Agnes, E. Moss, Charlotte, Jessica, E. Nilsson; Elders Larson, Harris, Pine, Nilsson and Jensen practising for next Sunday. George Wimalasuriya is playing the piano.

JULY 5, 2009 SUNDAY

Sundays come around so quick it’s just amazing how time flies. We were talking with Martin Neidhart the other day about this very thing and his theory is that as we get closer to the end of the world, time is just naturally speeding up. We don’t know if this is true, but it sure seems like it. We were almost ready to go to the correlation meeting at 8:00 when we received a phone call from Elder Pine asking us if we were going to come early to practice our song for next Sunday’s sacrament meeting. Last week they kind of mentioned something about singing a song sometime, but it really didn’t register. We were able to get to the Church in time to sing the hymn through a couple of times. We’ll be ready for next Sunday.

It’s interesting to hear Elders Harris & Nilsson and Elders Pine & Jensen report on the progress of their investigators and learn of the new contacts they are teaching. However, today we learned that Patricia, Solange Baptiste’s friend, had already been deported back to Brazil after having been detained last week as an illegal. They reported she was doing well and actually was excited about being back in Brazil albeit in a better part than she grew up in. Right now she is staying with Solange’s sister. Solange plans on returning home at the end of August. They said Solange is uncomfortable coming to Church and would not be coming today because she felt the Swiss members would look down at her because she is also in the country with expired papers. The members of the committee assured the elders that in no way was the case. We also learned that one of their golden investigators, Jessica, was moving back to her homeland, Spain, this week. In both cases their names are being referred to the respective missions so they can continue moving towards baptism. We also reported on our activities for the week, but since we already wrote of these in our journal, we won’t rehearse them again here. We did ask the question when the membership records for Gabriella Rodriguez and her family would be read over the pulpit to welcome them into the ward.

Diana said the lesson in Relief Society was about charity and our priesthood lesson was about how important home teaching is. Brother Fuhrer taught the Gospel Doctrine class and then came Fast and Testimony meeting. We always wait with anticipation who from our contacts will come to sacrament meeting. We were hoping Renatus Raschle and his family would come, but he said they probably wouldn’t come today, but they would for sure come sometime. Cornelia came and we invited her to come sit with us more toward the front of the chapel. She declined and said she likes to sit on the very back row. Soon Gabiella Rodriguez showed up with her two kids, but without Julio. She said one of the kids didn’t sleep well last night and he was up all night tending her. She always sits on the back bench also so she can take her kids out if they become noisy. Nobody else looked like they were going to sit by them so we got our bags and went back and sat with them ourselves. It’s kind of neat to sit by two of our re-activated less- active members. After the opening prayer Bishop Schwendener got up and presented the records of Gabriella to the ward. We don’t know if that had already been planned or if it was a result of our asking the question in correlation meeting this morning, but we’re glad that they have been officially welcomed into the ward. Things went along pretty well with many sincere heart felt testimonies being borne. We were content to just listen until I kept getting prompted to get up and bear my testimony as well. I tried to just sit there and managed to do it until the very last and then I couldn’t sit any longer. I felt impressed to tell of the conversation we’d had with Renatus Raschle because Cornelia needed to hear about it. When we contacted him last Friday evening, we asked him why he left the Church and he specifically said it required too much from him. The two that he mentioned was smoking and playing soccer on Sunday. This gave us the opportunity to teach him that commandments are not a punishment, but a blessing because when we keep any commandment, we are blessed for doing so, without fail. We know Cornelia has a problem smoking and maybe this will help her understand a little better about commandments.

By the time the block of meetings was over we had invited seven members to lunch so we hurried home to get things ready. Diana put together the chicken pillows and got them into the oven, put the little spuds on to cook, and otherwise got everything ready. She had help getting the salad put together and on plates. Rather than mixing everything up as usual, she put each item on the salad plate by itself and, if the person eating it wanted to, he could mix it together or eat it the way it was. While she did that, I got the table ready and set out the plates, utensils, etc. When I could squeeze into the kitchen, I made the chicken gravy to pour on the chicken pillows. For dessert we gave them banana bread with vanilla ice cream on top. It was all really good except the gravy was a little strong. Here in Switzerland no one is in a hurray to eat or to go home after we finish. Paulina was also leaving this week for home in Mexico and we may never see her again either except for Institute on Tuesday night. I also cut Elder Pine’s and Elder Jensen’s hair before they left.

This evening we just relaxed a bit and then Diana made playdoh for our game at tomorrow’s family home evening. The game concept is to divide into two teams, draw a slip out of a jar with a word on it, have a member from each team sculpt something with the playdoh and the other members have to guess what the word is by looking at the sculpture. The team that guesses correctly first gets a point. It should be fun.