Peter Martin's birthday; Rosa at her birthday party; Diana almond staengli (cookies).

SEPTEMBER 19, 2009 SATURDAY

This morning was Stake Priesthood meeting so I got up early to be at the Church by 8:00. Pres. Bolt was the first speaker who used 1 Samuel Chapter 2 as the basis for his talk. He spoke mostly about how we all should treat our wives, that we should be partners in marriage and neither one should be a slave to the other. He focused on how we should be an example to the people and not do anything that would discredit the Lord’s Church. He grew up in the mountains herding cows in the summer, that related they would put a bell on each one so they would know where it was. He used this example to teach us that, figuratively speaking, each of us have a bell on us and people look to us to lead them in the right way. He spoke of chastity, honesty, virtue and only having one wife and counseled everyone to follow the Lord’s teachings. He counseled fathers to pay attention to the family and that time slips away so fast that one has to make an effort, it just doesn’t happen. As an example, he used watching TV or playing video games. Husbands come home from a hard day at work and want to just relax. On goes the TV or the computer with the intention of just doing it for a little while. Before one realizes, the evening is gone and it’s time for bed and there has been no interaction with the family. The opportunity has been lost for teaching, building relationships etc. while really not doing anything productive at all, just wasting time. He went on to teach the Plan of Salvation in that in this world we have our freedom to choose; we can either following the Lord’s plan or we can follow Satan’s plan. Each day we have thousands of choices; which do we choose? Who do we serve?

High Councilor Koch spoke next to the same theme and added that this life is serious business when it comes to preparing for the eternities. Sometimes we forget the real purpose we are here on the earth which is to work out our salvation. Do we take this life seriously, doing everything we can to work toward the goal of Eternal Life together with our wife and family.

Pres. Ruckauer, 1st Counselor in the stake presidency, focused his talk on freedom of choice, that this life is full of decisions to make every day. Satan doesn’t just show us the wicked things, but uses more subtle tactics such as half truths, lies, disappointment, doubt, dishonesty, just one won’t matter, just this one time will be okay, etc. He used the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. For example, Satan told Eve if she partook of the fruit of the tree that she would become like God, knowing good and evil. This was the truth. But then he also added that she wouldn’t die, which was a lie. He covers a lie with the truth. In Moses 4:4 it states that Satan is the father of all lies. When we respond to his temptations, we essential are in prison and slaves. However, Pres. Ruckauer used James 4: 7 to teach us that the devil will flee from us if we choose the right and, James 4:8 that God will come closer to us when we come closer to Him.

Pres. Bolt closed the meeting with the remark that the Lord will bless us after the trial of our faith.

After priesthood meeting I came home and soon after Elders Nilsson and Harris came to see if they could do their morning studying here rather than waste time going home. They had a teaching appointment at the Church and then right after, we all had an eating appointment together at Charlotte’s at 12:30. We left them there while we traveled to Duebendorf to talk to Werner Buehlmann to make sure he still wanted to come to Church tomorrow and if he would be ready at 10:30 when we would need to pick him up. We thought we would have just enough time to do that before the dinner appointment and, we would have had, if the bus would have been on schedule. We were able to talk with Werner and confirm everything and then we went back out to our bus stop. We waited the twenty minutes for the scheduled pick up, but the bus didn’t come for another 15 minutes. Grrrr. The Swiss like everyone to be punctual, but this wasn’t our fault. We called Charlotte and told her our problem and she graciously accepted our excuse. We ended up being 15 minutes late.

Charlotte had sauerkraut, ham, bread and boiled potatoes for the main course. She knew Diana didn’t like sauerkraut so she prepared cooked string beans for her. It was all very tasty and filling. For dessert she served us vanilla ice cream with some homemade chocolate topping over it. After the meal and just before we had to go, Elders Nilsson and Harris gave the spiritual thought. They gave everyone ten small pieces of paper. On the first piece of paper each person had to write a simple sentence about anything they wanted and then pass the whole stack of ten pieces of paper to the next person with the one with the sentence on it still on top. Each person had to look at the sentence on their respective stack and then put it on the bottom and draw a picture on the top piece illustrating the sentence. Then everyone passed their stack to the next person and then each looked at the drawing, put it on the bottom and then wrote a sentence to describe the picture. This rotation kept going until all ten pieces of paper were used up. The point of the exercise was to see how the meaning of the sentence changed when handed around from the first sentence to the one on the tenth page. There were five of us playing and out of the five, only one was kind of close to the original sentence. This exercise illustrates how doctrines get changed without prophets to lead and guide us. Prophets and Apostles keep the teachings and doctrines pure. There are many scriptures one can use with this exercise including Amos 3:7.

