Some more of the hundreds of cows in this shop; Spiez overlook; Grosse Scheidegg.

JULY 18, 2009 SATURDAY

Last night after we went to bed there was sporadic lightning and thunder and it continued raining all night and most of today. It finally let up in the late late afternoon. Mostly today we worked on translating the 10 Virgin parable, making brownies, making banana nut bread, contacting people by phone and writing our weekly progress report. The brownies and banana bread are for the baptism tomorrow afternoon. The parable is for FHE Monday evening. The report is for tomorrow’s correlation meeting. And the contacting is what we do.

Elders Harris and Nilsson came over this morning to finish making the programs for Priscilla’s baptism tomorrow. It takes a lot of coordination to get all the details for the program worked out as well as create and print the programs to be handed out at the baptism. It’s work they are glad to do and they wish they had more of the same. Elder Norris was supposed to call us to let us know what he wanted for lunch at the district meeting Tuesday. When he hadn’t called by the afternoon, we called him. He told us he couldn’t decide so he called some of the other missionaries for their ideas. All he found out was that some didn’t want chile and one of the sisters couldn’t eat spaghetti. So we were on our own to figure it out. We’ll probably use the gov’t. surplus food Charlotte gave us a while back. It’s already cooked and frozen pork cutlets in gravy which we’ll heat up and put over noodles. We’ll also include a vegetable, salad and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Sounds good to us.

We haven’t been to the store for a long time and we needed some eggs, bread and some other things, but we waited until too late to go into town. All of the big grocery stores were closed, but we found the little Greek market was still open. We bought some tomatoes and a cucumber for the salad (we already had lettuce), a watermelon, a couple of T-shirts with the Swiss flag on them, a small Swiss flag, a loaf of bread and a can of black olives. Charlotte came over for a minute, too, to tell us she wouldn’t be to Church tomorrow because she would be out of town visiting a friend. She told us she was going to introduce the Church to her and to pray for her. She also brought back our salad bowl and dressing we left there the last time we were over. She also wanted to make sure we had Tuesday 5:00 reserved to be at her place, but she won’t tell us why. She says it is a surprise. She wanted us to know she has our next Monday P-day all planned out for us too. Elder Pine wants us to meet him at the Church at 3:30 on Tuesday, but he won’t tell us why either. What’s all this secrecy about?

These are the people we contacted and today:
Renatus Raschle - He promised us he’d come to Church, but he’ll be on vacation for 2 weeks.
Cornelia Schaer- We want to teach her some more, but she comes to Church every Sunday now. She paid her tithing last week and, before she did, she said she didn’t have many appointments at her business. Today she said she had a good week and was pretty busy all week. Blessings come when you pay tithing.
Verena Bosshart - She was very ill last week and this week she has a cold. We’ll visit next week.
Susan Serfoesoe - Invited her to Church; she said she would come to sac. mtg. and bring a friend.
Charles Aboussou - We wished him happy B-day and invited him to Church, but he’s going on vacation to Germany for a week.
Sandra Buchser - Called to wish her a happy birthday and also to ask her to visit Gerde Schroeder who lives close by and has been having a struggle with depression.
Suwang Stefaniak - Called just to check up on her and we found out she will get her operation in the middle of August to fix her lung problem. She misses us so we’ll try to visit her once in awhile.

Others we have on our report are Hildegunde Schroeder who promised us she would come to Church tomorrow, and Brigitte Roffler who needs some attention. Elders Harris and Nilsson will report on Priscilla Wegmueller.