View from Sylvia's window; Sunset on the way out to Sylvias; Diana, Jeselyn & Karl Hoenli, Irma Pietreboni; Sylvia Gardedieu.

JANUARY 17, 2010 SUNDAY

Brother Klaumuenzner called this morning really early to ask us if he could drop by and pick us up for Church. Although he goes to Church in Frauenfeld, he said he wanted to come to Schaffhausen so we wouldn’t be alone on our first Sunday here. Now how thoughtful is that? We told him we already had been welcomed and had a ride this morning and, right on the button, 8:45, Brother DeMarzi was at our door to pick us up. It was a short ten minute ride to the Church and there we were greeted by the branch president, Philippo Flammia. He was very cordial and accommodating as were all the other members. We were among the first to arrive, but shortly after others came including brother Klaumuenzner and President Bolt. Brother Hoffmann from the High Council came, too, to help Pres. Bolt introduce the Zurich Stake 2010 goals.

Sacrament meeting came first and the sacrament was blessed by Brother DeMarzi, both the bread and the water, and one Aaronic Priesthood bearer passed them to the congregation. We didn’t count those present, but just guessing there could have been maybe 20-25 members counting the visitors. The talks were inspirational and as Pres. Bolt and Bro. Klaumuenzner as they started their talks said a few nice things about us to the point we’re going to be hard pressed to live up to the expectations placed on us. All we can do is our best.

Sister Gardedieu was especially anxious to meet us and began trying to organize our work for us. She’s just so excited to do missionary work. She said she has two days a week she can get home early from work to go proselyting with us. We set up an appointment with her next Thursday to go visiting some “missed friends” (less-active members.) In President Bolt’s remarks today he told us we should be very careful in labeling “missed friends” as less active because we don’t really know what their personal worship practices are. Some may be surprised and offended to think they have been labeled less active. He said something else surprising to us. His counsel to Pres. Flammia was that if a member wanted to go to the temple and during the recommend interview, he revealed he smoked or had other word of wisdom problems and, if he promised not to do it any more, to go ahead and issue a recommend and not make him wait for three months to actually show he had been faithful. He said that trust is a powerful tool and people respond to it. He and Brother Hoffmann presented the stake goals for the year which included daily scripture study and prayer, family home evening once a week, a visit to the temple once a month and bringing someone into the Church either through re-activation or conversion. If every member would do this, the Zurich Stake would double and could be divided in two and our Schaffhausen branch could maybe become a ward.

After Church Sister Silvia Gardedieu invited us to dinner this afternoon. Diana asked what we could bring and she responded if it were proper for senior missionaries to be asked to bring something. We told her it was okay with us so she asked us to bring a dessert. Brother Wigger, the first counselor in the branch presidency cornered us and asked us to talk in Church on January 31. He asked us to introduce ourselves and tell of some experiences while growing up that have helped us to become who we are today and how that helps us to serve others. We have twenty minutes at our disposal, ten for each of us. We said our goodbyes and made our way slowly out of the building and down the steep icy road to the bahnhof where we got on our bus after a twenty minute wait in the freezing cold and went home.

At home Diana made the dessert which was a vanilla pudding over which we were going to put raspberries with a waffle stick to dress it up a bit when we got to Sister Gardedieu’s home. While she was doing that, I looked up scriptures for our presentation tomorrow and then wrote the journal entry for yesterday. It seems we’ll never catch up. All too soon it came time to leave for our dinner appointment with Sister Gardedieu. We took our bus #5 the ten minute ride to the bahnhof where we got on bus #21 for the thirty-three minute ride to Schleitheim Gemeindehaus where we met her mother, Irma Pietriboni, who took us by car up the hill to her home. We were met by Silvia who gave us a warm reception. She gave us a quick background of herself and her husband. He has an alcohol problem and would like to see if we can help him. She hopes he can relate better to us who are closer to his age (50) and additionally, she thinks it would help that we will be here for an extended period of time where we can develop his trust rather than seeing a new face every couple of months. She is aware of the Church’s addiction recovery program and hoped we were acquainted with it. We know about it and have friends in our home ward, Mike and Shauna Bath, who are missionaries serving in this program. When we get the internet connection, we’ll have to see if we can get some information from them about this program.

While Silvia was busy with getting dinner ready, we found out her mother was the actual owner of the home, but finds it too hard for her to live up on the hill. She said she lives down in the town of Schleitheim and lets her daughter live in the big house. She and her husband built the home in 1967. She was proud of the workmanship of the wooden ceilings in the kitchen and dining room and how spacious it was which is not typical Swiss construction. The view out of the dining room window was exceptional; we could see over the town and the whole valley. She invited two other guests, Karl and Jeselyn Hoenli. He is Swiss and speaks English and she is from the Philippines, speaks English and is learning German and has only been here for three months. It took them six months to get her visa during which she had to take German language lessons and pass a language test as part of the requirements for the visa.

Dinner was quiet and comfortable as if we were old friends. We talked about ourselves and got to know them as well. After the meal was over, Silvia wasn’t bashful about asking us if we had a spiritual thought for them. This is normally what happens, but this time we hadn’t thought about it at all so it kind of came as a surprise. Roxsan sent us a couple of ideas some time ago and we’ve used one quite a few times. It’s the one about asking those present to focus on objects in the room that are a certain color and then having them close their eyes. Instead of asking them to name those objects, we asked them to name objects of a different color while their eyes were still closed. That’s not quite so easy and for those not familiar with the home, it is usually difficult. We related the color we had them focus on to problems in our lives. Sometimes we focus on these so much that we don’t see the other colors or in other words, blessings and good things, that we have in our lives. The final thought is that we should thank the Lord for all that we have and experience. We mentioned the hymn, Count Your Blessings, and we all sang it together. Eventually we had to go and Irma drove us back down to our bust stop. By then it was drizzling, but we only had about five minutes to wait for the bus. We got home somewhere about 9:30 and were glad to be back home. We ended the day by writing this journal entry, or most of it, and then went to bed.