Little pond at Gornergrat (Matterhorn); YSA Institute; Elder Norton
SEPTEMBER 7, 2009 MONDAY

We didn’t have any P-day trips planned for today; we just wanted to stay home and do nothing except go look in second hand stores to replace a favorite bowl of Diana’s that we broke the other day. That was the plan. But things happen. Elder Richeson & Dockstader came at 10:00 for Elder Richeson to get his hair cut. As soon as they left Elders Norton & Roberts came from Altstetten to get their hair cut. While one was getting his hair cut, the other one did his emails. Of course Diana brings out the brownies, banana bread, crackers or anything else we have mostly to get rid of the leftovers so we don’t have to eat them up. They were fasting so instead of eating things here, Diana sent them home with them. Elder Carrier called this morning to give us another assignment to get done and bring to district meeting tomorrow. Diana and I need to identify one strength and one weakness in our companionship; report on the progress of our investigators and write down what we liked or didn’t like about the last zone conference and suggestions to make them better. For old folks like us we can’t remember yesterday let alone what happened a month ago. What are they thinking of.

Today was a good day to go grocery shopping again. Saturday we discovered we were down to our last kilo of flour and were running short on sugar so we needed to replenish our stores. This time we went to Denners first and bought 10 kilos (24 pounds) of both sugar and flour. We also replaced the canned corn, mushroom soup mix, bread, spaghetti, cacao powder, and chile and bought some cheese and crackers for tonight. We stopped in Migros and bought a few more things and then went home. While we were in Denners, Elder Harris called to see when we would be home so they could come and pick up some equipment they left here the other day. Soon after we got home they came. Diana brought out more snacks and stuffed them full. It’s always fun to talk with the Elders and mostly we talk about investigators, how we can help members and so on. They stayed about an hour and then left.

Home evening was at our home tonight and, since most of our “regulars” were not going to be here, we had all of the assignments including hosting, the lesson, game and dessert. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon preparing a lesson on what we can learn from the story about the Jaredites building boats to travel to the promised land. While I did that, Diana tidied up our apartment and prepared the snacks and dessert and got what we needed for the game. She put the crackers in bowls, cut the cheese, cut the cucumbers into slices, made chip dip, sliced the banana bread, and set the drinks out. Everything looked great. We also devoted some time selecting a “success story” to share at district meeting tomorrow and talked a little about the other assignment mentioned above.

Home evening normally begins at 7:00, but the only one on time were Kathi Bolt and us. We waited fifteen minutes before starting, but no one else came. We were disappointed that the Wachters, Suki, Neide and Agnes didn’t come. We three sang a hymn, had a prayer and then started the lesson. We had just got started when Elders Richeson and Dockstader came. We continued the discussion with the main points being that the Lord expects us to pray and because the brother of Jared didn’t, He chastized him for a three hour period. Can you imagine that? Second, they went to work and built the boats. We can’t sit idly by and think the Lord is going to do it for us. Third, that the Lord will helps us with some things when we ask, in this story, what they should do to get fresh air into the boats (cut holes in the top and bottom of the boats). Fourth, we have to think, ponder and pray to work out our own problems and then ask the Lord to help us with the rest that we can’t or don’t know how to do (provide light for the boats). There was some discussion about why cut a hole in both the top and bottom of the boats. On the surface that seems kind of odd, but we saw a video clip on Youtube where a man demonstrated why that may have been necessary. You can watch it by googleing Brother of Jared. It is a fun video to watch. We had Elder Roberts download it off Youtube and put it on the desktop so we could unhook the laptop and take it into the living room to show. It all worked fine, but the sound didn’t come on. That was a little disappointing, but it was still okay. Later, when we connected the laptop to the internet again, the sound worked fine. Kathi was really interested in this discussion especially wanting to find where, in the bible, it talked of the confounding the languages at the tower of Babel.

After the lesson we played the spoon game for a little while and then the Elders had to go. We had a closing prayer and everybody left. This P-day really didn’t seem like a P-day at all, but we’ll make up for it on Saturday. The Martins have invited us to go with them on a trip into Appenzell country where Daniela will participate in a yodeling celebration of some sort.