Rhine River in Kleinandelfingen; working waterwheel; Honey wagon which spreads liquid manure on their fields.

MARCH 20, 2010 SATURDAY

This morning Silvia called to see if we were going to be able to come to her home tonight for dinner. We had to decline because we had an appointment scheduled with Kofi at 5:00 tonight. She mentioned she met with the wife of the couple who were having problems, found out in clearer terms what the problems were and then called the stake president, President Bolt, and explained them to him. She told us that he was going to deal with the husband so that lets us off the hook. We discussed the situation with Pres. Matern last night and he advised us not to get involved and to refer the matter to the branch president or stake president. Silvia also told us she and her mother hadn’t had home teachers for over five years and would we consent to being their home teachers. We told her we’d be glad to do it and made an appointment with them for next Thursday evening. Tomorrow we’ll let Brother Hoenle, the Elders Quorum President and the one responsible for home teaching know, to make sure he’s okay with it. We also got a call from Sister Flammia inviting us to lunch after church services tomorrow.

We saved today to go out to Oberschlatt to try and visit Andreas Ryter. We knew it would be difficult to get to him and thought we’d have a better chance to catch him home on Saturday. There are very few buses that go there and so it took good timing to not get stranded for hours waiting for another bus to come. We took the train to Schlatt and waited at the bahnhof a half hour for the bus to Unterschlatt to come. There happened to be an antique store close by so we took advantage of it to pass the time while waiting. Most of it looked like just old junk to us. The bus that came was more like an oversized van, but had capacity for probably 20 people. We were the only ones on board for the ride to Unterschlatt. Not being familiar with the route we got off at Bistro and then walked twenty minutes or so to Andreas’ address. As we got close we came to the next bus stop which was just around the corner from where we had to go. If we would have stayed on the bus, we could have saved ourselves the long walk.

We found the building where Andreas lived, but the bottom level looked like a school and a daycare center. We rang the only doorbell, but no one answered. The door was open so we walked in to a hallway and up to the second floor. There was only one door there with a doorbell so we rang it as well. No answer. There were three other windowless doors, one of which looked like it went up into the attic. There was another room where it sounded like a class was being taught, but we didn’t want to disturb them so we went back down and out to the mailbox out front. We left a note for him that we’d been by and that we would try and visit him another time. As we left we went around to the back of the building and found another doorbell there, at least we think it was, and rang it. No answer. We continued around and to the street and walked back to the closest bus stop. Just as we were approaching it the bus came whizzing by without stopping. The driver must have seen us, but because we hadn’t stopped walking and turned as if looking for the bus, he must of thought we weren’t looking for a ride. This bus would have taken us back to Schlatt where we could have caught the next train to Schaffhausen. Well, what to do. We could have waited 30 minutes where we were for the bus going the other direction to Marthalen or, rather than just sit there, we could enjoy the twenty minute walk back to Bistro and catch the same bus there. And that’s what we chose to do. We got back to Bistro and we sitting on the bench waiting when the bus came buzzing around the corner. He almost missed seeing us, but fortunately he did and stopped up the street to waited for us. If we wouldn’t have caught this bus, we’d have been stuck there for a couple of hours. We rode the bus through the countryside to Marthalen and enjoyed the ride.

We only had to wait a few minutes for the train to come. We hopped on and decided to get off at Neuhausen to see if we could catch Erika Meier home, who is an inactive member. We’d tried several weeks ago with no luck. We caught bus #6 at Neuhausen and rode it to the City Center and then walked to her apartment building. We rang her bell and she answered through the intercom system and when we introduced ourselves and asked her if we could visit her, she said “no” and shut the intercom off. It always makes us sad when people respond negatively. If they only realized what and who they were rejecting, we’re sure they would regret it. From there we went on home to wait for Kofi to come at 5:00.

5:00 came and went and no Kofi. We used the time to read our Sunday school lesson for tomorrow and catch up our weekly progress report. At 7:00 we were just about to call him to find out if he was going to come when we got a call from him. He said he would be able to come at 8:00 if it was still okay and come he did. We asked him to say the opening prayer, but he demurred and said he’d try and say the closing one. This time we used the Preach My Gospel as the text and thought we’d kill two birds with one stone: review the gospel and teach him to read English at the same time. His reading has improved some and at the end he said a wonderful prayer. He won’t be coming to Church tomorrow because he has to pick up his wife at the airport as she returns from her vacation in Ghana. He’s says he’s happy she’ll be returning because then he won’t be alone with their two kids.

Of all the blessing we received at the hand of the Lord today, the two we want to mention are these. First, Silvia referred the matter of the marriage problem to the Pres. Bolt instead of expecting us to take care of it which couldn’t have done anyway. Second, the bus driver didn’t live us sitting in no man’s land.