NOVEMBER 20, 2009 FRIDAY

This morning we got a reminder call from George at 06:30 just to make sure we hadn’t forgotten we promised to help him move his ex-wife and daughter and also to ask us to bring our tools. He hoped to have enough to have some dismantling furniture in the one apartment and another crew in the new apartment putting things together. We got there at 9:30 and pitched right in. We were the only missionaries there to help because Elders Nilsson and Irick were both ill and had doctor’s appointments later in the morning, and Elders Dockstader and Richeson were busy lining up all the transportation for missionaries being transferred next Thursday. That has to be a big job. George had two other helpers there to do the heavy lifting, but Diana did her share, too.

George and I took apart the two bunk beds while Diana and the two men carried the taken apart wardrobes down the elevator, loaded them into their van and transported them to the new apartment. The two men with the van were responsible to get it from there to the new apartment which was only about a 15 minute walk away. When we had the beds apart, George had us walk to the new apartment and start putting the wardrobes together. It’s not too hard to put them together again, but it would have helped to see them while they were in one piece. George had to leave for work and we continued putting the wardrobes and beds together. They have no built in closets in Switzerland. Once they were done, we screwed the lights in two of the bedrooms to the ceiling. It sounds pretty simple, but that was the hardest job of the whole day for me.

In Switzerland when people move, they have to strip everything down to the bare walls, including taking all the light fixtures off the ceiling. New renters have to bring their own wardrobes, furniture and light fixtures. Ceilings, walls and floors are made out of concrete and then have a half inch layer of plaster on them. The floors are usually covered with some type of wood flooring. If the old holes in the ceiling don’t match the holes in the new light fixture, you normally have to drill new ones. The concrete seems a lot harder than the concrete at home for some reason so it’s not easy. I didn’t have any new carbide tipped drill bits the right size and after straining my guts out to no avail, I decided on a different tactic. I drilled new holes in the light fixtures to match the old holes in the ceiling, and that seemed to do the trick. Wonderful!

As we were finishing with this task, we heard some huffing and puffing and discovered Elders Knight & Vincent together with the two men struggling with a piano to get it up the stairs and into the apartment. We were glad we didn’t have that assignment; everyone who has ever had that job, knows how heavy they are and they had to come up six flights of stairs with it. That ended the work for today. Everyone left but Elders Vincent & Knight and us and we had a chance to rest up a bit and visit while eating some bread, cheese brownies and cold cuts. All good things have to come to an end and we went home to get ready for our appointment with Tony Dkere tonight at 6:00.

When Pres. Matern informed us of our impending transfer, he asked us to keep it confidential until the actual transfer calls go out to the missionaries the end of December. Because we are being transferred, we felt it advisable to try and get the Elders acquainted with the members we’ve been working with, who they don’t know already, so they can continue to work with them after we’re gone. It’s kind of awkward to ask the missionaries to come team teach with us and they probably wonder why we want them to come along. When the transfers are made public, they’ll understand. All that was to explain why we invited Elders Dockstader & Richeson to come with us tonight. They met us at 5:30 and we all traveled to Oerlikon and walked to Tony’s apartment. We anticipated a good meeting with him, but when we rang his doorbell, we got no answer. We called his home phone number; no answer. We called his cell phone and again got no answer, but we were able to leave a message. We were disappointed he wasn’t there and we hope he’s okay.