Guess whose feet; Robert by Luzern Ward building; pumpkin pie looks better in real life and tastes much better than it looks.

SEPTEMBER 27, 2009 SUNDAY

This morning we attended our missionary correlation council meeting and waited in vain for our ward mission leader to show up to conduct it. He is usually reliable although late almost every Sunday, but sometimes he kind of goes AWOL. Just as we got started, the other members of the council representing the various organizations came and we had a productive meeting. For our part we keep reminding them to assign home teachers to Werner Buehlmann and Walter Burri who desperately need them. Home teachers could arrange to bring Werner to Church, if he had some. We feel if someone would visit Walter, he would probably start coming to Church again. Rather than the council taking on this responsibility to discuss it in Ward Council, it was put back on us to talk to the High Priest Group leader about getting home teachers assigned. It was not exactly the way it should have gone, but we’ll follow through. Next, we followed Pres. Matern’s directions and asked if the Young Men or Young Women could accept a service opportunity and visit Elisabeth Kalt in the care center regularly so she will have a little interaction with the members. They could read to her or push her around in her wheel chair through the gardens etc. There are many other things they could think up to do with her. David Wichtermann asked if we would go with them the first time and we said we would be glad to. We also reported on who we made contact with throughout the week to invite to conference next Sunday which included Hildegunde Schroeder and Charles Aboussou. We didn’t report on all the others we went to who weren’t home, but still left a conference invitation in their mailbox.

After the meeting we split up and each went to our own meeting, I, to Priesthood and Diana to Relief Society. Today was “Teachings For Our Times” and the lesson was a talk given by Pres. Monson in last General Conference, Be Your Best Self. That may not be the exact title because I’m translating from German, but it should be close. Then came Sunday School and we love it when brother Fuhrer is our instructor. He speaks plainly and he is always prepared and has a very good presentation. He started the lesson by performing a demonstration. He had previously set up two water-tight boxes and inside one he had a pile of sand with a miniature temple on top of it. In the other box he had a block of granite with another miniature temple on it. He asked what would happen to the temple if a rainstorm came. After a few comments, he poured water on the temple on sand and, of course, it fell over. The other one did not. He then related the experience of the Salt Lake temple when first the foundation was made of sandstone. We all know the story that it had to be replaced because the sandstone was already falling apart. Many years labor was lost when they had to start over. He used this example to illustrate the foundations we are building for ourselves spiritually. Are we building on sand or granite?

We had quite a few visitors in sacrament meeting today; the Chandlers from St. George and two sisters from Australia. There were two more sitting by Elder Nilsson, but we didn’t get a chance to talk to them before they left. We always look to see who from our less actives, or former less-actives, who are at Church. Today we were thrilled to see Hildegunde again after being absent a couple of weeks. The Rodrigues family was here again as well as Margarita Maurer. We were disappointed that Marc Kummer didn’t come, but Agnes, Elders Nilsson & Harris’ investigator came. All of our recently baptized members, Neide, Charlotte and Priscilla, were there except Cornelia was not. She already told us some days ago she had to work today and wouldn’t be coming. That was too bad because the talks were inspirational and the Spirit was strong. The Melchizedek Priesthood sang the song in between the speakers. There we somewhere around forty of us and we were quite the chorus. I wish this ward had a choir, but everyone is so spread out, it would be hard to get people to come.

After sacrament meeting we stayed and visited until there were almost no one left to visit with. Then we went home and had lunch. Diana had fried potatoes with cut up cervalats and I had heated up leftovers of tortellini chicken from yesterday. Just as we were trying to decide if we wanted to eat what was left over again, two Elders, Nilsson & Harris buzzed our door. We let them in and then they decided to let us know why they were. “We’re hungry,” said Elder Harris. Good, we thought, because now they can eat the left overs. We cooked a couple of hamburgers and added some potato salad and a few other things to supplement. We always have ice cream and heated up the carmel topping for them for dessert. These two Elders have a soft spot in our hearts because they are so good and they are the hardest working Elders we know. It’s going to be a sad day when either of them get transferred. We went over our people-to-contact-for-conference list again and divided up the names so we’ll be sure to get them all contacted.

We bought a small pumpkin a few days ago to try and make a pumpkin pie out of it. We had some time to try it today, so we cut it open, took the seeds out and then baked it in the oven. When it was done, we let it cool for awhile and then put the meat through a strainer to make it like pumpkin out of a can. We don’t have a blender so that’s all we could think of to make it the right consistency. The result was very juicy, so we poured the mashed pumpkin into a cloth and squeezed out most of the water. It turned out just the right consistency. It was surprising the pumpkin yielded only 11/2 cups of mashed pumpkin, not as much as we’d of liked. We got a recipe from the internet and went to work. We thawed out some crust dough we had in the freezer from some time ago and used it. Much easier than trying to make the crust from scratch. We mixed up all the ingredients and, luckily, we had a small bottle of pumpkin pie spice the last couple left for us. Into the crust it went and into the oven. As the pie began to bake, this wonderful aroma started wafting though our apartment. It’s funny what you miss from home when you can’t get it here. We had to make our own pumpkin because you just can’t buy it here. Anyway, an hour later out came this beautiful pie and we could hardly wait until it was cool enough to eat. Finally, the time came and oh was it delicious. Every bit as good as we remembered Costco pumpkin pie being. Now the question is, can we save any for the missionaries or will it all be gone before tomorrow?