You never know where you'll find a cow; Sister Bea Bolli; Sister Silvia Gardedieu.

MAY 13, 2010 THURSDAY

When Priska Staehelin called yesterday to cancel her appointment for today, we were then able to plan to go to the Schaffhausen Branch BBQ this morning at 10:15. We were planning on going, but it was raining pretty heavily and we weren’t sure if it would be cancelled or not. We got a call from Greta Troesch about 8:30 wanting to invite us and Paul Hunziker to lunch and the only day this week where we all could get together was tomorrow. Just before she hung up she told us the BBQ had been postponed because of the rain. We called Paul to see if tomorrow noon was okay with him, and it was. Before we hung up he said he would be home all day today and, if we wanted to come visit him, he’d enjoy it. Next we got a call from Sylvain explaining that his boss at work had called a meeting of the employees and he wouldn’t be able to come to his appointment this afternoon at 4:00. He has tomorrow off so we were able to squeeze him in at 10:00 a.m. Well, that wiped out all of our appointments for today and that is how it goes sometimes.

We were low on supplies so we decided to go to Jestetten grocery shopping. We wanted to get something for Paul’s birthday today and also buy some supplies for when Monica and Chris come back from Scotland tomorrow night and for district meeting next Tuesday. We put our shopping list together and as we were leaving the house to catch the bus, Jacob, our landlord, asked us where we were going and that he would drive us, if we wanted. When we told him, he laughed and said today was a holiday and all of the stores were closed! In Germany, too? Absolutely! Nothing was working for us today. We went back home and looked up the Swiss holidays just so we would know when stores would be closed. Today was Ascension Day which is when they celebrate Christ ascending into heaven, but we saw that there are so many other holidays it’s a wonder that the stores are ever open.

Last night at the Relief Society activity we took photos of Silvia and Bea, the last ones we needed for Paul’s Book of Remembrance. We printed these out and finished putting it together. We added a few 8X10 photos of Christ and then paid Paul a visit. He loves for us to come and was really excited about his book. It was his 75th birthday today as well and we helped celebrate it. We spent a couple of hours looking through the book with him and reading all of the comments people had written to him. As we went through it words or phrases reminded him of experiences he’d had in his life and he relishes telling us of them.

We walked down the steep steps in the rain to our apartment and burrowed in for the night. We read the chapters in Joshua for our next Sunday School lesson, filled out our planner for the next transfer period and read our next Priesthood/RS lesson. Evidently Elder Stucki received the glucosamine/chondroiten pills from Elder Walters because he called to make sure he knew who he was to deliver them to. We gave him some background on Silvana Gianatti and pleaded with him to try and continue to work with her and to not just drop the pills off.

We got a call from Neide wanting to tell us about an experience she’d had. Elder Andrezzi, one of the first missionaries that made the initial contact with her, came back with his parents to visit Switzerland. She has a crush on him and really wanted to see him, but was afraid she wouldn’t be able to because of her night time work schedule at the post office. He and his parents and family went by twice, but she didn’t wake up to answer the door. She found out later and was able to make contact with them and invited them back. She was so happy that she was able to meet with them twice.

Tender mercies for today include getting phone calls from both Elder Irick and Sandro DeMarzi letting us know that Angel Lloyd is planning to get baptized on May 30. That is really good news. Elder Irick is getting released this week, but he and Elder Nilsson plan on flying back to witness her baptism. We’ll be there, too. Another tender mercy is that our landlord caught us before we went to Jestetten. We could have been sitting in the rain in Jestetten for an hour because the store was closed waiting for the next train to bring us back to Schaffhausen. And Roxsan skyped us and we talked to her for a half hour or so.