E. Nilsson giving young man BM; Alpen Horns

JULY 21, 2009 TUESDAY

This morning our main concern was to have all the food we needed to make lunch for the missionaries during our district meeting today. We waited too long last Saturday to get the few things we needed and Monday we started early before the stores opened and didn’t have time all day long either. So this morning I was up and went into Schwamendingen. The first stop was to the ATM to withdraw the rest of our money for the month and then I was on the doorstep of Migros waiting for when they opened at 8:00. I quickly bought some lettuce, cake for strawberry shortcake, ice cream, nectarines (not for the missionaries, but for us), carrots, noodles and some cheese. Then I went to the little Greek grocery store to buy a couple of loaves of bread that we like and some Swiss flags to use as transfer presents for the missionaries leaving for new assignments. When I got back, Diana had put everything in bags ready to take to the Church where we would prepare everything. We added what I had bought, got the laptop and went to the Church. When we got there, we prepared everything we could so it wouldn’t take too long to actually put it together when lunch time came. Charlotte had given us some surplus meat cutlets in gravy that we cut up into pieces to put over noodles. We cut up all the veggies/lettuce for the salad, cut up and seeded the watermelon, made the Kool-aid, got the table out and set and etc.

The meeting was good as usual and we received some good instruction and motivational talks. This was the last meeting that Elder Norris would be our district leader because he’s being transferred Thursday to Germany. This was also Elder Jensen’s last meeting with us because he’s also being transferred to Germany on Thursday. At 11:30 we went to the kitchen to get everything cooked and ready while the missionaries played some games. We cooked the noodles, heated up the corn, made the cut up meat and sauce into a gravy, mixed the salad, sliced the bread, and put everything on the table. The missionaries gathered around and we had lunch. For dessert we brought out the watermelon and also served strawberry shortcake with vanilla ice cream and cream topping out of a can if they wanted it. It was all very delicious and we had many compliments.

While lunch was going on and for awhile after, the missionaries were exchanging digital photos using our laptop and the two computers in the Institute office. Elder Norris downloaded all their photos onto our computer in order to have one super back-up for all their photos in case something happened to someone’s camera or card. They finally got through with our laptop and we went home. But the work continued in that RS Pres. Sister Ryser gave us a list of sisters of whom she wanted to know the status of. We went over this list once before four or five months ago, but she wanted the update anyway.

We had a meeting with Elders Pine and Jensen at 5:00 scheduled at the Church, but we got a call from him at 4:30 asking us to meet them at the Stettbach train station as soon as we could get there. We hurried, got ready and left. When we got there, they got on the tram with us and we all rode it back to our tram stop at Schoerlistrasse. We still didn’t know what was going on or what the fuss was about. We ended up back at the Church at 5:25 where all the other missionaries from our district were. Without telling us yet what all this was about, we left the Church in a group and went over to Charlotte’s where we also had an appointment at 5:30 scheduled. When we rang Charlotte’s doorbell, she came from around the corner of the house and waved at us to come to her. When we got there we heard some Alpen Horn music being played in the back yard and discovered she had arranged for three people from a family who play Alpen Horns to come and play for us. We had mentioned we were dying to see and hear these horns being played and Charlotte arranged these people to come free of charge to do it for us. They belong to the Salvation Army and play for old folks homes and other charity causes and it was really nice of them to do it for us. Hopefully, in exchange, they’ll receive the Gospel which is a priceless gift from our Heavenly Father and His son, Jesus Christ. After they finished playing we all talked to them and thanked them. A little later Elder Nilsson came over and asked if anyone had the brochure comparing the Bible and Book of Mormon. We not only had that, but also a marked BM with two other important brochures in it. He took it and went back to the young man and gave it to him and talked to him and his sister for some time. His sister left after awhile, but the young man stayed and talked with all of the missionaries while eating the munchies that had been prepared. He seemed to genuinely enjoy the association with the missionaries.

We finally went home and were able to talk to Roxsan and her kids and later, to Rebecca and Mack on skype. While we were talking with Rebecca, Priscilla called us just to say hello and to let us know she was still doing okay. We got another call from Charlotte asking if we were home and could we have a visit. We told her we were home and, if she wanted to come over, she could. We couldn’t imagine what would be so important or necessary to visit us this late. But, when our doorbell rang, we got another surprise. Instead of Charlotte, it was Fabian who had just arrived from Kosovo where he’s serving in the Swiss Army. We weren’t expecting him until middle August, but he was here to get some arthoscopic surgery done on his knee. It’s late again and so we close this entry.

