Video of the Rheinfalls taken from the train.


Elders Diaz, Von Niederhausen, Schmidt, Tavake, Talley, Holzapfel, Bentley, Dockstader and Diana. Statue of George Fischer.

FEBRUARY 9, 2010 TUESDAY

Today we were hosting the district meeting and we had forgotten to bring some song books home from Church Sunday so my morning walk took me in the direction of the Church. I discovered it took exactly a half an hour on a fast walk to get from our front door to the Church. While I was there, I checked to see if I could get on the computer and pull up the report file where we have to enter our weekly missionary progress report information. I was able to do it on the first try which made me happy. I walked back to the bahnhof in a different direction than we normally go and saw that I could see and take photos of three of the old towers that were part of the wall that used to surround Schaffhausen. I also took a photo of George Fischer’s statue built in his honor as the founder of the large steel mill that helped Schaffhausen to grow into the city it is today. I arrived back home in time to help Diana get things ready for when the missionaries showed up. We put the casseroles in the oven so all we had to do was turn it on mid way through the meeting for them to warm up.

The first to show up were the zone leaders and our district leaders. Finally, after a long wait, Elder’s Bentley & Von Niederhausen and the assistants to the president, Elders Dockstader & Diaz arrived. That made ten in all counting us. We had a good meeting with Elder Tavake giving a spiritual thought on “love,” ZL Elders Talley & Schmidt reviewing the assignments given by Pres. Matern at the last zone conference and Elder Holzapfel giving a talk on loving the people and working hard so there’ll be no regrets at the end of our missions. Diana led a mission rules book discussion on rules about communicating with family at home and reviewed the rules about emails. As soon as the meeting was over Elders Diaz, Dockstader and Bentley had to leave. That was too bad because we had prepared two large casseroles and with three of them gone, we were in trouble. On top of that Elder Tavake said he ate a big breakfast and couldn’t eat as much as he usual could. The casseroles turned out perfect and they were able to eat one and a couple of servings out of the second one. We don’t have freezer space so that means we’ll be eating chicken casserole for awhile. After lunch three of them needed haircuts so we accommodated them. When they left, Diana took pity on me and cut my hair as well. She would do it whenever I ask, but it seems like we’re always too busy or doing other things and don’t get around to it.

By the time we got things cleaned up it was time to go to our appointment with Paul Hunziker. He’s our 75 year old professional investigator who is really a great guy, but doesn’t see the need to belong to any particular Church. He feels he can do what God wants him to do without a bishop or anyone else telling him what he needs to do. We talked about the Plan of Salvation, prophets, Christ being baptized by someone who had authority, Christ organizing His Church, Joseph Smith as the prophet of the restoration, the Book of Mormon and the importance of him being baptized. He climbed on a chair and got his old Books of Mormon down to show us that he had them and that he’d read them more than once. He had a copy of the Article of Faith and had read that, too. He still feels he doesn’t need a church organization to help him know what the Lord wants him to do. Every morning he says he cooks food and when people come to visit him, he feeds them. He says he gets visitors all the time. Before we left he gave us a couple pieces of fried chicken and some sauce to go on it. He would have fed us, too, but we talked him out of it. He really is a good man.

On the way home Madeleine called and Diana was able to help her understand we weren’t going to come and stay over with her for stake conference. We are going to help Suki move Saturday and, if we have time, we’ll go make a surprise visit to her.

Diana called Sylvain this morning to check on him and give him some early morning support. He said he would try today, but Diana countered that you don’t just try, but you do it. He said he would. Tonight he called us and this time I talked to him. He said Diana gave him very good advice this morning and he’s adopted it as his theme. Not just try, but do it. He said it’s helped him to have the courage to go without drinking. He talked to his boss and has made arrangements to be able to meet with us twice a week and work through the Church’s “Twelve Steps to Addiction Recovery” program. He’s going to check the train schedule and decide on what time he wants to meet with us and which days. He’ll call us tomorrow to work out the details. I told him we’d be in the temple tomorrow and wouldn’t be home until after 8:00. We told him we planned on putting his name in the temple and he asked if we would also put his wife’s name in, too. We said we would.

