Building in the old town; Me on the stairs to Heaven; One of the remaining towers of the old wall surrounding the city.

JANUARY 29, 2010 FRIDAY

As part of my morning walking routine we have included finding less-active member addresses so that when we go out later, we don’t have to wander around looking, but can walk directly to them. It gives me a purpose to go walking and helps Diana, too, who still has a little difficulty with her knee and so the saved steps helps her out. It was lightly snowing again this morning, but this time I wrapped a scarf around my neck which made it a little warmer. It wasn’t long before I had it up around my ears to keep them from freezing.

I had three addresses to find and at the first one Franca Flammia had moved. A cleaning lady was there and when Franca’s name wasn’t on any of the doorbells, I asked her if she knew where she went. All she knew was that Franca had moved and we’d have to check with her father for the new address. This is another item for our correlation council. I found the next two addresses and then walked back to the bahnhof. By this time I was fairly tired and needed a rest so I caught the bus back home instead of walking. We spent a little time working on the internet trying to find out how to find the bus schedules and where they stopped throughout the city. We think we finally found out how to do it. On the internet white pages there are several tabs we hadn’t used before. One of them was “maps” so we clicked on it and in the box we typed an address. Up popped the map of Schaffhausen with the address circled and, what we have wanted, was also there: the bus icons which, when clicked, showed which bus and the name of the bus stop. Now it will be so much easier to find the addresses in Schaffhausen, we hope. We’ll have to see if this system works as well for the outlying towns that are in our area. In the white pages while looking for Anna Thoenings’s building again, the one we thought was under construction, we found a number of the rest home right by it. We called the number and asked the receptionist if Anna Thoening lived there. She said she lived there until she died a few years ago. So that really is a dead end and we no longer have to worry about Anna.

We were hoping the snow would quit. It didn’t, but we went out anyway to visit the people at the two addresses, Elvira Buergi and Maria Ryter. The nearest bus stop was a few blocks from Maria Ryter which wasn’t so bad. We rang her doorbell and got to talk to her over the speaker. She was pleasant and seemed young and had kids who were in school. She said it wasn’t a good time to visit her right then and could we come back next week. We persisted and were able to make a specific appointment for next Wednesday at 3:00 pm. We went away from there happy that we would be able to meet with her. We walked back to the bus stop and, while waiting for the bus, talked to a lady until her friend came after which they kept up a conversation between them. However, as the bus came, we gave them both a copy of the Joseph Smith testimony and asked them to call us after they had read it.

We got on the bus, went three stops and then walked the few blocks to Elvira’s home. We rang her doorbell and an old guy came to the building door and opened it to see what we wanted. Before we could say much to him, Elvira came to the top of the stairs and, as soon as she realized who we were, she very curtly told us she had no interest and for us to leave. We asked her why to which she replied the Church had left her and her kids in a mess and was so angry she just wanted us to leave. We didn’t get a chance to talk to her about what the problem had been or how to resolve it. Those kinds of encounters make us sad to see how some people can’t forgive and so jeopardize their eternal welfare. From there we walked to the next bus stop, rode back to the bahnhof, switched to our #5 bus and went home.

Elder Nilsson called today to find out about a less-active member they’ve been trying to contact. He wanted to know what the best time of day was to find her home. He also mentioned that Priscilla had been asking about us and requested that Diana call her. He also had some great news. He said that a couple of Sundays ago Walter Burri, our old friend, came to Sacrament Meeting. He rode his bike from Dietlikon to Schwamendingen and came into the Church and asked if the Larsons were there. Elder Nilsson recognized Walter and greeted him and made sure he got welcomed. He said Brother Locher sat with him throughout the meeting. Walter told Elder Nilsson he had been promising us for a long time that he would come and he wanted to keep his promise. We were elated to hear the news, but sad that we weren’t there to greet him. We hope the members and missionaries will keep working with him. He’s had so much pain in his life, but through it all he’s maintained his faith in God and is grateful for his blessings. He has just lost his focus and needs help to regroup. Elder Nilsson also said Cornelia is letting the missionaries come teach her now which is really good news. He reported also that they met with Tony Dkere and gave him a lesson after which he promised them he’d come to Church the next Sunday. They called him at 8:30 Sunday morning and he said he’d be to Church, but he didn’t come. How can we build a fire under this guy?

We spent some time this evening trying to eliminate the build-up of emails and people are probably sick of getting the ones we forward. We’ve thought of just deleting them all and starting over, but some of them are inspirational that we wouldn’t of liked to have missed. Besides, this is the only diversion we have. While we were doing this, Sylvian Gardedieu called on the phone and said something extraordinary. He said he had heard (from his wife Sylvia) that Diana needed help giving up sugar and in the process lose some weight and that maybe if he made a covenant with her to quit drinking, it would help her to stop eating sugar and sweets. He asked me how to make that happen and I told him he’d have to speak with Diana. I gave the phone to her and they talked about it and the final agreement was that he would stop drinking and she would stop eating sweets. They made sure they had each other’s phone numbers and agreed to be able to call each other anytime when they needed support to get through a particularly bad time. Diana had already planned to approach Sylvain with this proposal and for the last week has tried to not eat anything with sugar in it to prepare for it. Sylvain, on the other hand, said he quit drinking alcohol a few days ago and wanted to stay alcohol free. He has tried to quit drinking many times before and hasn’t been able to, but this time, he may have a stronger incentive because he’ll be helping someone else. What he does will have a direct affect on what Diana does. When serving others, you reap the blessings and become stronger. After that Diana called Priscilla and talked to her. Priscilla is having problems with health and depression and hasn’t been able to work much. We said we’d keep her in our prayers and exercise our faith in her behalf.

Our tender mercy today is we got skyped by Roxsan and got to see all of her kids, Rees, Drayson, Mayleah and Nathan. It was good to get caught up on the goings on at home.