Church in Davos; Diana under Malojapass sign; Robert in St. Moritz.

OCTOBER 23, 2009 FRIDAY

Today began with wash day, first load in at 7:00 and the last load in at 10:00. By the time everything was dry it was a little past noon. In between loads we listened to the Sunday afternoon session of conference even though we’ll see it again on Sunday at Church. We marked a Book of Mormon for our appointment with Tony later on today and while we were doing that, the phone rang. Our absent Sister Otte finally returned a call and we set up an appointment with her and Frieda for Saturday, October 1st. Diana called Angela Campbell to invite her to conference Sunday, but she wasn’t home. She hasn’t been to Church for a couple of months now, and we’re concerned about her. Diana left a message on her answer machine. We wanted to call Liz Bouso again, but before we did, we checked with Elders Nilsson to see if they had made an appointment with her. They hadn’t and were just planning on going by tonight to see if they could catch her home. Yesterday we sent an email to Bishop Schwendener to advise him Werner Buehlmann wanted to come to Church Sunday, if someone could come pick him up from the rest home. Today we received an email that he had asked Brother Locher to either pick him up or arrange someone else to do it. That was good news.

Finally it came time to leave for our appointment with Tony so we couldn’t avoid going out in the rain any more. Cold and rainy all day. We arrived at his apartment a little early so, while we waited, we tried to call Liz, but got no answer. A little before 4:00 we rang Tony’s doorbell hoping he would be home. He was! We had a good discussion and gave him the marked English copy of the BM and at the end, we invited him to come to conference Sunday. This time he said he would for sure come so we’ll look for him Sunday morning. We also invited him to come over for lunch after and he seemed to like that idea. As we were leaving he said he had a question for me and when Diana turned around to stay, he politely informed Diana that it was man talk and so Diana went out into the hall. He said he was supposed to get a payment from Worker’s Comp. in relation to the accident he’d had which prevents him from working, but instead, he’d received a couple of letters indicating they would be late or something. He asked if I could lend him a little money to tide him over. After looking at the letters, I gave him a few franken to help him out. I probably should have referred him to the bishop, but we’ll introduce him to Bishop Schwendener on Sunday.

Next, we walked over to see if Priscilla would let us in. We rang her bell a couple of times and it appeared she may not let us in, but, finally, the door cracked open (her apartment is on the bottom floor) and, when she saw it was us, she popped the entrance door and we went in. She had been busy at work ironing all those shirts, but for some reason, this time she had 400 shirts to iron. She’s been ill and worried about her mother so maybe she just got behind. We stayed for about an hour and she had a good cry on Diana’s shoulder while we tried to help her work through her problems. Her family wants her to go home to the Philippines to see her mother before she dies, but she doesn’t get vacation time so, if she doesn’t work, she doesn’t get paid, and her family needs the money she sends them to pay the hospital and doctor bills. She’s in a catch 22 and it’s tearing her apart. We talked about the Plan of Salvation and how wonderful it is to know that, after this life, we can be together as families in the hereafter if we but keep the commandments and endure to the end. We gently invited her to come back to Church because that’s where she needs to be to receive the spiritual strength to carry on, and where she can get support from the other members to help her through this tough time. Of course we closed our meeting with both Tony and Priscilla with prayer asking the Lord to bless them and strengthen them.

From Priscilla’s we walked to the ALDI grocery store and bought a few things for tomorrow. Earlier in the day Elder Richeson called to see if we had time to cut his and Elder Dockstader’s hair at 11:30 so we invited them to come for lunch as well. He jumped at the offer. After that we came on home. We bought some chesnuts while in Davos a few days ago so tonight we put them in the oven and roasted them. We left them in a plastic bag and they had already started to sprout and get mildewy, but Diana washed them off and they roasted just fine. We also made a cake for tomorrow’s lunch.

The tender mercy for today is that on the way to the bus stop from ALDI’s we ran into Salim, a man from Kosovo we haven’t seen for probably eight months. He used to come to Institute for awhile and claimed to be a member, but was very evasive about where he lived. He said he was doing okay and we invited him to come back to Church.