Ramp and then stairs going down to our tram stop. We go up and down these many times in a day. Norma and Diana after the dancing.

NOVEMBER 14, 2009 SATURDAY

I got up first this morning and showered, shaved and got ready for the day. Since the missionaries and the two girls finished off our banana bread and poppy seed cake, we wanted to make some more just to have on hand. It’s convenient to have something to serve someone on the spur of the moment, if someone drops in. We didn’t have enough eggs and bananas to make a couple of loaves and we needed milk and bread to tide us over until Monday, so while Diana showered and did her hair, I walked into Schwamendingen to buy the things we needed. When I got back, we read our chapters in Third Nephi looking up the German words we didn’t quite understand. After we were through with our reading, we made some phone calls to some of our less-actives. We were thrilled when Tony Dkere answered his phone. We told him we missed him and had tried to call him, but his phone always sounded as if were busy. He said his phone was broken and he’d just got it fixed yesterday. We invited him to Church tomorrow and he said he would come. We’ve heard promises before, but we pray for him that the Spirit won’t let him rest until he’s active again. We also left Charles Aboussou a voice mail inviting him to Church, too. We tried to call Liz Bouso again, but she didn’t answer. We also called Cornelia, but she was busy and couldn’t talk. She said she’d see us tomorrow.

Yesterday we made an appointment with Suwang to visit her today at 2:30. We climbed on our tram #7 at 1:30 expecting we would arrive at her apartment by 2:30. If something interferes with the trams, a voice over a loudspeaker explains the problem and delay, and sometimes gives a detour routes one can use to get to where he want to go. Evidently, there was a demonstration of some sort in downtown Zurich and our tram was detoured. The announcer almost always speaks fast and in Swiss German, so it’s hard to understand what they say. We stayed on the tram expecting it to just detour around the problem and then get back on it’s own route. It never did and we ended up some other place. We had no idea how to get to Suwangs so we stayed on the tram when it turned around and went back the other way. We got off on Paradaplatz hoping another tram #7 would get through the problem which we could get on and ride to Suwangs. We thought that maybe it was the tram driver who made the error and never got on the right track after detouring around the problem. We waited and waited, but no tram. We decided the problem wasn’t going to be a quick fix so we got on the next tram #7 and started back towards home. So sooner did we get underway when a tram #7 passed us going towards Suwangs By this time it was too late to get to Suwangs and still get to our 7:00 appointment tonight. We called Suwang and apologized that we wouldn’t be coming today, but we’d call her tomorrow to see how she was doing. We still have our lunch appointment with her next Tuesday.

We stopped in Schwamendingen and, because we had a little time, we went to Denners and bought a few more groceries. We also went to a vegetable stand and bought a 20# bag of spuds. We used up the last twenty pounds in about a month. It wears us out carrying all of this stuff back home. When we got home, we wrote our “Progress Report” for our correlation meeting in the morning before we left for the dance recital.

While we were on the tram, Elder Nilsson called to ask if we were home and could they come over to burn a copy of Elder Holland’s last talk, the one where he bore testimony of the Book of Mormon. We had to disappointment them this time. They also called us later in the evening wanting to borrow the picture of the temple that hangs on our wall at home. This time we were in Oerlikon and had to disappoint them again.

Norma Bachmann and Anita Weiss, members in our ward, belong to a dance club and tonight they were going to perform, kind of like a recital for kids learning the piano or an instrument. They were excited that we would come and support them, and we were excited to do it. We were committed or it would have been easy to not go out in the cold, dark and rainy evening. We didn’t have too much trouble finding the place, but when we finally got to the right floor and dance hall, it was absolutely crowded, with little or no standing room either. We met Witney Weibel in the foyer and we went up together. We were lucky and got in a back door that someone opened, so we at least got in. We had to stand the whole time and were on the side, a little in back with people in front of us, but at least we could hear the music and see a little bit. As time went on, people left and came and by the time Norma and Anita performed, we could see okay. We were able to take some videos of them dancing and hopefully they’ll load on our blog. We also saw Felix Locher there, but he was an observer and not a dancer.

We watched a few more dances after Norma and Anita were finished and then we decided to leave. As luck would have it we ran into Norma on the way out and were able to congratulate her on her performance. Then we went back out into the rain and made our way home. We forgot to mention that as we got on the tram going over to the dance, a young woman was going to stand up to let Diana sit down. That’s unusual here in Switzerland; almost no one stands up to give old ladies or old men their seat. We were only going one stop so we thanked her, but declined. As a reward, we gave her a Book of Mormon pass-along card.

The tender mercy for today is that it seems everything worked out wonderfully for Roxsan and Brad to get the house they put an offer in yesterday. The offer of $216,000 was accepted and they have a closing date of December 14, if all goes as planned for the closing of our 1031 exchange. The house is located in Sandy on a third of an acre, has a detached double garage, extra RV parking and is over 4000 square feet.