Sister Pietroboni who knitted these caps and booties from the yarn we bought for her. The caps and booties are for babies in Africa, we think. Brother and Sister Hoenle, Paul and me with Diana taking the photo.

MAY 23, 2010 SUNDAY

Sunday morning is always an early up for us, prayer at 6:30 and then a long walk to the Church for me. I normally have at least an hour and a half of quiet time to work on the computer filling out our weekly report. However, today was their branch conference and the meeting was scheduled to start at 9:00 instead of 9:15. Pres. Flammia came extra early to prepare for their pre-sacrament meeting meeting with his presidency and Pres. Bolt and with his wanting to chit chat, I didn’t get much done after that. Shortly after Brother Wigger and Brother DeMarzi came and finally Pres. Bolt. When they were all there, even though I was still in the room on the computer, they started their meeting. I overheard Pres. Flammia ask Pres. Bolt if it was alright for Elder Larson was in the room. He said it was, but I responded that I couldn’t understand their Swiss German anyway. They all got a chuckle out of that one. I was almost done anyway and I really didn’t feel all that comfortable being there, so I closed the computer down and left.

Diana had to come on the 8:31 bus this morning instead of the 8:51 bus because of the early start time. On the way in she had a good chat with a woman who’s last name was Wiedmann. We met at the bahnhof and walked up to the Church. Today the chapel was full with branch members and stake visitors. Pres. Hitch Bolt and Kathy were there as well as Guido & Erika Weibel from our old Schwamendingen ward. It was good to talk with them again. Kofi Safo-Adu came and near the end of the meeting, Roger Ojingia, one of the referrals from Elder Dahneke, came in. He stayed for the rest of sacrament meeting and then stayed for priesthood meeting. Fortunately Yvonne Grimske sat by them and did the translation which saved me from having to try and do it.

Ward conferences are always very special and the Spirit is always present. I helped David Flammia pass the sacrament after which the stake leaders gave wonderful well prepared talks. Peter Kahn talked about the third member of the Godhead, the Holy Ghost, and his role in the Plan of Salvation. Sis. Weibel talked about the duty of parents to teach their children and focused on the fourth Article of Faith. The next speaker (didn’t get his name) told the story of an eagle that was injured as a young bird before it learned to fly. A farmer found it and put it in with his chickens and it grew up thinking it was a chicken. A hiker came by one day and was surprised to see the eagle on the ground pecking for it’s food like the chickens. He couldn’t understand why an eagle would be satisfied to be on the ground when it could fly in the heavens. To make a long story short he tried and tried to teach the eagle to be an eagle and capture it’s heritage of being the king of the sky. Over and over again he tried to teach the eagle to fly, but it always went back to what it knew, pecking in the chicken yard. Finally, after a lot of work and a lot of tries, the eagle learned to fly. The counsel he gave was to stop living in the chicken yard of life and realize we are the sons and daughters of God with the seeds of Godhood planted inside us. Sister Stemmer spoke on staying on the small and narrow path and holding fast to the Iron Rod. The next speaker spoke about the Abrahamic Covenant and how all who are accepted into the Church are added to the posterity of Abraham and are included in the covenant. Pres. Bolt as the last speaker spoke on the theme, “by your fruits ye shall be known.” He used the parable of the “sower” to illustrate the seed is the Word of Christ and people are the ground. What we sow we also reap. At the beginning of the meeting he took the time to recognize Paul Hunziker as having been newly baptized and welcomed him into the fold. That was really nice and thoughtful.

After the meeting many members introduced themselves to Roger and made him feel welcome. We confirmed he was the referral we’d received from Elder Dahneke and found out a little about him. He is a refugee living in Buch, the same place where Godwin lives. We made an appointment to visit him on Wednesday and bring him the English Book of Mormon that we knew he wanted. He stayed for priesthood meeting and the lesson this time was on Chapter 10 which covered the holy scriptures. I translated for Roger, but most of the discussion was not something that someone would be able to understand who was visiting for the first time. Rather than translate the actual discussion I took the opportunity to teach him about the bible, Book of Mormon and the Doctrine of Covenants and, of course, about Joseph Smith, revelation and prophets. Before he left he said he would come to Church every Sunday. We are excited to have another investigator we can work with.

After the meetings were over we made a beeline for the bus to get home as quick as we could so we could cook lunch before the Hoenles and Paul arrived. Bro. Hoenle had to attend the after conference meeting which gave us about an hour to get things ready. We made noodles with a chicken and gravy sauce, a scrumptious green salad and buttered carrots. For dessert we made the strawberry pie which turned out pretty good, too. Everything was ready when they got here and we had a pleasant time eating and talking. When the meal was over, we had an hour long discussion on the Plan of Salvation. Even though Paul has a pretty good understanding of the gospel, it’ll help him to go over the lessons again to reinforce what he knows.

When they left, we got our things together and left to visit Sylvain in the hospital. When we arrived, he was waiting for us and came out to meet us. Rather than go to his room we stayed outside on a bench in the sun and talked for an hour. Today was pretty hot for a change and we hope we didn’t get sunburned. We gave Sylvain the French BM we promised him as well as an exercise bungee cord, some envelopes from Silvia, a loaf of bread and a box of thin mint cookies. Yesterday he said he had three goals: first, he wants to overcome the alcoholism; second, he wants to be worthy to go with Silvia back to the temple and; third, he wants to someday come to America to see if he can help Justin with his problem drinking.

We got back home in time to meet with Kofi who comes on Sunday evenings to get help with reading English. A few days ago Silvia told us she saw Kofi take a cigarette from a friend and smoke it. Tonight our strategy was to use D&C 89 as the text for reading. In this way we could teach him about the Word of Wisdom while helping him with his English. We always start and end with a prayer. As we gave him the background of what we were going to read, we asked him if he had any problems with the W of W. He was very forthright is admitting to starting to smoke again after having not smoked for a long time. We talked about it and he said he wanted to quit again and he felt he could manage it because he did it once before. He just had to decide to quit. We helped him make that decision.

Other things we did today was report our numbers to Elder Bentley. We also talked with Charlotte about our excursion tomorrow. We’re going to meet at the Romanshorn Bahnhof at 10:18 and decide from there where or what we all want to do. The Singen elders called wanting to know if they could come to Schaffhausen and spend the day with us visiting the Rhine Falls. We told them we were already booked, but we arranged to do it next Monday with them. Elder Dias called from Ravensburg, Germany, to see if he could come get his haircut tomorrow. No, but we agreed he could come next Monday, too.

This whole day was a tender mercy; we can’t pick out just one or two.