E. Harris & Priscilla; E. Nilsson, E. Harris, Priscilla, Diana & Robert; E. Larson, Priscilla, S. Larson

JULY 19, 2009 SUNDAY

We had the normal meetings today starting with our correlation meeting at 8:00. At the beginning of our High Priest class Brother Ryser assigned people to give the lessons for August. There were fewer than normal there today because some were on vacation so Brother Ryser got desperate as asked me to teach the class on August 9th. I struggled last time I gave the lesson, but it didn’t scare him off. Pres. Bolt gave the main talk in Sacrament Meeting and the thing that stuck with us is the demonstration he made to emphasize a point. He had a stalk of wheat and explained the stalk is important to grow the head on, but the head is the most important because it contains the fruit or kernels. He took a pair of scissors and cut the head off and laid it on the podium and held up the bare stalk. Pres. Bolt said most of us take the stalk home and leave the head in the Church. In other words, we come to Church and go through the motions and don’t remember what we learned or what we were taught when we go home. Something to think about.

After Church we were invited to go to the Moeller-Russos for lunch. Elder Jensen is being transferred and they wanted us to all be together one more time before he left. The main dish was something similar to Shepard’s Pie and was really good. It’s sad to see Elder Jensen go, but he’s excited to be going to Germany for his next assignment.

After that we went home and got the brownies and banana bread ready and took them to the Church for Priscilla’s baptism. Again there were a lot of people who attended the baptism and it was a very nice spiritual service. Diana led the music and I was one of the witnesses. She also was the escort for Priscilla, helped her change clothes, sat with her during the service and helped her after to get changed. She bore a tender testimony after she was baptized. She’ll be confirmed next Sunday in Sacrament Meeting. We were there a half hour before it started at 5:00 and we finally got home at 7:30. Before we left we invited her to come to FHE tomorrow night, but she said she was very busy. I spent the rest of the night translating the story about the ten virgins for tomorrow’s FHE lesson which didn’t leave time to write our journal entry. That why we wrote it tonight, Monday.



JULY 20, 2009 MONDAY

Today for P-day our district and part of another went to the Maennlichen, a small peak at the base of the Moench, Eiger and Jungfrau, and hiked from there to the Kleine Scheidegg which took them about 2 hours. However, we wanted to go to the Jungfraujoch which is the highest pass in Switzerland. The train we were riding in, unknown to us, was going to divide in two, one half going to Grindelwald, the jumping off place to catch a tram to the Jungfraujoch, and the other to Wengen, the jumping off place for the rest of the group to get to the Maennlichen. We sat by a lady who told us we had to make sure we got out of the end of the train going to Wengen and get on the other end going to Grindelwald when we got to Zweiluetschinen. We were able to do that and the train split and we both went our separate ways. We also met a couple from Chicago and had fun talking to them. He said he had a brother-in-law who was a member and he had “worked them over petty good.” When we got on the train in Zurich to begin our adventure, we sat by a lady, Anita Bucher, who turned out to be the neighbor of Urs and Rita Wichtermann. Before she got off we gave her a brochure introducing her to the Church even though she said the Wichtermanns had talked to her about it.

We got to Grindelwald and the train to the Jungfraujoch was already waiting there with only a few minutes before it was going to leave. We hurried into the ticket office, but got behind a lady that seemed to have all the time in the world and a hundred nonsensical questions. Needless to say, we ended up just a few seconds shy of making the train so we had to wait a half hour for the next one. This made it so we had no time to even do anything when we arrived at the Jungfraujoch pass other than get out and then get back in the train and go back down.

