Catholic cathedral in Konstanz; interesting building in Konstanz; view out of our window of police who stopped a bus for some reason.

AUGUST 10, 2009 MONDAY

For P-day today we hopped the train and went to Konstanz, Germany, to do a little sightseeing and grocery shopping. We arrived at 10:00 and walked around town for a couple of hours looking for things to see and do. We did a lot of window shopping and went into a couple of cathedrals, took a lot of photos and then found our way back to the shopping mall where the ALDI’s grocery store was. We walked around the mall looking here and there and discovered a fast food Chinese place where the food seemed reasonably cheap and smelled good. We decided to spring for a takeout portion of fried rice/chicken and vegetables for Diana and noodles/chicken and vegetables for me. Each cost 3.50 Euros and it was worth it; both were delicious. We both ate half and saved the other half to eat on the train on the way home. After we were finished there we went into ALDI’s and filled a grocery cart with all the food we thought we could carry back home with us. We bought quite a bit of fruit and also muesli (cereal), outmeal, cheese, ham slices, buttermilk jogurt (it is soooooo goooood), snack stuff for tonight’s home evening, pork chops, frozen vegetables, butter, etc. It was quite a load, but we managed. We goofed around so much that by the time we were through the check stand and had the food bagged, we only had ten minutes to get back to the train station. We still don’t know how much of what we can take across the border back to Switzerland with us. We stopped and got a brochure, but we still can’t figure it out. We’ve never been stopped yet crossing the border, so maybe we should quit worrying about limits. We weren’t stopped this time either and just walked on through customs. The hour’s train ride back home was uneventful and we arrived in plenty of time to change and get to our every six week interview with Pres. Matern. But rather than being able to take a break, we were rushing around trying to get things set up for home evening and trying to brush up and review our lesson for home evening.

Our interview went well with Pres. Matern; everything seems to be going fine and he says he’s pleased with our work. We always feel like we should be doing a little more. After the interview on the way home we decided we needed to have some bananas for tonight’s dessert so we hurried into COOP, bought the bananas and came back home. The rest of the time was spent with organizing the snacks, reviewing the lesson one more time waiting for the group to arrive. Then the phone calls started coming in. Suki couldn’t come, but she invited us to her home on Wednesday afternoon. Norma called and said she couldn’t come, but would like us to come visit her so we can organize a “going home” party for Elder Pine. Denise and Neide had already cancelled earlier. So the ones who came to FHE were Pres. & Sister Bolt, Charlotte and us. A small group, but we had fun and Diana gave a great lesson on the Holy Ghost. The Bolt’s missed our last two FHE’s because they were at their son’s place in Graubunden where they are helping him build a house. He flippantly asked us if we would like to come help him because they are going there again on Wednesday and stay until Saturday. We told him we would, if he could get approval from Pres. Matern to to help him. We thought he was joking, but the next thing we knew, he’d called Pres. Matern and gotten his permission for us to leave for a few days to help him. So, we’ll be leaving Wednesday evening and come back Saturday some time. Don’t expect a journal entry on those days. And that about wraps up today.

Bern State Capitol Bldg. (I may have put this one on before); anotherfountain in Bern; waterwheel at Einstein Museum.

AUGUST 9, 2009 SUNDAY

Hooray for Sunday! We always look forward to Sunday so that we can rub shoulders with the saints, renew our covenants by taking the Sacrament and to be able to discuss the progress of the missionary work in correlation meeting. I was even looking forward to giving the lesson in High Priest Group. And that came rather quickly because Priesthood/RS meetings are first in our block of meetings. I had everything perfectly laid out and prepared to take the full time, but five minutes into the lesson, answering one question Bro. Kummer gave most of the lesson in that one answer. Now what???? I held up my lesson outline and showed it to the brethren and told them they’d have to slow down because we’d already covered 2/3 of what I had prepared. They all got a laugh out of that and then we continued. The lesson progressed nicely and I didn’t stumble around too much with the language and, before we knew it, time was gone and we didn’t get everything covered anyway. Jan Tolman, the wife of Bishop Tolman whom I served with, authors a blog about the Relief Society and she asked us to solicit conversion stories and other related information from members here to put on her blog. That is the last thing I did and many brethren wrote down the blog address, so I hope they provide some stories for Jan. The blog address is www.ldswomenofgod.com.blog/ if anyone is interested in looking it up. I did and it is full of interesting stories and history about the Relief Society organization.

