FEBRUARY 1, 2010 MONDAY

Today was Monday, our P-day, and Charlotte invited us to come to Schwamendingen and have lunch with Elders Nilsson, Dockstader, Irick and Dias to celebrate her’s and my birthday. We were on the train to Zurich by 9:00 and arrived a few minutes after 10:00. On the way we called Madeline to see if we could visit her this morning and she told us she would be home. Before we got there we stopped into a COOP and bought her a six pack of bottled water just to make sure she has some. It’s difficult for her to get around and she can’t carry it by herself. She was excited to see us and we were excited to see her. We had a nice visit and during it she asked some questions about the temple, baptism for the dead and temple marriage. We gave her a quick review of the 2nd discussion, The Plan of Salvation, and the opportunity she would have to make sure the work for her deceased husband was done and then to be sealed to him for time and eternity. We taught her that she would have to be a member for a year before she could actually go through the temple herself and discussed the worthiness requirements. We finally had to leave to get to Charlotte’s by noon.

We had fun at Charlottes and she had prepared a wonderful lunch of a spicy sauce and chicken over rice. It was good to see all of the missionaries again and to be around them. In Schaffhausen we don’t have that opportunity any more except on our district meeting day once a week. Diana taught them the game, Bonsai, we played at our district meeting last week and it was a lot of fun. Charlotte finally finished writing her conversion story and gave us a copy. Now we have to translate it and then send a copy to Jan Tolman for her “Womenofgod.com” website.

It was getting close to the time we had to leave and we wanted to stop in and visit Neide for a minute. We called her to see if we could drop by quick and told her we’d be there in about ten minutes. As we were leaving we met Hitsch & Kathi Bolt and Marcus & Barbara Weidmann and said hello to them. Still on our way out of the building we ran into Joerg and he invited us in to visit with him and Irene for minute. We are lucky to have such good friends and we had a happy reunion. On Saturday, February 20, there is a special meeting in the stake center in Schwamendingen for all the priesthood holders to listen to a broadcast from Pres. Uchtdorf and then stake conference will be on Sunday. Irene invited Diana to come visit her on that Saturday while Joerg and I go to the priesthood session, and then both of us to stay overnight so we wouldn’t have to go home only to have to come back on Sunday. We’ll have to see how that goes, but it was nice of them to offer. We finally made it to Neide’s and were able to visit with her for about twenty minutes before our bus came to take us to the Oerlikon Bahnhof. The whole day it snowed and snowed and as we left Neide’s it was still snowing pretty heavily.

We made it to the bahnhof and got on our train to go home. We were merrily wending our way home when, as we neared Winterthur, an announcement came over the loudspeaker system that there was a problem up the line and that the train wouldn’t travel past Winterthur. We all had to get out. Holy cow,! Now what! Everybody got out and we went with the flow down the steps underground and back up to where the main big waiting room was. We got in line for the ticket counter and, when we finally got to talk to the clerk, he told us to go out into the foyer and talk to the people with the fluorescent green vest on and they could tell us how to get to Schauffhausen. He said there had been a collision between a train and a vehicle and the line would be closed to Schaffhausen for quite some time. We went out into the foyer where a hundred people were milling around and located an information officer. He assured us that buses had been ordered and it might be awhile before they arrived because of the unusually heavy snowstorm, but he would inform us when they arrived. We waited and waited in the unheated foyer and occasionally checked back with the information officer just to make sure they knew we were still waiting. And hour and a half passed by and we were getting pretty antsy because we didn’t see many people waiting around anymore. We thought maybe the locals knew better ways to get home when trouble came, but we decided to check one more time with the information officer. When we did, he said the buses weren’t coming anymore and that we’d better hurry to platform six because a train was just about ready to leave for Buehlach and then continue on to Schaffhausen. We didn’t have time to vent our frustration about their continual assurances that they’d keep us informed and then forgetting about us, but hurried as fast as we were able down the stairs into the underground tunnel and then back up to platform six. We arrived just in time to get on the train bound for Schaffhausen by way of Buehlach.

We settled into seats across from a woman ready to get warmed up and enjoy the rest of the ride home. I had removed a Book of Mormon from my backpack and began to read it. The woman was busy reading something, but after awhile she was just sitting there looking bored. We noticed that occasionally she looked to see what I was reading. Opportunity was staring us right in the face. We asked her if she liked to read and offered her the Book of Mormon. That lead into a discussion about what it was about and we were able to give her a shorter version of the 1st discussion. She was interested and asked questions, but when we asked her if we could visit her and her husband to teach them more, she declined. She also declined taking a Book of Mormon or any of the pamphlets we offered her including the Testimony of Joseph Smith. She was surprised when we told her we have a church in Schaffhausen and accepted a pass along card with the address on it and our phone number. She told us that this is the second time in a week that she had had a discussion about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and at this point, Diana told her there was a reason for it and that the Book of Mormon we offered her was for her and she should take it. But she didn’t. We hoped we planted another seed.

On home we went on our Bus #5 and we were glad to be home. We should have been home about 6:00, but here it was after 8:00. It could have been worse, however. After getting comfortable we decided to start in on our journal for the day and also catch up on some of our emails. We decided to do emails first and while looking at them, we noticed our computer getting gradually slower. And then all of a sudden it froze up. Nothing worked and the screen went black. We tried shutting it off so we could reboot it, but the laptop has a battery and it wouldn’t shut off either. We tried the soft boot with the control/alt/delete. Nothing; the screen was still black. We closed the lid and let it sit for a half hour and then opened it back up. The screen lit up, but was still blank. Finally, a message came on asking if we wanted to boot in normal or safe mode. We chose the normal mode and eventually everything seemed back to normal, but slow. We decided not to push our luck, exited and turned it off for the night. So, if anyone reading this has a suggestion as to what went wrong, or what we need to do to avoid something like this in the future, please let us know. At home our neighbor came over one time and did something to our desktop computer called “defragment.” Is that something we should do, and how do we do it?

A tender mercy today was that we were prompted to ask the information officer one more time, just in time, to catch our train to Schaffhausen. Otherwise it would have been a much longer wait before we got home. In addition, our computer seems to be working again. We also got to visit some of our dear friends in Schwamendingen.