smallest car in the world.
Bells from another close by church as I stood looking out our chapel window.


MARCH 4, 2010 THURSDAY

This morning we got a call from Sylvain apologizing for asking us to not come with Silvia to visit him this afternoon because he was still sick with pneumonia. We told him to just stay in bed and we hoped to see him Sunday in Church. He said Silvia still planned on coming to our place this afternoon to do something with us anyway.

After our morning routine we went to see Greta Troesch, a dear sister who turned 88 years old today. She is originally from Sweden, but has lived in Switzerland for a long time. She was gracious in that she let us visit her for awhile even though she was getting ready for a large group of people coming later on to celebrate and have dinner with her. We got back on bus #6 and rode it to the end of the line then rode it back to the bahnhof. We switched to our own #5 and went back home to prepare for Silvia’s visit at 3:00. We thought Silvia would still have her mother’s car so we wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to have her drive us to less-active members we otherwise probably wouldn’t be able to get to. We started on our member list looking up travel information to get to each address and got halfway through when we were interrupted by Silvia ringing our doorbell. We three continued to go over the list until we decided on who to visit and then we took off. First we went to visit Brigitta Stiehl in Thayngen who was not very nice in rejecting us. Next we went to Feuerthalen to visit Theodor Otth. We found him home, too, and had a nice chat with him. He said he was baptized when he was little and didn’t ever remember being active the Church. He said he had no interest in coming back. Before we left we asked him if he knew a Thomas Otth who lived in Opfikon near Zurich. Theodor said Thomas was his brother. Thomas was in the Schwamendingen ward and we tried the whole time we were there to visit him, but never did catch him home. From there we went to Uhwiesen to visit Katharina Schmidiger, but she wasn’t home. We left a note in her mailbox that we’d been by and would call her later unless she called us first. Our last stop was in Neuhausen where we visited with Irma Eggli. We visited her a couple of weeks ago on her birthday and learned she needs another hip replacement. She had an appointment with her doctor yesterday and we wanted to find our what happened. In addition, we wanted to introduce Silvia, the branch Relief Society President, to her.

We found out her doctor yesterday didn’t get good x-ray results and she has to go back tomorrow to a specialist. After that she may know when she’ll get her other hip replaced. It was good to have Silvia with us because she spoke their native Swiss German and had a good discussion about why she quit coming to Church etc. She told Silvia the same things she told us a couple of weeks ago which really boiled down to being offended because someone told her she was not a good member because she didn’t pay tithing. By then it was time to go and Silvia asked Irma if it was okay if Brother Larson could give a spiritual thought before we left. Members are really great for putting others on the spot. I started by bearing testimony about the “Plan of Salvation” and told her one of the blessings for being obedient was that we would be with our families after this life. Right then she interrupted and emphatically asked who would want to do that? She said she hoped she would never see her mother again, that she had suffered enough at her hand. Now what do you say to that? I bore testimony that we are here on the earth to follow the Lord’s plan of happiness and that part of that plan was to be tried and tested to see if we loved the Lord enough to follow His plan. If we do our best according to our knowledge, we are promised that through the Atonement of Christ, all our hurts, sadness, troubles, pain, sickness etc. would be healed. At this point Diana bore her testimony which appeared to have an affect on her. I bore testimony that sometime after this life, she would meet her mother and give her a big hug in celebration. She didn’t believe me, but agreed to another visit where we could continue the discussion on the Plan of Salvation. After we left, Silvia, when discussing our visit, said she asked herself how would she have responded to Irma’s outburst. I felt inspired to stay with the basic gospel principles and bear testimony of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

We rode back into Schaffhausen where we helped Silvia move the rest of the office equipment to her car to take to their new office where she works. By then her car was full so we said goodbye and walked back to the bahnhof. We just missed the bus so we waited in the warm entry of the post office until the next bus arrived. We got home at 7:30 and felt we had had a very productive day. We were able to get to four members in four different towns which would have been impossible to do on our own. What we did in one afternoon with a car would have taken at least two days to accomplish using buses, trains and our feet. We probably never would have been able to get to Sister Schmidiger’s home. We’ll try to get her to help us every Thursday.

The tender mercy for today was that we were able to meet with Irma Eggli after twenty years of no contact with the Church and have a meaningful discussion and then be invited back to continue it.