Rhine Falls; the inscription of the monument was in a strange language; Singen District comprised of E. Bushnell, E. Tavake, E. Bentley (sitting), E. & S. Larson, E. Von Niederhausern.

MARCH 30, 2010 TUESDAY

Well, wouldn’t you know it. Elders Tavake and Bushnell arrived at the appointed time of 8:00, but the other two elders, Bentley and Von Niederhausern, called to say they had slept in and would be an hour late. The meeting was moved to 8:00 for them and they slept in? But they had a good excuse. Yesterday they moved to a new apartment and they had to use their little car to do it with. I took many trips and at the end of the day, they were pooped out. Also Elder Tavake only today realized he hadn’t called us Saturday that they wouldn’t be coming to get us. We love our missionaries and forgive them for their little foibles.

Today was the last district meeting of this transfer period. Elder Tavake will go home on Friday and Elder Von Niederhausern will be transferred to another area in Germany. Elder Bentley is our new district leader and will receive a new companion. Elder Bushnell will become a trainer and receive a brand new elder who will be arriving from the USA on Wednesday. Our mission is receiving eleven new missionaries, three of which are sisters, which is really amazing because of the hassle it’s been for the Church to get permission for new missionaries to come into Switzerland.

After we were all here and had sung the opening song and said the prayer, our district leader announced we were going to watch the movie “The Other Side of Heaven” for our Omega meeting. We had gotten up early to embellish the pizzas we were going to serve today and had them staged in the oven ready to cook. We also made a quick batch of peanut brittle while waiting for the tardy elders. As soon as the movie started Diana went in and turned on the oven and about halfway through the movie we started serving pizza. We kept serving as long as they would eat, but only Elder Tavake seemed to be a big eater. We had way too much left over. We gave Elder Tavake a Swiss flag as a go away present and then said goodbye to them all. It’s always heart wrenching to see them go even though we didn’t get a chance to get too close to these elders since we only see them once a week.

After they left we cleaned up the dishes, vacuumed and put everything back in order. We had an appointment with Sylvain scheduled for 2:30, but he called and cancelled because he is still having problems with his back. Diana talked with him for at least ten minutes encouraging him to continue on with his efforts to recover from drinking alcohol. We rescheduled a meeting for Friday. We’ve been wanting to go to Altenburg to visit a couple of less-active members there so when we were finished with everything, we saddled up, so to speak, and headed out to find them. We got on the train at Schaffhausen and traveled the few minutes to Altenburg which is in Germany. We tried to enter the address into our GPS, but it couldn’t find the right town in either Switzerland or Germany. We had looked it up on the internet before coming so we knew approximately which direction to go so off we went. It was about a 10-15 minute walk to the first house which we found without only a little trouble. We rang the doorbell several times, then knocked and a man & wife opened the door on their way to go somewhere. We asked if Michael Larsen was home to which the man replied he wasn’t and he wouldn’t have any interest in talking to us anyway. We thanked them and left with the firm resolve that we would at least call Michael later and talk to him personally.

We continued on down the street and found a large map of the town posted on the corner. We found the next address, An der Holzgass 5, where Kaethe Toensmeier lived. We found her home, but she said there had been a death in the family and she couldn’t accept visitors at the moment. She was very cordial and invited us to come back and visit her in a couple of weeks. We were excited and felt blessed that we were rewarded for our efforts today.

Then the question was how best to get back to a train station. We knew we weren’t very far from Jestetten, but didn’t know exactly how far or if it would be flat walking or uphill, too. We also knew that to get back to the Altenburg train station, it was all up hill and about a half hour away. We decided to try for Jestetten and asked directions from a couple sweeping their sidewalk. So off we went and before we got very far as we went around a bend in the road, we could see that it was uphill for quite a ways, too, a fairly steep hill to boot. We were too far along to change our minds and go back to Altenburg so we kept on. As we approached a fork in the road our GPS told us to take the right one, but we were undecided if that was the way to go. We saw a lady coming our way from the other fork so we waited until we could ask her which was the better way. She told us to take the way she had come which was opposite of what the GPS told us. We took the lady’s word for it and kept on. As soon as we crested the hill we saw Jestetten in the distance and knew that we’d arrive at our destination in another twenty or twenty-five minutes. Before we got to the bahnhof we stopped at ALDIS to get the last few things we needed for our part in the branch Easter camp this weekend. Loaded down again like pack mules we got on the train just as it began to rain and made our way back home really tuckered out and feet hurting. This afternoon when we started out it was sunny and warm. By this evening it was blowing, cold and blustery-rainy and we were glad to be back home again.

We saw the hand of the Lord today in that He strengthened Diana to be able to go out on this longer than expected hike to find Sister Toensmeier and, hopefully, shepherd her back into the fold.