FEBRUARY 8, 2010 MONDAY

This morning on my walk my goal was to find two addresses, one for Elizabeth Hurter and the other for Elvira Kobler. We had an appointment at 3:30 with Silvia Gardedieu to visit these two and we wanted to know exactly where they were so we wouldn’t waste any time looking. I found the right address for Elizabeth, but her name wasn’t on any of the doorbells. I thought I found the right address for Elvira, but I got mixed up and looked at building 14 instead of building 19. Naturally, I couldn’t find her name on any of the doorbells there either. When I got back home, I called both of them on the phone and when I did, Elizabeth simply hung up when I introduced myself as representing the Church. Elvira at least talked to me a minute. She said she had no interest in the Church and didn’t want us to come visit her. I told her we came all the way here from Utah just to visit her, but that didn’t convince her either. I finally had to say goodbye and hang up. She sounded like a really nice lady and we really would have liked to talk to her personally. We don’t like to call anyone on the phone because it’s too easy for them to say no. We only call as a last resort.

Today was supposed to be P-day so we went to Jestetten to do some grocery shopping. Jestetten in only a few stops away on the Turbo Express train, but it’s in Germany so prices are much better than here in Schaffhausen and this ALDI is much closer than the one in Konstanz. There’s not much in Jestetten that we saw except for a couple of stores near the train station. We spent 51.00 Euros (about $80.00) and had so many groceries we almost couldn’t carry them home. My backpack was full as well as two of the big MIGROS bags and Diana also had another one that she carried. It really would be nice to have a car to carry stuff in. We should have remembered to bring our pull cart except, when full, it’s also difficult to get it in and out of trains and buses.

When we got home we put all the groceries away and then got to busy figuring out who we were going to visit this afternoon. We picked out three names and decided we would wait until Silvia arrived before deciding who to visit. We had some time so we called Margaret Kunzle, an excommunicated member, to see if we could visit her. She was active and then got into some difficulty and, even though she was excommunicated, she came to Church faithfully for many years. About three years ago she had an accident in which she sustained a head injury and she hasn’t been back to Church since. Pres. Flammia said she may know a little more of the background why Elvira Buergi has so much anger against the Church. We made an appointment with her for Feb. 12. Sister Nerina Fleury called again today to tell us she has decided to move to Appenzell to be near one of her sons. She said she didn’t want us to come by and suddenly not find her there any more. She didn’t exactly know the address where she is moving, but she said she would be sure and call us when she did. It was nice of her to let us know. Later in the evening she called again wanting to know the phone number of Pres. Flammia so she could also tell him personally.

At 3:30 Silvia arrived and she needed to put on some warmer clothes so we went up to our apartment. She was surprised to see how clean and nice it was. She recognized two of her overstuffed chairs in the living room that she had donated some time ago. She also recognized the couch that she said Sandro DeMarzi donated. Before we went out visiting we had a nice long discussion on how we might help her husband, Sylvain Gardedieu. We can’t begin to understand the heartache she has been through and the hope she has to somehow help Sylvain give up drinking. She is grateful she has someone to talk to and help her.

We talked about a few things and then we decided to go visit Martin Hedinger. We tried to visit him on Sunday for his birthday, but we didn’t find him home. Sylvia explained that he is seldom home, but lives in a treatment hospital for psychiatric patients not far from where he lives. He has his own apartment, but seldom stays there. When we got on the bus at the bahnhof we sat in two of the seats that face two others. There was a young lady across from Diana who was looking at a box of perm for her hair. Diana mentioned something to her and that started a conversation. Pretty quick Diana pulled out a pass along card and handed it to her. Sylvia was sitting across the aisle, but when she saw that happen, she switched seats to the one next to the lady and in front of me. A conversation ensued between them and Silvia asked if I had any Church brochures. I pulled out a couple and gave them to the lady. She was really friendly and interested so before we came to our stop, I got out a Book of Mormon and gave that to her as well. Silvia invited her to come to Church and she said she would. She also said she would call us if she decided she wanted to learn more.

When we got to the psychiatric hospital we were walking down the sidewalk to the office, a man (patient?) walked up to me and asked for my necktie. I didn’t hesitate, but started to take it off telling him he could have it if he want it. He quickly said he really didn’t need it, said a few other things and then left. As we continued down the sidewalk, Silvia asked me if I would really have given my tie to him. I told her, of course I would have, that I had plenty of ties and really only needed one. If he needed one, I certainly could share. This seemed to surprise her for some reason. We found Martin in the hospital, found a table where we could sit and talk, and had a nice visit with him. We don’t know what his mental problems are, but he seemed normal to us. He spent time in Canada and learned English there. Because he knew English, he wanted to use it so we carried on the conversation in English. We got to know him a bit and then we told him we hadn’t seen him at Church lately. We invited him to come next Sunday and, we think, he said he would. We also invited him to come to the Priesthood meeting to hear Pres. Uchtdorf talk on February 20. He said he’d try and make that too. When we had to go, he walked us out to the bus stop where we said goodbye with the promise we would come visit him again. We rode back to the Bahnhof with Silvia and then went on our different ways back home.

