FEBRUARY 28, 2010 SUNDAY

Here we are on Sunday again, our favorite day of the week. It was a little bit rainy this morning so we took our umbrella with us. By the time Church was over, the sun was shining and it was a beautiful spring day. Later on in the afternoon, however, the wind whipped up and it became a little cooler.

We expected Katia and Emely DiPaolo to come to Church today, but for some reason they didn’t didn’t make it. Jasmine Hunziker kept her promise and came and brought her three children with her. A surprise visitor was Charlotte Kunz whom we met last Thursday for lunch with Silvia Gardedieu. She arrived in time for Relief Society and enjoyed the time with the sisters. Martin Hedinger came as well and after the sacrament meeting, Pres. Flammia and I gave him a priesthood blessing to help him with his medical problem. A recent convert who is originally from Kenya, moved to Italy about a year ago and then moved to Switzerland a couple of months ago came to Church today. He is a young man 18 years old, doesn’t speak Italian or German, but does speak a little English although he’s very hard to understand. Paul Hunziker wasn’t there today either. We didn’t actually count how many people came to Church, but it seemed like it was more than usual.

After the sacrament was administered, Dorothea was the first speaker. She spoke on truth and light and gave a very good talk. Living without light is impossible for anything here on the earth and the sun is a symbol of Christ. Christ is the light of the world. The more we learn, the more we can learn. She talked about the scripture where Satan tried to command Moses to worship him and Moses refused asking him where his glory was that he should worship him. Finally he commanded him in the name of the Only Begotten to leave and he had to go. She ended her talk with talking about Charity and that we should love one another. When she was through with her talk, she was supposed to play something on the piano, but instead she played How Great Thou Art from a Tabernacle Choir CD with a CD player. A little unusual, but effective.

Yvonne Grimske was the next speaker. She was sitting in the back of the chapel and started giving her talk from there as she walked up to the pulpit. A little unusual, but effective. She talked about grace, the attributes of Christ and the need for us to do all we can do before we can be partakers of His grace. 2Nephi 25:23. She also referenced Isaiah chapter 53 as she talked about Christ and His atonement.

Following sacrament meeting we had our priesthood and Relief Society meetings although Pres. Flammia, Martin and I missed most of our priesthood meeting because of the blessing we gave Martin. I returned in time to meet Godwin and get in on a little of the discussion. As soon as this meeting was over I wanted to find Diana and then say goodbye to all the people before they left for home. I especially wanted to talk to Br. Sandro DeMarzi to wish him a happy birthday, but before I could do either, Pres. Flammia caught me and asked me to come up to his office. He showed me how to get into the MLS program on the Church’s computer to correct addresses of members and update records when we found things that needed updating. He also had a baptism/confirmation certificate from Godwin that he wanted me to enter into the data base and transfer to Frankfurt, the main headquarters of the Church in this part of Europe. He wants us to do the computer work ourselves instead of him having to do it. After he showed me how to do this, we spent an hour going over our weekly progress report, although this time we had two weeks to review because of conference last week. By the time we got finished everyone but Diana and Dorothea were gone. While I was upstairs with Pres. Flammia, Diana was downstairs going over the song Search, Ponder and Pray to see if Dorothea could play it and also to see if she could translate if from English to German. This won’t be a simple task to make the words match the music and still have it make sense. We three walked down the hill to the parking lot and then Dorothea gave us a ride home.

We had a little lunch, Diana oatmeal and I the rhubarb yogurt and muesli, and then we decided to make chicken noodle soup with homemade noodles to take to Paul. Pres. Flammia said the reason he didn’t come to Church today was because he had a cold or the flu or something and chicken noodle soup is supposed to be really good for it. After we got it made we took a quick trip on the bus to his place and gave it to him. It was such a nice afternoon we walked down the steep stairs to our road and then to home. It only took about ten minutes to walk home, but it would have taken a lot longer to walk up the long stairs to his place. When we got home, we ate some of the yummy soup and loved it. We should make it more often.

Kofi came a little after 6:00 and we had a good hour and a half English reading lesson. Part of it was to help him practice reading the sacrament prayers so he’ll be able to help with the sacrament. His son needs an operation to help him with his ability to speak and we discussed priesthood blessings for the sick. He’s a recently baptized convert and hadn’t been taught this principle and he was grateful to know about it. Just as we were getting started Rebecca skyped us, but we weren’t able to talk to her because we needed the computer for Kofi’s English lesson.

Later on Rebecca called us back and we had a nice long talk with her. The happy news is that she just found out she’s pregnant. This will be her second child and our twelfth grandchild. She brought us up to date on the happenings of our family and we talked about how families are important and we should love and support each other. Should all else fail, families should stand as a place of peace and refuge.