8/7/09 Priscilla's birthday; cannon in front of Einstein Museum; street in alte stadt Bern.

AUGUST 7, 2009 FRIDAY

Whenever we want to make something, like a cake, we look up recipes on the internet. Since we needed to make a birthday cake for Priscilla’s birthday today, that’s what we did. We found a recipe we liked and it called for bananas and pineapple among other things. We started making the cake by putting all the dry ingredients in a bowl and then began to put the wet ingredients into another just like the recipe said to do. When it came to the bananas, we discovered we didn’t have any so we put everything on hold to run to the store to get some. While there, besides the bananas, we also bought a few other things for it such as powder sugar and a can of pineapple. It’s funny, but they don’t have crushed pineapple at Migros. We’ll have to check out COOP and Denners to see if they do. We also bought a six pack of 2 liter bottles orange soda, four liters of apple juice and 12 liters of orange juice because they were on sale and we needed some drinks for company. We also needed some to take to Priscillas tonight. We felt like pack mules on the way home because everything weighed so much and drinks are especially heavy. We got back home and finished making the cake and put it in the oven to cook.

Once we had that done, we started working on a lesson to teach Verena Bosshard when we visited her this afternoon. She has been ill for so long and hasn’t felt like having visits, but we call her about every week to check on her. In the middle of preparing the lesson (11:45) Elders Harris & Nilsson called to say that Elder Pine & Richeson called them to see if they could go to a lunch appointment with Heinz and Lily Locher at 12:30 because they were at a zone conference and couldn’t go themselves. They accepted the invitation without checking their calendar and we don’t know why they waited so long to cancel or see if someone could bail them out. Elders Harris & Nilsson were already booked and so they called us to see if we could go. We would have loved to, but we had the appointment with Sister Bosshard at 2:00 and couldn’t. Besides that Elder Pine wanted us to just show up at the Lochers without telling them anything about a switch. Even though the missionaries are great and we love them to death, in some things they are still just inexperienced young men who need to learn life’s lessons. They didn’t want to call the Lochers and face the music knowing Sister Locher goes to a lot of expense and trouble to prepare meals for the missionaries.

The cake got done, we made the icing and had the lesson prepared for Sister Bosshard so we were set. We left the cake to cool and left to go to Bassersdorf to visit Sister Bosshard. It took and hour to get there on the tram and buses even though we lucked out with good connections. When we arrived at the tram stop it showed as we got there. We got off the first tram and only had to wait a few minutes for our bus. When we had to get off that bus, we were able to jump right on the next one. Sometimes it takes closer to two hours if connections aren’t good. Sister Bosshard is such a sweet person and she sure misses coming to Church and the visits when she’s ill. She loves the lesson and being able to talk to someone about the Gospel. She can’t read because she’s almost blind and there’s no other members there to talk with. Her roommate is mentally and physically handicapped and can’t talk at all. After an hour we had to leave so we could get back home, ice and decorate the cake and get to Priscilla’s apartment in Oerlikon by 5:00. We did it too, but it was a frantic half hour at home to get the cake iced, decorated and in a box to carry to Oerlikon. We melted a chocolate bar to write “Happy Birthday Priscilla” on the cake. When the bar was melted, we poured it into a plastic bag and poked a small hole in the corner with a tooth pick. Diana squeezed the chocolate out the hole to write the words. We learned this trick from our daughters who invented this method doing Easter eggs last Easter.

We met Elders Harris & Nilsson by the bus stop we get off at to go to Priscillas. When we got there, Priscilla was still working hard trying to get her daily allotment of 200 Swiss Air uniform shirts ironed, folded and bagged. No problem! She already had them ironed and on a rack so we formed an assembly line to finish them. Diana took them off the rack one at a time, buttoned the top button and laid them on the ironing board. Priscilla folded them neatly and gave them to Elder Nilsson who carried them to a table where he and Elder Harris bagged them in plastic bags. Elder Harris slid the bagged shirts over to me and I folded the end of the bags over, taped them, then stacked them in a big plastic tub on wheels. What would have taken her probably at least a couple of hours, took us a half hour to finish. That was the best birthday present she got today.

We put candles on the cake and lit them, sang happy birthday and then dived in. The cake got a little messed up on the tram on the way over, but it tasted good nonetheless. We had a good time talking for about an hour and a half and then we had to go. Before we left, however, her husband who is her boss, came to pick up the shirts for Swiss Air. He was very nice and friendly, had a piece of cake and then had to leave. Shortly after we left too. We arrived back home shortly before 8:00. We were checking the emails when Rebecca skyped us. Diana talked to her while I went to the Church and found a Children Song Book Charlotte had asked us yesterday to get for her. She wanted to memorize the children’s primary songs before Sunday and she didn’t have a key to get into the Church. I delivered the book and then returned home.

The tender mercy for today was the Lord arranging the missionaries and us to arrive just in time to help Priscilla get her shirts finished in time for the pick up at 6:00. She has to have them ready by 6:00 every evening and she can’t be late although tonight she would have been if we hadn’t come when we did. She knew we were coming at 5:00 and she was going to stop working while we were there and just take the consequences. But Diana wouldn’t take no for an answer and organized everything to make quick work of it and have it done by the deadline.