So we bought the tickets knowing we wouldn’t have any time, but we’d come specifically to go there. We had the idea we could at least get out and enjoy the view for a few minutes. The scenery was magnificent on the way up as you can see by the photos and film clips, and we enjoyed it immensely. We arrived at the halfway point, Kleine Scheidegg, where we agreed to meet the rest of the group at 2:15. We thought we still had time to get to the top and back down in time to meet them there. We continued on up and soon we entered a tunnel and remained in it until we got to the top. Not exactly what we anticipated at all. We should have realized that would be the case because the mountain is covered with snow year round. There were a couple of stops where there were window outlooks you could look through and see the beautiful mountains and glaciers. When we got to the top, we exited into an underground terminal and it looked like it would take longer than we had just to get somewhere to see something. The train going down was waiting and ready to leave in minutes and so we just got back on and returned. Of course we got to Kleine Scheidegg after the rest of the group had left and we never did catch up to them. We arrived back down at Grindelwald, caught our train and went to Interlaken East where we changed trains and traveled to Bern where we again changed trains and ended up back in Zurich. We quickly jumped on Tram #7 and rode home getting there at 7:00, the time we should have been at FHE. We hurried and got the few things we needed and went to FHE at the Moeller-Russos, getting there 10 minutes late. Not bad for how things went today.

For the spiritual thought we went through the translated story and lesson about the ten virgins and passed out a copy of the painting to everyone. They had a lot of fun reading the translation I had made, but they understood the points of the lesson. I tried to find a German translation on the internet, but couldn’t find one. Irene told us there is one already in German and it would have been so much easier, if we had known that and could have found it. Daniela & Peter Martin attended tonight and she sang a few songs which included the Swiss type yodeling. We would have like to have filmed it, but in the rush, we left our camera home. Too bad. But Diana invited them to come next Monday and do sing songs again so we can film them. Norma & Allessandro Bachmann and Denise & Ashley Maurer were with us tonight too. The Bolts and the Moeller-Russos won’t be here next Monday so we’re going to be the ones hosting it in our apartment. All in all it was a good day.

Some more of the hundreds of cows in this shop; Spiez overlook; Grosse Scheidegg.

JULY 18, 2009 SATURDAY

Last night after we went to bed there was sporadic lightning and thunder and it continued raining all night and most of today. It finally let up in the late late afternoon. Mostly today we worked on translating the 10 Virgin parable, making brownies, making banana nut bread, contacting people by phone and writing our weekly progress report. The brownies and banana bread are for the baptism tomorrow afternoon. The parable is for FHE Monday evening. The report is for tomorrow’s correlation meeting. And the contacting is what we do.

Elders Harris and Nilsson came over this morning to finish making the programs for Priscilla’s baptism tomorrow. It takes a lot of coordination to get all the details for the program worked out as well as create and print the programs to be handed out at the baptism. It’s work they are glad to do and they wish they had more of the same. Elder Norris was supposed to call us to let us know what he wanted for lunch at the district meeting Tuesday. When he hadn’t called by the afternoon, we called him. He told us he couldn’t decide so he called some of the other missionaries for their ideas. All he found out was that some didn’t want chile and one of the sisters couldn’t eat spaghetti. So we were on our own to figure it out. We’ll probably use the gov’t. surplus food Charlotte gave us a while back. It’s already cooked and frozen pork cutlets in gravy which we’ll heat up and put over noodles. We’ll also include a vegetable, salad and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Sounds good to us.

We haven’t been to the store for a long time and we needed some eggs, bread and some other things, but we waited until too late to go into town. All of the big grocery stores were closed, but we found the little Greek market was still open. We bought some tomatoes and a cucumber for the salad (we already had lettuce), a watermelon, a couple of T-shirts with the Swiss flag on them, a small Swiss flag, a loaf of bread and a can of black olives. Charlotte came over for a minute, too, to tell us she wouldn’t be to Church tomorrow because she would be out of town visiting a friend. She told us she was going to introduce the Church to her and to pray for her. She also brought back our salad bowl and dressing we left there the last time we were over. She also wanted to make sure we had Tuesday 5:00 reserved to be at her place, but she won’t tell us why. She says it is a surprise. She wanted us to know she has our next Monday P-day all planned out for us too. Elder Pine wants us to meet him at the Church at 3:30 on Tuesday, but he won’t tell us why either. What’s all this secrecy about?