When we got to Sunday School, Tony Viegas-Hawes told Diana their little two year old daughter, Jasmine, was upset last night. She thought it was Sunday and when she found out it wasn’t, she was really upset. The family had been to the temple Saturday and Jasmine wanted to tell “grandma” (Diana) all about. Her dad told her she’d have to wait until in the morning and today she was so excited to tell Diana all about it. Loic, her older brother (3) was just as excited to tell us about their trip too. Another little guy, Nikolas Sigrist (5), always comes and gives us a hug too. Fun little kids.

We are always anxious to see who from our newly activated members will come to Church. Today we were pleased to see Cornelia again as well as Gabriella and her two kids, Julian and Siskea. After about a month of being absent Suki Ehrensperger came too. Our newly baptized members, Solange, Priscilla, Neide and Charlotte were all there which is gratifying to see. They are all remaining faithful. Solange will be moving back to her homeland in South America this month and intends on staying there. Heinz & Lily Locher brought Verena Bosshard from the care center so she could attend Sacrament Meeting. She seemed happy to attend a meeting again.

Fraser Daly blessed his and Isobella’s little newborn son, Dominic, and he didn’t seem to be very happy about it. He was good up until the blessing during which he cried the whole time. After’ he was good most of the time. The three speakers gave inspirational talks and then the meeting was over. We were able to get around and greet and talk with a lot of the members and that’s always fun to do. Irene & Joerg Moeller-Russo asked us to water their plants while they are on vacation so we walked to their home to get instructions on when, what and where. They gave us a key to their apartment and told us we could move in for a couple of weeks, if we wanted to, or at least come over and watch TV or movies. We told them we didn’t want to get spoiled because we would eventually have to come back to our dinky apartment and the pain would be too great. They invited us to eat whatever was in their fridge so it wouldn’t spoil before they got back.

This afternoon Diana called Denise Maurer, Nelly Rathgeb, Suwang, Neide, Suki and Charles Aboussou. Denise was ill today and that is why she wasn’t at Church, and Angela didn’t answer. She invited Neide and Suki to FHE tomorrow at our home, but Neide has to work. Charles Aboussou said he couldn’t understand English very well and so I’ll have to call him back. Nelly must have gotten our number off her caller ID and called us back. I happened to answer and talked with her for a bit. She said she was really busy during August, but in September we’d have better luck to try and catch her home. We told her we’ve been trying to find her home for the last 10 months and she thanked us for not giving up. That is a positive sign she wasn’t just putting us off, but that she really may want us to come visit her. She runs some kind of a school in Buehlach and is only home for short periods on the weekends. I called Pres. Bolt and Charlotte and invited them to come to FHE too. The two sets of Elders have been invited elsewhere tomorrow evening so they won’t be attending our FHE. We assigned Charlotte the game and we have the lesson and dessert. We have little time to prepare so we hope all goes well.

interesting bldg. in Bern.

Fountain in Bern; This time you get to see Diana by rock pillars; 100 of Priscilla's shirts, that's only half of a day's work of ironing and she still has to bag them.

AUGUST 8, 2009 SATURDAY

Today was a little different than most days. First, it started to rain this morning which cooled the temperature a bit, but that isn’t what made it different. It rains quite frequently so we’re used to that. Second, Pres. Matern came at 10:00 to get a haircut and, this time he brought Sister Matern with him. Again, that isn’t what made it a little different today because both have been here before to conduct interviews and this is the second time Pres. Matern has been here to get his hair cut. Third, today was the last day to prepare my lesson for High Priest Group, but that isn’t what made it a little different either because I’ve lead a discussion in HPG before. Fourth, there was a gays parade/celebration in Zurich at which they anticipate 800,000 revelers filling the streets in varying stages of undress and drunkenness, drugs and all that goes with it. We were advised and counseled not to stray far from home today. And that’s what made it unusual. So we spent most of the day quietly reading, preparing lessons, studying and listening to German etc. We were glad for the interruption when the Materns came and we spent a pleasant hour with them. A little after noon we went out in the rain and walked to the Wichtermanns to take a birthday gift to their 12 year old daughter. Unfortunately she wasn’t home because she had gone on her first Young Womens activity and wasn’t going to be home for another couple of hours. We had a nice visit with her mother, Rita, and talked about their son’s (David) upcoming wedding on September 25. He returned from his mission in Russia about eight months ago and now the girl he’s going to marry is from Russia. He must of met her while on his mission, but he’s been traveling to Russia frequently since he’s been home to see her. They’ve tried to reserve the stake center for the reception, but they can’t get an answer from the building scheduler to confirm the reservation. It seems there is a stake auxiliary meeting that may take place, but no one is sure if they are going to use the building. Until that’s decided, the Wichtermanns can’t have it because the stake always has precedence. September 25 is the only weekend the bride’s mother can come so that makes it tough. They also can’t send out invitations without having a definite reservation. We offered our help wherever they think we can be of use.

