Greta, Andreas, Bea, Susan, Manuel; Greta, Dorothea, Carla, Vivian, Lukas, Andreas; Singen bear

AUGUST 2, 2010 MONDAY

Since today was P-day and we didn’t get to bed until well after midnight last night, we slept in a little this morning. However, I was out the door for my morning walk by 8:00, this time up the road towards the Herblingen Castle. I go as fast away from our apartment as I can get within a half hour and then turn around and come back. Along the way I do about four reps of modified pushups and try to break my record each day. Today I made 85 pushups which beat the previous record by five.

When I got home, we checked the emails and saw one from Neide. She wrote to tell us that she wouldn’t be able to attend the temple until September 4 at the earliest. She asked us if we could stay that long so we could go with her. We had to tell her we were already registered with Switzerland to leave on August 12 because our visas had expired and we couldn’t change it. We didn’t promise, but we told her to let us know when she’s ready and the date is set, and we’ll try to come back, if we can arrange it.

Diana cut my hair and then I was barely able to get ready in time to catch the bus. It was Diana’s P-day to choose something to do and she chose to spend it in Singen, Germany, just to see what was there. We’ve been there several times for conferences, but never had time to look around or explore. We met Charlotte at the bahnhof and then traveled together to Singen. We walked around town exploring different stores, but we didn’t buy anything until right at the very last. Diana had 4.35 Euro in small change, mostly of the copper variety, and wanted to get rid of it. We stopped in a bread store and bought some butter rolls for .15 each which was less than half of what they would have cost in Switzerland. We were hungry, too, so we went into a grocery store and bought some nectarines, blue berries, pistachio milk and some sliced bread to snack on. For some reason there were a lot of bear statues placed throughout the town and, of course, that demanded we take photos of them.

By 3:30 we’d had enough and climbed aboard the train bound for Schaffhausen. On the way there Diana decided we needed to go to Erzlingen to buy some more groceries from the Penny Markt store. Most of what we bought we’re going to take to Paul tomorrow when we visit him including two bags of frozen chicken, two packages of hamburger and several pounds of butter. To that we’ll add several liters of milk and some chocolate wafer sticks. I bought some more Mueller Milk, yogurt and fruit while Diana bought some chocolate mint wafers for gifts when we are invited to dinner. When we had as much as I could carry, we went on home. At the Schaffhausen Bahnhof Charlotte caught her train and we caught our bus and went home.

We had a couple of hours to change, put together a spiritual thought and then we left to go to our dinner appointment with the Flammias. When we arrived, Philippo was standing out on the sidewalk and greeted us as we got off the bus. We should have suspected something, but naive people that we are, we didn’t. We hadn’t eaten all day expecting to be treated to a dinner tonight. As we went into his house we heard singing coming from his living room and we saw Dorothea and Greta sitting on the couch. I thought maybe we were interrupting some kind of meeting or something, but we found out soon enough that the singing was for our benefit. The branch had organized a surprise going away party for us. Now how sweet is that? We really didn’t suspect a thing.

Rather than each of them having their own home evening, they had one together. The opening prayer was said and then the time was turned over to us for the spiritual thought. We showed the 20 minute film, The Bridge which is about the atonement. After that we played a few games, had dessert and then visited for quite awhile. Susan Flammia made sure we won a few prizes including cookie cutters in the shape of Switzerland and edelweiss, and Carla Wigger and Sister Troesch gave Diana go-away gifts, too. Carla’s was cookies, chocolate and a little glass angel. Sister Troesch gave her a small beautifully hand stitched cloth to put on a table. We were really appreciative of their thoughtfulness. We’re going to miss them.

Everyone left about 9:30 except the Flammias, of course, us and Yvonny and we sat around and talked until 10:00. Yvonny took us home, but before we left, Pres. Flammia asked Diana and I to speak in sacrament meeting again, each for about ten minutes. He left it up to us to decide what to talk on which always makes it harder, at least for me.

It drizzled most of the afternoon and was still drizzling as we got home. It was a great day