We had to hurry to our next appointment with Valerie Otte at 4:00. She had dinner waiting for us and, not to our surprise, she had a companion with her who she asked to come to help her convert us. She welcomed us with the traditional smile and three cheek kiss and introduced us to Frieda, an delightful lady of 85 years old. She had us sit down and both of them served us, first baked salmon, white rice, what looked at first glance to be sauteed mushrooms and onion, two different sauces for the salmon, fried scolloped potatoes, bread and something to drink. It was all delicious except Diana had to ask what kind of mushrooms they were. She said they weren’t mushroom, they were fish livers. Diana was a good girl and didn’t gag, but ate all she had on her plate. She didn’t take any more, however. I like liver, but I had never heard of fish liver before and they were a bit strong for my taste. Valerie insisted on everything being eaten that she prepared, so I was obligated to take another big helping as well as another plateful of potatoes and two more bowls of salad. For dessert she brought out plums and very small mini bananas. Fruit was just what we needed after a big meal. Once the meal was out of the way, Valerie cleared the table and got down to business. She had some more anti-Mormon pamphlets and while waving them at us, said that we were being led astray and what we believed was wrong. All we needed was more anti stuff.

Frieda was a spry 85 year old with a very active mind who liked to talk a mile a minute. We learned that she had prepared very diligently for our meeting and researched scriptures and prepared arguments, but when it came right down to it, she couldn’t ever find the scriptures she was looking for. Finally, after letting her look for some minutes for a certain scripture, we found it for her so we could move on. We were there for three hours total and it’s impossible to write down everything that was discussed, so we’ll just highlight a couple of things.

Frieda claimed the Mormons have a different bible than hers and the other churches and we told her our was the same as hers; she wouldn’t believe us. We had her look up a scripture in her bible, Valerie found the same scripture in hers and we read the same scripture out loud from ours. Frieda keep saying, “Yes, that is exactly the same as mine” like she just couldn’t believe it. She finally accepted we have the same bible as she did.

Of course they don’t believe in the Book of Mormon and Valerie has refused to read in it prior to today. Diana finally got Valerie to read some verses out of it and Diana kept asking her what she couldn’t believe or what was wrong. Valerie and Frieda agreed that what they read, they believe too. Diana asked them why they believe the negative things people write about the Mormons when she can find out for themselves. They have the BM and all they has to do is read it and apply Moroni’s promise in Moroni 10:4-5.

Frieda isn’t baptized and believes it’s not necessary for anyone who lives after Christ was crucified. Valerie believes it’s absolutely necessary, but that it doesn’t matter how it’s done, just that one is baptized. Diana and Frieda got into a lively discussion on their side of the table and, while that was going on, Valerie asked me to help Frieda understand that it is necessary for everyone to be baptized even if they lived after Christ. She told me that Frieda is old and she doesn’t have much time left to get it done, otherwise she’s going to hell. I assured Valerie that next time we meet, we’ll talk about baptism and, in the process, we’ll teach her too, she just doesn’t realize it yet. But now we have an ally and maybe we will be able to get some real teaching done next time. In the end when we were in the process of leaving, Frieda confessed to being very nervous about confronting us, but now feels that we really do believe in Christ. We agreed to all meet together sometime after next week so we’ll call Valerie and invite them to come to our home for the next meeting.

We kept trying to get away from there to get to our next activity which was the birthday party for Peter & Daniela Martin, Rosa and George Wimalasuriya, but Frieda just wouldn’t give up. We were fifteen minutes late already when we finally had a prayer and got out of the door, but we got to the Church okay. Thank goodness things usually start late because we didn’t miss anything. George ended up not being there, but the other three were. Altogether, there were about 50-60 people there and it seemed everyone had a fun time. We sat across from Hitsch & Kathi Bolt and they were impressed with the Almond Staengli Diana made and brought using Kathi’s recipe. Diana found out from Neide that one of the investigators the missionaries were teaching was gay and was actually married to another man. We found out later the missionaries had already discovered this was the case because they suspected something and they asked him directly about it. There were members as well as non-members there and we talked to a couple from Germany about the Church and answered their questions about the priesthood. Diana was having such a good time talking with all the members that I had to literally drag her away as it approached 10:00 pm.

The tender mercy for today is that the Lord answered Diana’s prayer that Frieda would get confused and not be able to find all her scriptures to argue against us and, in the end, realized we all want to follow Christ.