Tomorrow our district meeting is going to be at our home again. We promised them lunch to entice them to come here for the meeting. We spent a couple hours putting together a chicken/noodle/veggie casserole that we’ll put in the oven and heat up tomorrow. We wanted it pre-made so we wouldn’t have to miss any of the district meeting. While we were doing it, Sylvain called to say he is again on the road to recovery and hopes to stay there. He’s going to ask his boss if he can take two nights off a week to come meet with us and work through the Churches twelve step addiction recovery program. We’ve never done this before, but we’re up for it if Sylvain is willing. We know the Lord will help us and Sylvain if he is honest in applying the principles of the program.

Elder Nilsson called tonight to see how we were doing. He also wanted to verify if we had told Madeleine that we would come and stay overnight with her the Saturday evening between sessions of Stake Conference. He said she asked him and Elder Irick to come help her clean a room for us to stay in. We told him we didn’t know how she came to believe we were going to come stay with her. Joerg and Irene invited us to stay overnight too, but we won’t be staying there either. He said he will tell Madeleine that we won’t be staying there , but he wants Diana to call her, too, just so she really understands we’re not coming. Diana did say that we would see her in conference and asked her to save a seat next to her because Diana wanted to sit by her.

The tender mercy for today is that Suki wanted Diana to find her a black leather book bag for her scriptures, one with a picture of a temple on it. There’s no place here to find one of those so we asked Monica to see if she could find one and send it to us. Monica has worked so hard to find one and finally did, with a temple on it to boot. We appreciate all our children for the things they do for us while we’re here on our mission. Rebecca for putting our journal into book form which is also a lot of work. And Roxsan for keeping our rentals going and managing my financial matters. We also appreciate our children for helping each other and especially for the help they’ve given Roxsan on the rentals and the help they WILL give her in the future. She needs all the help she can get to get the Larkspur house and the Barium Lane house rented for us.

Fasnachts photos of the parade; cute little girl in costum.

FEBRUARY 7, 2010 SUNDAY

Today was not as cold as it has been and most of the snow and ice has melted. It was easier climbing up to the Church, but when we got to the gravel, it still had ice on it so we had to be careful. Even in this little branch there was no time wasted during testimony meeting. Many heartfelt testimonies were borne and Diana and I expressed ours as well. Following Sacrament meeting there was a break where we got to visit a bit and then came Sunday School. We thought today would be priesthood meeting and Relief Society, but it turned out we had Sunday School. We haven’t quite got onto the schedule yet; branches here don’t have a full program. We have Sacrament meeting every Sunday and then alternate Sunday school and Priesthood/RS every other Sunday. President Flammia was the instructor today and he gave a wonderful lesson on Noah and how it relates to us today. Do we have faith to do God’s will, to follow the prophet and our priesthood leaders. Do we have faith to build our own ark in the desert so to speak?

We were sad to see that one of the sisters who was involved in the disagreement last Sunday didn’t come to Church today. But Jasmine Hunziker came, a non-member who is interested in us coming to help her learn English a little better. She needs English for her work. We have an appointment with her Thursday morning and we will find out how we can help her and also how we can teach her the gospel at the same time. She also has three children ages 7, 12 and 16.

Following Sunday school we visited with the members and then Pres. Flammia asked us if we could meet with him in his office. We gave him our missionary progress report earlier and he wanted to go over it then and not wait until later and do it on the phone. We spent the next couple of hours talking about the less-active members and how we could maybe help them back into activity. Pres. Flammia is probably about forty and is such a caring man with wisdom beyond his years. He carries the weight of his little flock on his shoulders and we felt the two hours we spent with him was beneficial not only to help us with missionary work, but also to give him some encouragement and support.

After our meeting with him we went home, got a small bite to eat and then went back out to find Martin Hedinger, a less active member who had a birthday today. Unfortunately he wasn’t home so we left a message on his answer machine. Later on we called again, but he still didn’t answer. We went back home to get ready for Kofi to come get his English lesson. While we were waiting for him, we made three loaves of banana bread. Boy did it smell good. It tasted good, too. Diana didn’t get to have any because she is still true to her promise to Sylvain not to eat sweets or sugar. It was hard for her, but she stayed strong even though Sylvain slipped up yesterday. She wants to be a good example for him.

Kofi came for help with his reading and this time he stayed for just an hour. We could tell he has been working on his own because tonight we saw that he had made progress in his ability to read. Charlotte called while Kofi was here and we talked to her for a minute. She told us that Kyvia Sigrist had come back to Church today, met with the bishop for an hour and a half, and then took Nokolas with her to Charlotte’s for lunch. She said also that Kyvia said she will start to come to Institute on a regular basis. Kyvia is a good girl who just got off track for the last six months, but hopefully she has found her way back.

