A print tacked to the pulpit of the "All Saints Church" (Munster Kirche) in Schaffhausen; Agness; a statue by the St. Johns Church.

FEBRUARY 25, 2010 THURSDAY

We have been busy getting familiar with the Schaffhausen area, visiting the people Silvia wanted us to get to know and then teach, trying to find and meet the less-active members and etc. etc. that we really haven’t taken the time to look in the area books where the teaching records of previous missionaries are kept. After we got through with our morning routines, we started digging into them to get prepared for our meeting with Silvia this afternoon. We wanted her input on people she may know who had been previously taught and who we could contact again. There were a lot of people in the records, but most live in outlying towns that would be hard for us to get to. It appears to us that former missionaries serving here must of had a car in order to travel to all of these places.

By noon we left our apartment to travel to Neuhausen to try and contact a couple of less-actives. Erika Meier wasn’t home so we continued on to try and find Godwin Osarenren. We found his building, but couldn’t find his name on any of the doorbells. We took a chance and rang the doorbell of an apartment and the lady who answered was kind enough to look in her new phone book that had just arrived in her mail to see if she could find him listed. She did and he was and she gave us his new address. It didn’t seem too far away so we decided to walk to it using our GPS to give us directions. It was a little farther than we thought and mostly uphill including some fairly long steps. It took us about twenty or twenty five minutes to find his new address. The bottom door was open so we climbed the four stories to his apartment, but it turned out he wasn’t home either. We left a note at both his and Erika’s apartments to let them know we had been by and that we’d like to meet them. We returned to the closest bus stop, got on the next bus and traveled back to Muhlentor and got out to try and visit Michael Schaellebaum. He wasn’t home either so we left a note there, too. We came on home after that and waited for Silvia to arrive.

Silvia arrived at 3:30 and we had our discussion about the old investigators. She didn’t know only a couple of them and gave us some good insights about them. We discussed the ones she introduced us to, who we’ve been teaching, and the progress they’ve been making. Finished with that part of the meeting we discussed her ideas on the RS Workshop on March 17. She plans on taking the first thirty minutes and then wants us to take the remaining 30-45 minutes. After our planning and discussion was over, she stayed a while so she could eat her dinner that she brought with her before she went to an appointment in Schaffhausen. Later tonight we’ll meet her again at the Church along with the other sisters who come for a Relief Society activity. While Diana attends that, I’ll use the computer upstairs to continue working on getting our missionary progress reports entered.

Today while we were out walking around it was a beautiful sunshiny day. It was so good to be out. However, tonight when we went out to catch our bus to go to the church, it was raining again. When it’s sunshiny in the morning, it’s usually raining by evening. Thank goodness for our umbrella; it keeps us mostly dry while walking around. We thought RS started at 7:30, but it started at 7:00 so Diana was about twenty minutes late. She went into her meeting and I went up stairs to the computer. Yvonne Grimske (pronounced Ivany) was the teacher and her lesson was about all of the General Presidents of the Relief Society, what they were known for and what historical events happened during their terms as presidents. Meanwhile, I entered all of the information I could think of in our weekly report so last week’s and this week’s is up to date. I’ll just have to add what occurs from now until Saturday night. I still have to catch up the three week before we knew we had to enter them into the database on the Church computer.

So now we’re home in our comfortable apartment finishing up a few things. I’m finishing this journal entry and Diana is finishing the translation of the song “Search, Ponder and Pray” from English to German. This song isn’t in the German hymn book and Diana wants to teach it to the sisters when we do our work shop.

Some of the tender mercies include Yvonne and Dorothea offering us rides home from RS. Diana kept saying no, but finally gave in by the time we had walked with Dorothea down to the park and ride. We would have had to wait in the rain for another twenty minutes for a bus, but by car we were home in just a few minutes. Also, Ivonne has an apartment in American Fork, Utah, and lives there about three months out of the year. When she’s not there, she rents it to friends. She has a car there as well. She plans on spending October in Am. Fork and we invited her to come visit us when she’s there.