These are the people we contacted and today:
Renatus Raschle - He promised us he’d come to Church, but he’ll be on vacation for 2 weeks.
Cornelia Schaer- We want to teach her some more, but she comes to Church every Sunday now. She paid her tithing last week and, before she did, she said she didn’t have many appointments at her business. Today she said she had a good week and was pretty busy all week. Blessings come when you pay tithing.
Verena Bosshart - She was very ill last week and this week she has a cold. We’ll visit next week.
Susan Serfoesoe - Invited her to Church; she said she would come to sac. mtg. and bring a friend.
Charles Aboussou - We wished him happy B-day and invited him to Church, but he’s going on vacation to Germany for a week.
Sandra Buchser - Called to wish her a happy birthday and also to ask her to visit Gerde Schroeder who lives close by and has been having a struggle with depression.
Suwang Stefaniak - Called just to check up on her and we found out she will get her operation in the middle of August to fix her lung problem. She misses us so we’ll try to visit her once in awhile.

Others we have on our report are Hildegunde Schroeder who promised us she would come to Church tomorrow, and Brigitte Roffler who needs some attention. Elders Harris and Nilsson will report on Priscilla Wegmueller.

Diana & Charlotte sitting on the bench at Spiez waiting for our train; Swiss like cows and sell them everywhere for souvenirs; overlooking Spiez.



video from bus leaving Grosse Scheidegg and going towards Grindelwald.

JULY 17, 2009 FRIDAY

For Priscilla’s baptism Sunday afternoon Diana has been asked to give her testimony and I’ve been asked to be a witness. We also volunteered to give the lesson in family home evening next Monday evening. Today we felt we needed to work on our assignments so we’ll be sure to be ready when the time comes; it’s so easy to put things off and then things come up when you least expect them and bingo, the time for preparation is past. Diana wrote her testimony out in English and then translated it into German. I helped her polish it up a bit, but she did a pretty good job on her own. Our lesson for FHE is going to be on the parable of the ten virgins using the painting by Gayla Prince and the written description of it’s meaning. Rather than try and translate the written text myself, I found a translation program and downloaded it onto my computer. The program helped a lot but, as anyone knows who has used such a program, there’s still a lot of work to do to make it right. I only got about half of it done today and I hope to finish it tomorrow. Later on while I was still working on my translation, Diana called Suke Ehrensperger and Gabriella Rodriquez to see how they were doing. Suki hadn’t been to Church for several weeks and also didn’t answer her phone when we tried to call before. Today she answered and Diana was able to talk to her for awhile. She said she has been depressed and didn’t want to come to Church and have to act happy. Diana is good to cheer people up and we’re hoping she’ll come this Sunday and also to the baptism. Daniella said she has been busy with her kids and didn’t feel like coming, but Diana told her we’ll see her in Church Sunday and invited her to the baptism too. We hope she comes. We also texted Neide a “hello, how are you,” but she didn’t answer back.

Elder Norris called this afternoon to give us our district meeting assignment which is to bring the treats, only this time “treats” means to bring lunch for everyone. This is the last meeting before transfers and so it’s the “Omega” district meeting. It’s mostly a normal meeting, but it will last a little longer and have some special things added depending on what the district leader can think up and plan. This transfer Elder Jensen is going to Germany and Elder Richardson is coming to take his place and he and Elder Pine will be the assistants to Pres. Matern. Elder Norris, our current district leader, is also being transferred to Germany and so this next meeting is his last one here. His companion, Elder Carrier, will be getting a brand new “Golden” who arrives in the mission next Thursday and he’ll also be our new district leader. Everyone else stays put. We told Elder Norris we’d cook his favorite food for lunch, but he has trouble making snap decisions so he said he’d let us know tomorrow what he wanted.

Elder Pine called and asked if he and Elder Jensen could come over about 2:30 (they didn’t show up until 3:30) to do their weekly planning with us. In code that meant they’d like to come over and hope we’d feed them something. They arrived and went right to work with their planning and Diana went right to work cooking them lunch or dinner, or is that linner? At any rate they got hamburgers, wieners, left over macaroni salad and root beer. We had to leave, before they got finished with their planning, to visit our birthday people for today, Charles Aboussou and Gerde Schroeder. Charles is less-active and we were hoping to catch him home. It was raining heavily and we thought everyone should be home, but he wasn’t. We left his gift sitting by his door. We expected Gerde to be home, but she wasn’t either. Her mother, who lives close by, said she never goes anywhere and we were hoping to cheer her up. By the time we got home we were somewhat wet, but this time I wore my raincoat and the umbrella mostly protected Diana. Still, it’s impossible to stay dry.

