These are more photos of some of the booths at the Christmas Market. This particular soft book (middle) only cost $145.00. How many do you want?

DECEMBER 2, 2009 WEDNESDAY

This morning we got up and did three batches of wash and between the batches, completed our personal study, companion study and our language study. That took us to lunch time and after lunch we had to make a trip to the mission home to take the letter from the Zurich Tax Department to Sister Sunke. The last thing we want to do is pay taxes to Switzerland, especially when we don’t owe them any. While we were on our way there, we saw a lady waiting at our tram stop. We had a Christmas pass-along card inviting people to call the mission home number and request a “Birth of Christ” video. We mentioned Christmas was coming and asked her if she had everything ready for it. She didn’t exactly know what to think, but then we told her she probably didn’t have a present for herself yet, but she could order one by calling the number on the card. That began a conversation about what we were doing here in Switzerland and that we had a message that we would like to share with her. As all of this was going on, our tram came and we all got on it and continued our conversation. Before she got off, she said we could come visit her and even wrote down her name, address and phone numbers in our day planner. She said she would be busy today, but we could call her tomorrow. And that made our day.

We continued on to the mission home and gave the letter to Sister Sunke. While we were there, we wanted to pick up some of those videos that were advertised on the pass-along card. It turns out that the cards are outdated and so the video is unavailable. Brother Klaumuenzner also said that the orders he had placed with the distribution center in Frankfurt six weeks ago to get prepared for the Christmas promotions hadn’t been filled yet. We offered to travel to Frankfurt and personally pick up what he needed, but he declined the offer. Instead he said the two mission vehicles are being replaced soon and asked us if we would like to drive one and follow him driving the other one to Germany to pick up the new ones. We told him we’d really like to do that, but I didn’t tell him that I don’t have a valid driver’s license since mine expired October 1st. He doesn’t have a lot of media available in the mission home right now. We did get at least two of each of the following DVD’s: Together Forever, The Restoration, Joy to the World, and Finding Faith in Christ.

From the mission home we traveled to Emma Schmids to wish her a happy birthday. It took us a long time to get there and then she wasn’t home to boot. We left her gift and card on her doorstep and then went back to Duebendof to take Daniella Schwendener her birthday gift. We didn’t expect them to be home since she and her husband both work, but they could have taken a day off. No one was home so we left her gift in her mailbox. We needed to get back home in time to make dinner for Valerie Otte whom we had invited to dinner at 6:00. We called her this morning to remind her, but she didn’t answer. We left a message on her voice mail and asked her to call us back and, if tonight wasn’t good for her, to come tomorrow night at 6:00. She didn’t return the call to our cell phone so we didn’t know if she were coming or not. We arrived back home at 5:45 pm and thought we’d have to hurry whip something up when we noticed the light blinking on our home phone. We picked up the message and Valerie said she was busy both nights and don’t expect her. In a way we were relieved, but sad also that we wouldn’t be meeting with her tonight.

For dinner Diana cooked her some tomato soup and I had leftover soup from yesterday. It wasn’t fancy, but it was good and filling. We were out of banana bread and we had some over ripe bananas, so rather than let them go to waste, we made some more banana bread. We promised Silvana that the next time we come to visit, we’d bring her a loaf. She has to watch her sugar so we told her we’d make it with Splenda, a sugar substitute. Tonight we made one loaf with Splenda, and the other with regular sugar. Splenda does not cook the same as regular sugar in spite of the advertisement printed on the package. Is there a secret to make it work? The Splenda loaf certainly didn’t look the same and it didn’t taste quite right either.

The rest of the evening we spent reading, checking emails/blogs and writing our journal entry for today. Elder Knight called to make his mid-week check on us and Diana had fun talking to him for quite awhile.

The tender mercy for today was Brother Klaumuenzner gave us a Lindt “Petits Desserts Mousse au Chocolat Noisette” while we were there. Diana didn’t have anything to eat this morning and this was just the ticket to tide her over for the rest of the day. I enjoyed my share, too.