Sisters Robinson, Jensen, Dittli & Christopher; Pres. Bolt; E. Rolwy, E. King, E. Nilsson

JANUARY 18, 2010 MONDAY

Last night we knew I would have to get up at 5:15 in order for both of us to shower and get ready to catch our bus at 6:45 to get to Aarau for our zone conference. We haven’t had to set an alarm clock yet in order to wake up on time. When we have set an alarm, it seems my internal clock always wakes me up a few minutes before it’s set to go off. That happened to me this morning because we set two alarm clocks just to be sure. I woke up 15 minutes before and thought I’d just stay in bed and wait to see if the alarms actually went off. Yipes! The next thing we knew it was 6:15 and the alarms didn’t go off. We jumped out of bed and scurried around, got ready, collected our books and material and somehow made it to the bus stop in time to catch our bus to get to the bahnhof. We had no trouble finding our connecting train to Zurich and had a comfortable ride. We used the time reading and rehearsing our part in the program and before we knew it, the hour slipped away and we arrived in Zurich. We got off the train and went to find our connecting train to Aarau on platform #13 which was the train we were supposed to take according to the internet schedule I had looked up. However, before we got to platform #13 we saw one on platform #15 that left a few minutes earlier and Diana wanted to take it. I still wanted to take the one for the travel plan I had written down, but to settle the difference of opinions, we went to the counter and asked if the #15 train went directly to Aarau without stopping. It did so we hurried and got on it and who should we run into? None other than Elders Nilsson & Irick. It was good to see them again and travel with them. It gave us the opportunity to talk about how their investigators were progressing and to be brought up to date on the people we were working with.

Elder Rowley called us last night to see if we knew the address of the Church in Aarau and if we knew how to get there. We knew the address, but didn’t know how to find it so he told us he would be at the bahnhof when we arrived to pick us up in a car. When we got there, Sister Robinson got off the same train, but from a different car than we were riding in and she joined us. We looked for Elder Rowley, but couldn’t see him. Elders Irick & Nilsson knew the way to the Church so we just followed along not worrying about Elder Rowley. It was a good thing, too, because he got involved with other things at the Church and didn’t come to the bahnhof at all. Why he didn’t call us to let us know is as mystery, but all’s well that ends well.

We had a great conference as usual with a lot of inspiring talks and workshops. President Matern discussed D&C 4 in detail, going over the meaning of a lot of the words. Diana and I were given the word “Geduld” (patience) and asked to define it, describe how it’s necessary to do missionary work and the relationship between patience and faith. Later, we did our workshop on cleanliness focused on keeping the apartments clean and in a condition conducive to inviting the Spirit to be with and help them in this work. At the end we committed them by the raising of the covenant hand to follow the guidelines posted in every apartment. All but one raised their hand and he probably wasn’t paying attention, or maybe it was because he goes home in a month.

Lunch was prepared by the Aarau Ward Relief Society and it was very scrumptious. Boiled potatoes, sour cream, link sausage, cranberry sauce, peas & carrots and chocolate pudding for dessert. I was really surprised to see cranberry sauce because it is an unknown food here in Switzerland. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed it and after the meal I went back to the kitchen and thanked the sisters and one brother for the meal and raved about the cranberries. I asked them where they had bought them and they said they went to Germany to buy it, that you can’t find it in Switzerland. Later on one of the sisters was nice and brought me an unopened bottle of it for which I thanked her profusely.

After the conference was over, we rode the bus back to the bahnhof and got mixed up which stairs to go down in order to find the right platform for our train. The first two we tried were blockaded because of all the construction going on, but we only discovered that after we went down the steps and into the tunnels. Both times we had to turn around and climb back up the stairs. We finally found the right one, but too late for us to make the train. The Elders ran on ahead and caught it because they needed to be in Zurich for an appointment and couldn’t be late. It wasn’t long before the next train came along which we boarded and rode to Zurich. We found a train to Schaffhausen and finally arrived home around 8:00 p.m. The transportation system in Switzerland is great and it’s not too complicated to find your way around and usually it’s only twenty minutes to a half hour between trains. However, some are much faster than others, and don’t stopping at every little podunk town along the way.

The tender mercy today was that Diana was observant and found the train that Elders Irick & Nilsson were on who guided us all the way to the Church. Otherwise we would have been stuck at the Aarau bahnhof not knowing which way to go.