After we left the Wichtermanns we went into Schwamendingen to buy a few groceries and to visit Diana’s favorite little junk store. However, the little store was closed and had been for a week and a half. Smaller stores just close up when vacation time comes and it’s too bad for the customers. That didn’t take too long and so back home we went. Roxsan skyped which helped break up the day and we got a couple of calls from Elders Pine and Elder Harris. Elder Pine wanted to know if we had a Portuguese BM which we did, but he called later and said they found one and didn’t need ours. Elder Harris called to see if they could look up an address on the internet, but he called back later and said they left the name and phone number of the person at their apartment and so weren’t able to look up the address anyway. However, Elders Harris & Nilsson surprised us about 7:30 and showed up on our doorstep wanting to know if we had any of Priscilla’s birthday cake left. We did and we’re glad they came to eat it so we wouldn’t have to. They wanted to take the leftovers home with them last night, but they had another appointment to go to so they couldn’t. They just had to come tonight and get another piece.

The tender mercy for today is that we were able to provide a service to Pres. Matern by cutting his hair. Also that we are in a position to give aid and comfort to young missionaries who are far away from home serving in a foreign country. It seems they come by occasionally, not just for the cake or a warm meal, but also for the warm fuzzies that ersazt (substitute) parents/grandparents can provide.

8/7/09 Priscilla's birthday; cannon in front of Einstein Museum; street in alte stadt Bern.

AUGUST 7, 2009 FRIDAY

Whenever we want to make something, like a cake, we look up recipes on the internet. Since we needed to make a birthday cake for Priscilla’s birthday today, that’s what we did. We found a recipe we liked and it called for bananas and pineapple among other things. We started making the cake by putting all the dry ingredients in a bowl and then began to put the wet ingredients into another just like the recipe said to do. When it came to the bananas, we discovered we didn’t have any so we put everything on hold to run to the store to get some. While there, besides the bananas, we also bought a few other things for it such as powder sugar and a can of pineapple. It’s funny, but they don’t have crushed pineapple at Migros. We’ll have to check out COOP and Denners to see if they do. We also bought a six pack of 2 liter bottles orange soda, four liters of apple juice and 12 liters of orange juice because they were on sale and we needed some drinks for company. We also needed some to take to Priscillas tonight. We felt like pack mules on the way home because everything weighed so much and drinks are especially heavy. We got back home and finished making the cake and put it in the oven to cook.

Once we had that done, we started working on a lesson to teach Verena Bosshard when we visited her this afternoon. She has been ill for so long and hasn’t felt like having visits, but we call her about every week to check on her. In the middle of preparing the lesson (11:45) Elders Harris & Nilsson called to say that Elder Pine & Richeson called them to see if they could go to a lunch appointment with Heinz and Lily Locher at 12:30 because they were at a zone conference and couldn’t go themselves. They accepted the invitation without checking their calendar and we don’t know why they waited so long to cancel or see if someone could bail them out. Elders Harris & Nilsson were already booked and so they called us to see if we could go. We would have loved to, but we had the appointment with Sister Bosshard at 2:00 and couldn’t. Besides that Elder Pine wanted us to just show up at the Lochers without telling them anything about a switch. Even though the missionaries are great and we love them to death, in some things they are still just inexperienced young men who need to learn life’s lessons. They didn’t want to call the Lochers and face the music knowing Sister Locher goes to a lot of expense and trouble to prepare meals for the missionaries.

The cake got done, we made the icing and had the lesson prepared for Sister Bosshard so we were set. We left the cake to cool and left to go to Bassersdorf to visit Sister Bosshard. It took and hour to get there on the tram and buses even though we lucked out with good connections. When we arrived at the tram stop it showed as we got there. We got off the first tram and only had to wait a few minutes for our bus. When we had to get off that bus, we were able to jump right on the next one. Sometimes it takes closer to two hours if connections aren’t good. Sister Bosshard is such a sweet person and she sure misses coming to Church and the visits when she’s ill. She loves the lesson and being able to talk to someone about the Gospel. She can’t read because she’s almost blind and there’s no other members there to talk with. Her roommate is mentally and physically handicapped and can’t talk at all. After an hour we had to leave so we could get back home, ice and decorate the cake and get to Priscilla’s apartment in Oerlikon by 5:00. We did it too, but it was a frantic half hour at home to get the cake iced, decorated and in a box to carry to Oerlikon. We melted a chocolate bar to write “Happy Birthday Priscilla” on the cake. When the bar was melted, we poured it into a plastic bag and poked a small hole in the corner with a tooth pick. Diana squeezed the chocolate out the hole to write the words. We learned this trick from our daughters who invented this method doing Easter eggs last Easter.

