly baptized members (Cornelia Schaer, Silvan Gianatti, Gitta & Kurt Kummer and Verena Bosshard).
3. Have two less-active members come to Sacrament Meeting.
4. Fellowship the following members: Neide Graf, Suki Ehrensperger, Charlotte, Dora Wachter.
5. Robert: Memorize three scriptures a week.
6. Diana: Memorize three German word definitions a day.
7. Finish contacting the rest of the less-active members on our member list.
8. Visit all the members on their birthdays.
9. Have a balcony garden.

A field plants with yellow blossoms that they make some kind of oil similar to canola oil. the spoons we bought at the brokenhaus.