Elders Bushnell, von Niederhausen, Tavake & Bentley; sister Jaermann trying to figure out the object lesson demonstration.
Video clip is Sister Jaermann trying to build the support on top of the glasses using the three knives which needs to support the weight of several books.


FEBRUARY 24, 2010 WEDNESDAY

If it isn’t one thing, it seems to be another. Diana’s knee has been bothering her for a long time, but over the last month it’s been getting better and better. She hasn’t had so much pain lately. Now her other leg goes to sleep while she’s walking and, when it does, it hurts. When she’s sitting or not walking, it’s fine. Now, I guess, it’s my turn a little. It seems I’ve bruised the ball of my left foot someway and it’s painful to walk on it. It isn’t too bad yet, but I wanted to stay off it as much as possible today so it wouldn’t get any worse. I didn’t take my usual morning walk. We’re a couple of fine missionaries, aren’t we?

Elder Talley called last week to see if we could unlock the Church today where they planned to have their zone council. All the zone leaders get together a week before the zone conferences are scheduled to do some planning and coordinating. Elder Talley called us this morning to make sure we remembered. He also asked us to provide some Books of Mormon, pass along cards and other proselyting brochures for their companions to use in “streeting” while the ZL’s had their meeting. It was a good thing our apartment was well stocked so all we had to do was stamp them all with our phone number, the time meetings were held and the address of the Church. I bagged them all up and took them to the Church. While I waited for them to come, I wrote up our progress report for last week. I didn’t get quite finished so while they had their meeting, I continued to work on our report until I had to leave at 10:45. We had a lunch appointment with Dorothea Jaermann at noon and we wanted to take her a small fruit basket as a token of our appreciation. I stopped in at the Migros by the bahnhof to buy the fruit and then I went home.

We took the bus to Dorotheas and got there right at 12:00. She is such a delightful happy sister and she cooks good, too. We had a nice long visit with her and at the end we gave a spiritual thought to her. We used the same one as we’ve been using and it really has a good message along with an interesting object lesson. Diana asked Dorothea about the branch Easter camp coming up and what happens at it. She said there’s a lot of games they play as well as hikes and other activities. She showed us a game called “Sets” and she insisted we play it. It was a fun game and one we want to get and bring home to play at our brother and sister parties and home evenings. This morning it was raining but, by the time we left Dorotheas, the sun was out and shining.

We didn’t have anything else scheduled today so we went home and worked on some stuff here. At the last ward council Sister Bolli asked us if we knew of any games they could play at Easter camp. So we spent some time on the computer looking up games that would be good for kids. We printed some off and now we have to translate the directions into German so they can use them. We also wanted to see if we could figure out how to get to some of our less-active members in Germany so we can go visit them. Google Maps wasn’t helpful because it would only give directions if driving a car. SBB, the Swiss website for travel information only works for travel within Switzerland. We finally found DB BAHN, the Germany website for travel information. It works for travel from Switzerland into Germany and will be helpful for us to use. However, when traveling in Germany, we’ll have to pay because our Swiss travel passes aren’t good beyond the Swiss borders. We tried to call the less active sister in Eggingen, Germany, to wish her a happy birthday, but she didn’t answer her phone and we don’t want to spend the time and the money to go there without an appointment. We’ve found that the member lists haven’t been all that accurate and many times members have moved without forwarding addresses. To get to some of these towns it’ll be an all day adventure and, if we do get there, we don’t know for sure how, or even if, there are buses or if we’ll have to walk everywhere..

This evening Elder Tavake called to see if we had received the 15 names of less-active members we should have gotten from the branch Relief Society, MP and EQ. We weren’t involved in this type of coordination with the ward in Schwamendingen because the other missionaries took care of it. We were kind of on our own, doing what we felt we needed to do. Since we are the only missionaries in this area, we need to make sure at the next ward council that we ask for these names. We counted up the names of those we’ve visited and are working with, 12 so far, and gave this number to Elder Tavake.

The missionaries ate up most of our bread last Tuesday so we mixed up another of the add water and bake packages this evening. The two loaves are still in the oven, but not any more. Smells so yummy, but tastes much better with melted butter and jam.

The tender mercy is that I found my missionary tag that fell off my pocket and discovered missing last Sunday. When it came off my suit coat pocket, it actually fell into an inside pocket of my overcoat. I put it on yesterday because it was raining and felt something in the pocket. Low and behold, it was my badge.