Display in the museum; members in our branch; Silvia Gardedieu & Jecelyn Hoenli.

MARCH 9, 2010 TUESDAY

By 9:30 we were up, showered, shaved and had all the food packed for the lunch we were providing after district meeting. 9:30 was the time Elder Tavake said they would be here to pick us up. While waiting, Sister Jaermann called and invited us to lunch on Thursday at noon. She is such a sweetheart. At 9:45 they arrived and we loaded up and took off for Singen, Germany, for our meeting. When we crossed the border, no one was in there to check passports so we just drove on through and continued on to Singen. All in all the trip took about a half and hour. The chapel there is the bottom floor of a building that has other tenants in it, but once inside it is pretty nice.

There were six of us in attendance, the Larsons, Elders Tavake & Bushnell and Bentley & Von Niederhausen. Elder Bentley wasn’t feeling well so at the beginning of the meeting we gave him a blessing. By the end of the meeting it looked like he was back to his old self. The Priesthood is a powerful blessing in our lives and evidence of how much the Lord love us. Elder Bushnell gave a short spiritual thought on how we can reach our potential as a missionary. One way is to set goals and to reach our goals, we have to do things we may never have done before. If we don’t raise the bar, how will we ever know what our potential is? Another part of the meeting included each companionship relating a success story they’ve experienced. This is always inspirational and helps us see the different ways the Lord puts people in our way who will listen to the gospel message. The game we played was called “Seek.” It was a question/answer game using questions from the Old and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon and general Church history. After the closing prayer Diana reminded Elder Tavake that she brought a game, too. This game they had to play in order to earn their lunch. Diana used the numbers on a die to represent a food item for a sandwich. For example: #1 was bread, #2 cheese, #3 ham, #4 condiments, #5 tomato and pickle slices, and #6 lettuce. Each had a turn to shake the dice and had to roll a #1 first to get the bread and so on. If they didn’t roll the right number, they had to pass. The first one to make a full sandwich won the game. They all thought this was great fun and it was a lot better than just putting out the sandwich makings and making sandwiches.

After the meeting as we were about to leave we got a phone call from Dora Wachter, a less-active member from our Schwamendingen Ward. She finally realized we weren’t around anymore and called to see why we moved to Schaffhausen. We told her we tried to get in touch with them before we left, but we never could. She asked if they were allowed to come up here to visit us and, of course, we told them we’d be happy if they did. We made temporary arrangements for them to come on Thursday, March 18, for dinner. She said she needed to talk to her husband to see if that would be okay.

Elders Tavake & Bentley took us in the car to the train station where we bought tickets and rode the train back to Schaffhausen. We then went home, reviewed the lesson again, then waited for Sylvain Gardedieu to arrive for his appointment with us.

Sylvain arrived at 2:45 and appeared frozen to the bone. He said he had some good news for us and while he told it to us, we made him some hot fruit tea to warm him up. After searching for a job for two or three years without success, he said he had just come from an interview and had been hired to work in a school cafeteria and would start Monday. He was so happy and attributed finding the job to our praying for him and fasting every Sunday. We reminded him that he, his wife and the rest of the members who support him were part of the equation, too. If he hadn’t of been out looking, no amount of fasting or prayers would have helped. We talked to him about this being a beginning and, as long as he was willing and working, demonstrating his faith, the Lord was willing to bless him. And then we began our lesson with a prayer. We went through the introduction and Step One, HONESTY, of the addiction recovery program. Each step focuses on a principle and a discussion is outlined to cover it. Following the discussion is a homework section consisting of reading scriptures and then writing down how they apply to him and how he can use them to overcome his dependency. In addition to the program booklet we gave him a personal study journal to write his feelings and impressions in. Writing helps a person to focus thoughts and get to the underlying causes and problems of addiction. If a person is honest in this process, he can understand the root causes and learn how to apply the Atonement of Christ in helping him recover. We quit at 5:00 and made another appointment for tomorrow. He was going to be in town anyway getting oriented at his new job and wouldn’t have to make a special trip from where he lives in Ramsen. Later on we got a call from Silvia, his wife, thanking us for working with Sylvain.

We are glad we don’t have to follow the schedule of the young missionaries who are required to be out proselyting until 9:00 pm. We are still a little under the weather and it is so cold outside and the wind made it even colder. We stayed in and read, checked emails and had dinner. We read late last night in our friend’s , the Doyles, blog that our dear friend, Norma Lord, had passed away. We knew she was ill and not doing well, but it was a shock to hear of her passing. We know she had a wonderful reunion with Ralph, her husband, who preceded her in death. Isn’t it great that we don’t have to fear death because we know through the restored gospel, at least in general terms, what lies before us.

Some of the tender mercies today are:

A priesthood blessing for the sick resulted in an almost immediate improvement; fasting, prayer and an honest effort resulted in Sylvain finding a job; and the knowledge of the Plan of Happiness helps us deal with the sorrow resulting from the passing of a loved one. The tonement of Christ is real!!!