We met Elders Harris & Nilsson by the bus stop we get off at to go to Priscillas. When we got there, Priscilla was still working hard trying to get her daily allotment of 200 Swiss Air uniform shirts ironed, folded and bagged. No problem! She already had them ironed and on a rack so we formed an assembly line to finish them. Diana took them off the rack one at a time, buttoned the top button and laid them on the ironing board. Priscilla folded them neatly and gave them to Elder Nilsson who carried them to a table where he and Elder Harris bagged them in plastic bags. Elder Harris slid the bagged shirts over to me and I folded the end of the bags over, taped them, then stacked them in a big plastic tub on wheels. What would have taken her probably at least a couple of hours, took us a half hour to finish. That was the best birthday present she got today.

We put candles on the cake and lit them, sang happy birthday and then dived in. The cake got a little messed up on the tram on the way over, but it tasted good nonetheless. We had a good time talking for about an hour and a half and then we had to go. Before we left, however, her husband who is her boss, came to pick up the shirts for Swiss Air. He was very nice and friendly, had a piece of cake and then had to leave. Shortly after we left too. We arrived back home shortly before 8:00. We were checking the emails when Rebecca skyped us. Diana talked to her while I went to the Church and found a Children Song Book Charlotte had asked us yesterday to get for her. She wanted to memorize the children’s primary songs before Sunday and she didn’t have a key to get into the Church. I delivered the book and then returned home.

The tender mercy for today was the Lord arranging the missionaries and us to arrive just in time to help Priscilla get her shirts finished in time for the pick up at 6:00. She has to have them ready by 6:00 every evening and she can’t be late although tonight she would have been if we hadn’t come when we did. She knew we were coming at 5:00 and she was going to stop working while we were there and just take the consequences. But Diana wouldn’t take no for an answer and organized everything to make quick work of it and have it done by the deadline.

Robert leaning on flexible stone pillars; part of the Einstein Museum; the fountain in front of the Einstein Museum, but it didn't have any water in it because of construction in the area.

AUGUST 6, 2009 THURSDAY

Today was a sunshiny and fairly warm day. We prepared diligently for our meeting with Marija Friederich this afternoon, going over the Plan of Salvation discussion and reviewing all the scriptures that goes along with it. The last time we were there was the first time we had met her and, after the pleasantries we got into why she didn’t come to church any more. She was all over the place and when we started to answer one thing she was off on another and so on and so on. With that kind of a conversation it’s hard to try and teach anything in a logical manner and so not much was accomplished other than finding out what she had problems with. This time we wanted to be a little more prepared and try to get her to focus on one thing at a time.

This time when we met with Marija we spent 2 hours with her teaching mainly the plan of salvation. She was very adamant that she would never come back to the Church. She wouldn’t let us talk to her about baptism because didn’t believe in baptism. She believes in reincarnation and that you have to keep being reborn until you’re perfected. She believes in Christ, but not the atonement. She loves animals more than people, doesn’t take medicines or go to doctors because they use animals to develop drugs. She doesn’t eat meat. God talks to her personally so she doesn’t need the Church, prophets or anyone else to know what God wants her to do. She doesn’t agree with tithing and thinks it’s only a way for the Church to get money from people. She was nice to us and pleasant to talk to, but is set in her beliefs. We asked her if we could come again to which she replied she’d have to think about it. We told her we’d like a chance to talk to her about the principle of tithing and where she can read about it in the bible. She was surprised to know the principle is taught in the bible. We’ll call her in a few weeks and see what happens.

Before we left to go meet with Marija, Elders Harris & Nilsson paid us a surprise visit. They wanted to look up a phone number on the internet, but when they tried to find it, they couldn’t. After we got home Diana called Priscilla to see how she was doing. Tomorrow is her birthday and we were going to try and surprise her with a birthday cake, but when Diana talked to her, Priscilla mentioned herself that it was her birthday tomorrow and that she would be gone for the weekend. Diana needed to find out if she would be there when we wanted to come, so that kind of took the surprise away. She said she would be only gone on Saturday because she wanted to be home for Church on Sunday. She also said she was thinking of us and was going to call us, but Diana beat her to it. Shortly after that Charlotte called to see if she could come over and visit for a minute. She’s been sick for close to a week and today she felt better and just wanted to get out of the house. She stayed for about 45 minutes and then went home. And now it’s 9:45 and this is the earliest we’ve been able to button things up in a long time. We were going to make the cake tonight, but Charlotte kind of took us off schedule. We’ll have to do it in the morning.