About 8:30 Elders Harris and Nilsson dropped by to get some help finishing up some details in planning Priscilla’s baptismal service. They needed the computer to download some music for a musical number they hope someone will sing. They also made a couple of phone calls to the ward mission leader and someone else. All in all it’s been a pretty good day.

These photos are of scenery on our Grindelwald trip. The photo with the flag in it has a sign on the building that says "glacier gorge" and the white along the top of the photo is an actual glacier.

JULY 16, 2009 THURSDAY

Yesterday was our normal wash day, but since we were in the temple, we had to postpone it until this morning. We put the wash in at 7:00, took it out at 8:05, put it in the dryer at 8:10 and got it out of the dryer at 9:00 which put us a little behind in leaving for our appointment with Brigitte Roffler at 10:00. In between I started writing yesterday’s journal entry, but didn’t come near finishing before we had to leave. Brigitte lives clear out in Freienstein which is beyond Embrach quite a ways. She lives in a group home which was a little hard to find, but after asking a couple of people for directions, we finally made it by 10:30. We had a nice visit with her and tried to give her some encouragement in dealing with her circumstances and disabilities. She feels isolated and shunned and not well accepted by residents of the group home, where she works and even at Church somewhat. Even though she thinks and talks a little slow she has the desire to improve her circumstances and her life. She has goals she’s working towards and later today was going into Zurich to meet with some people at an occupational help center with the hopes they could help her find job training and maybe even a better place to work. The Relief Society President visits her regularly, but her visiting teachers and her home teachers don’t. We will discuss this situation in mission correlation meeting Sunday morning to see if things can be improved for her.

We got back home about 3:30 and I finished writing our journal entry for yesterday while Diana caught up on her reading etc. At about 5:00 we left to visit Hildegunde Schroeder to invite her to Church and take back the umbrella we borrowed a couple of months ago, and also Sandra Buchser to take her a belated birthday present and card. Her birthday was yesterday, but our day was so full we didn’t have a chance to stop by. Hildegunde was home and we had a nice, but quick, chat on the door and she promised us she’d be to Church Sunday. We asked how her daughter, Gerde, was doing and she told us she had lost the will to live and didn’t see any future for herself anymore. We could tell she was very worried about her and she said she had done everything she could think of to help her. We told her we would go visit her tomorrow which is also her birthday, and try to cheer her up. After visiting with Hildegunde, we tried to find Sandra Buchser’s apartment which, according to our member list, should have been in the same building. It wasn’t, so the best idea Diana had was to visit the Diethelms, who lived a few stories up in the same building, to see if they knew where Sandra lived. We had a quick, but lively chat with the Diethelms who gave us Sandra’s correct address. Fortunately, it was on the way back home, but she wasn’t home. We did the usual and left the gift in her mailbox then went on back home. We had just a few minutes to cool off (it’s been very hot today), print a photo of Priscilla and Elders Harris and Jensen from the computer and then leave for Oerlikon to meet those same elders. We met up with them and continued on to Priscilla’s apartment, but at Oelikon when we got off the bus, we ran into Charlotte coming back from her hiking trip today. She gave us a set of drink coasters with pictures of Switzerland on them.

The purpose of our visit tonight was to teach Priscilla about the ten commandments, fasting, and prayer. The discussion went without a hitch and after it was over, she finished filling out the baptism form so it would be all done for Sunday. She got it all filled out except for a few dates she’ll have to look for. As we were going back to the bus stop at Oerlikon Elder Harris told us what our assignments for the baptism were. He asked Sister Larson to give her testimony and I’ve been asked to be a witness again. Everything seems to be falling in place and everything should be ready for Sunday. We also ran into Agnes and her friend and invited them to the baptism too.

Charlotte called in the middle of the lesson with Priscilla and wanted to talk to E. Harris, that it was absolutely urgent. After the lesson was over and we were on our way home, we asked him what was so urgent. He told us that Charlotte said that she wanted us all to keep next Tuesday evening open , but that she couldn’t tell us why yet. We came on home and that was it for today except for our journal entry and some reading.