JANUARY 27, 2010 WEDNESDAY

It just seems to be so blistering cold right now and it was kind of snowing again, but it didn’t keep me from my walk this morning. During my walk I re-checked to see if Joseph Carci lived at the address on our member list. Bishop Flammia said he did and that he lived in the apartment without a name on the doorbell. Well, all of the doorbells had names on them and I asked a lady who came out of the apartment building while I was there, if she knew the man. She said he didn’t live there. Okay, so on to the next address. I found the address and the name, Afae Samual, was not on the doorbells either. This time the apartment door was ajar and I went in and checked each apartment door, but could not find him. Later on in the day we called the phone number for each of these two people and got no good result. The number for Joseph was not a working number and the one from Samual was blocked. We checked the internet phone book, but found neither because both were cell phone numbers. We also put in the names and then the addresses, but still couldn’t locate either of them. We’ll discuss the results in our next correlation council which is in a couple of weeks.

We went down into the cold basement to get on the internet and post our yesterday’s journal and catch any emails that might have come. After that we started to document a history/progress report on what we’ve learned about each less-active member and investigator and what we’ve done in working with them so we can keep track of who’s who. We did our studying and reading and getting the lesson prepared for tomorrow’s meeting with the older single sisters. We also were hoping our computer guy would call to let us know he was coming. No such luck.

Early this afternoon we picked two less-active members to go visit, Anna Thoening and Elvira Bueergi. We took #4 bus and using our GPS while riding it, found the bus stop for Anna, but continued on up the hill to see if we could find the stop for Elvira. We thought maybe the bus would go up to the end of the line and then turn around a come back the same route to the bahnhof starting point. Instead it made a big circle and never came back the same way. Elvira’s address is not so close to a bus stop so we have to make sure we have enough time to walk there when we decide to visit her. Today we didn’t try because we had to meet Franz Maier at the bahnhof at 4:00. At the bahnhof we got off the bus, went across the street and got on the next #4 bus to take us back up to Anna’s bus stop. When we got there, we got out and tried to find building #36 on Buergerstrasse. We walked back and forth while looking at the Tom Tom and finally realized building #36 was the one under construction and had no number on it. It looked like the old building had been torn down and a new apartment building was under construction. Our member list had a number listed by her name so we called it. An old guy answered who said he had never heard of Anna Thoening. Another dead end for now. While waiting for the bus to come back we met a lady from Thailand who said she was Buddhist, but she still took a Joseph Smith pamphlet and another brochure about the Church as well.

From there we went back to the bahnhof and met Franz Maier. We didn’t know what he looked like, but he recognized us as missionaries and introduced himself. After getting a little acquainted he led off to a COOP where we went in and up four floors on escalators and then climbed the last flight of stairs to a restaurant. He was an interesting man and, in spite of what he said about not wanting to talk about the Church, every once in awhile we got on that subject. He mostly wanted to talk about politics be it American, German, Swiss etc. and the condition of the world in general. I asked him why he wasn’t active in the Church and he said it was because he knew everything and then why should he keep coming to Church. We kept the conversation going for an hour and a half and he was disappointed that we finally had to leave. Just before we parted company he said that he and his wife would come to Church either Sunday or the next Sunday. We told him we would be glad to see them there. He also said it would be great if we could get back together once in awhile and Diana said we would invite them to dinner some time. As we were about to leave we got a call on our cell phone from Elder Tally, our zone leader. He asked if we were home or could go somewhere that it was quiet and we would be alone. We said goodbye to Franz and then went out of the store and while walking back to the bahnhof, we returned the call to Elder Tally.

Elder Tally began the conversation by asking if we were alone and could we turn on the speaker function so that we could both hear what he said together. I didn’t know how to do that so he said he would just tell me and then I could relay the information to Diana. At this point it seemed like he had bad news of some kind for us and we were starting to get apprehensive about what he was going to tell us. Then he said that the information he was going to tell us came directly from the First Presidency through our mission president. Elder Tally told us that as of July 1st , the Swiss Mission was going to be dissolved and become part of the Munich Austrian Mission. We were relieved that something bad hadn’t happened at home, but thunderstruck that our mission was going to be dissolved. He said it wouldn’t affect anything we were doing right now, that for the time being it would be business as usual. He said the news was public knowledge and so it would be okay to talk to members about it, if we wanted. For us it’s sad news to see my old mission go the way of the dinosaurs, and we don’t know what going to happen to Charlotte and her new calling to work at the mission home and, for that matter, what’s going to become of the mission home itself. The new senior couple coming to work in the mission home, the Walters, should have arrived today. How will this affect them? Only time will tell as we understand the reasons for this decision.

It was past dark by then and what Franz told us about the nighttime activity here in Schaffhausen didn’t make us feel any better about being out after dark. He said it was a totally different life after dark in that the prostitutes came out and gangs of young men would attack older people or those who were alone to rob them. As yet we haven’t seen much of this, but we’ve read about it. As much as we can, we try to be in by dark or soon after.

This evening Diana was on the computer when a screen popped up that she thought was a new internet connection. She called me in and I clicked on the icon and wonders of wonders, we connected. Waahoo! A few minutes later our computer guy rang our doorbell and when I saw who it was, I surprised him with a big hug. He said he’d just installed a router downstairs and asked if our internet was working. He came in to check to make sure everything was okay and then went his way. We had fun checking out some of our emails and passing some of the 98 of them on. Before it got too late I went downstairs to let the Steubles know we had internet and to tell them our computer guy was going to send them the bill. When it comes, to let us know and we’ll be glad to pay for it. We won’t have to buy a years’ service, but just pay for the router and his time.

To end this evening we wrote our journal and now we get to post it from the comfort of our own apartment.

We feel the tender mercies for today are that we have internet now and also that we met Franz Maier who said he’d come to Church. We’ve made a new friend.