All of these are from the Aare Gorge trip including Diana standing on a large chess board.

JULY 8, 2009 TUESDAY

Today was our normal district meeting at 10:15, but we had to be at the Church at 9:00 to help the Relief Society make sandwiches to serve at the blood drive tonight. We met Emma Schmid and Kosimo there and started making them, ham, cheese and a carrot mixture they call Ruebli. Later, Rachel Mascaro came and pitch in. Before we left for our meeting we put our peach cobbler in the oven to heat up for serving later. Diana gave her part on one of Christ’s attributes which was “humility.” She used a story Pres. Hugh B. Brown told to illustrate an experience he had. The story is pretty long, but we’ll add just a quick summary here.

Hugh B. Brown bought a piece of land and discovered all the plants had been neglected. One of the first things the he saw was a current bush that had grown wild, was pretty but didn’t bear any fruit. He clipped and pruned and soon had the bush in shape. But then he imagined he saw tears on the end of each twig and that the bush said to him that he had been trying to grow as tall as the nearby trees and had almost grown as tall, and how could he cut him and hurt him and now he was just a scrubby bush again. Pres. Brown told the bush that he was the gardner here and knew what was the best for the currant bush and knew what he should be. What he wanted was the best currant bush he could get and not another tree. As time past the currant bush developed and bore a plentiful harvest of lush currants.

Pres. Brown was a high ranking officer in the Canadian Royal Army stationed in England and aspired to the position of general. He was called to the head office to meet with the supreme commander and felt sure he was going to get the promotion. He had his valet shine his buttons and get everything ready to present a good image for the interview. He saluted smartly when entering and then was told he wasn’t going to get the position. He was able to take a look at the papers on the commander’s desk and saw the word “Mormon” written on the paper and knew then why he wasn’t promoted. He was very disappointed and on his way home he thought about this and his diappointment. When by the time he got home, he had become angry and asked the Lord why He had done this to him. He knelt and prayed and while doing that he seemed to hear his own voice saying the same words he had spoken to the current bush. “I’m the gardner here and I know what’s best for you and know what I want you to become.” If he would have gotten the position, his children would have grown up in army barracks and not had the advantage of being close to the Church. He probably wouldn’t have been in a position to serve faithfully in the later positions and callings in the Church.

After district meeting we hurried home with Elders Norris and Carrier to cut their hair. After that we hurried to go see Kim Humphrey who had a birthday today. We knew he probably wasn’t home, but we had no other time today to take our gift to him. We left it in his mailbox and had a nice walk in the cool air and light rain. We got back home in time for our hair cutting appointment with Elders Frandsen and Roberts. While I cut their hair, Diana cooked them dinner. When both of them were done, we ate and then cleaned up fast, unhooked our laptop to take it for the elders to use to show a DVD at Institute and then took off for the blood drive to help serve the food/drinks to those who donated blood. It was a pretty disappointing turnout of only 29 people. It takes a lot of work and organization to set up the blood draw activity. Diana and I must have passed out 700 to 800 flyers around the neighborhood and others passed out more too. It seemed like quite a few of our ward members were either on vacation or had been bitten by ticks which seem to be very prevalent in the woods over here in the summer. One cannot donate blood for three months after having been bitten.

The blood donation event started before Institute and overlapped it, but we did get in on the very end on Institute. However, we were pretty tired by then so we said hello to everyone, collected our laptop and then scooted on home. Last night I wrote Monday’s journal entry and so this morning I’m writing Tuesday’s. Hopefully we’ll be caught up by tonight; it’s so difficult to play catch-up. And why does it seem like we are always hurrying?

Which mission in Brazil did Brian Stoll get called to. We have some referrals we’d like to send him, depending on where he is serving.