Tonight we called Christina Kusz and made an appointment with her for Friday. We also called Suwang and it was good to talk to her. We miss our old friends. We got a call from our district leader, Elder Holzapfel, who wanted our teaching statistics for the week. When we first came to the Singen District we expected to have to report our work for the week. When the call didn’t come, we asked him about it. He said he was told he didn’t need to report our statistics. That kind of made us feel like we weren’t really a part of the mission any more. But now it’s all right again and we’re happy.

The tender mercy for today is that we got an email from Cynthia & Kim Humphries inviting us to dinner after stake conference on February 21st. We gratefully accepted and appreciate them for being kind to an old senior missionary couple.

Confetti filled air; one entry in the parade; Diana covered with confetti.

FEBRUARY 6, 2010 SATURDAY

Yesterday I felt like I had a cold coming on and this morning I decided to stay in to see if I could recover. I took some cold/flu stuff similar to Theraflu along with some vitamin C. It seemed to help as the day wore on. We were going to try to visit Paul Hunziker a little after noon, but Madeleine called and Diana ended up talking to her until it was too late to go to see Paul. I called him later on and we made an appointment with him for next Tuesday at 3:30. He isn’t a member, but he comes almost every Sunday to our Church meetings. We’ve heard he doesn’t want to get baptized because he’s afraid his friends won’t come anymore if they find out he’s a member.

Just before 3:00 we got ready and went in to Schaffhausen to watch the Fasnachts parade. This celebration is supposed to drive out the winter so spring can come. We made arrangements to meet the Bolli family there, but there were so many people we didn’t find them. We saw Silvia Gardedieu, but we don’t think she saw us. She was too busy looking the other direction and taking pictures. We took our share of pictures and got just as cold this year as last. The parade was a lot smaller, but it still lasted a little over an hour. Everybody likes to throw confetti, the onlookers as well as the people in the parade. Many of the floats had machines that pumped confetti into the air and all over the onlookers as they went by. By the end, we were really covered. We tried to get it all off and out of our hair, but it was impossible to get rid of it all.

We hopped onto our bus and went all the way in to the shopping center to buy a few things. On the way there the bus wasn’t so crowded, but on the way back they used shoe horns to get everyone in. At each stop maybe one person got out and five or more got in. By the time we got to our stop, we had to force our way out. We bought a bag of plaster of paris for Diana’s sunstones, some bananas and tomatoes. At home we made sure we stayed in one spot as we took our coats and scarves off because we still had confetti on us. When all was said and done, we got the vacuum and vacuumed it all up. And then we got ready for Kofi to come for his English reading lesson.

While we were waiting for Kofi to arrive, Brad & Roxsan skyped us and we also got to visit with all their kids. Soon after Kofi arrived and we spent the next two hours helping him with reading English. We found an English dictionary for him and also gave him a Book of Mormon on cassette and loaned him a tape player to [play them with. This way he can listen to the words as he reads along in his own Book of Mormon. We had two plush toy animals left over from Christmas and we sent these home with him to give to his boys, John and Tito. He left to go home at 9:30.

Today we got a phone call from Franz Maier telling us he and his wife wouldn’t be to Church tomorrow, that they wold be out of town. He talked so fast and didn’t give me a chance to clarify anything so we hope they make plans to come another time. We got a call from Elder Holzapfel letting us know what our district meeting assignments were. My assignment is to choose an opening song; Diana’s is to teach something out of the missionary little white rule book. We got a call from Sylvain this morning and said he is still doing good.

After he went home we wrote this journal, completed our progress report and then checked out some emails. Tomorrow is fast Sunday and we started right after our breakfast. We have a lot of people on our “fasting for” list, here in Schaffhausen, in Schwamendingen and also at home.

My walk this morning (1st two photos); 3rd photo is of the stairs we had to go down to get home today.

FEBRUARY 5, 2010 FRIDAY

This morning I was up by 7:00 and went out to take my walk. We had an appointment with Dorothea Jaermann for lunch so my goal was to find her address so we would know exactly where it was. I didn’t bother to look it up on the computer because I knew it was somewhere up the hill above us. It’s kind of fun just taking off in a direction and seeing what one can find. This time I was lucky and walked right to the street, Spiegelgutstrasse, and found her apartment without any trouble. I walked on past, across the road and into the woods on the other side. They were doing some logging somewhere and the paths we blocked to keep people out. There was a snow covered road, however, above and inside the trees that paralleled the street. I walked along it until it came back out and down the hill and then I had to climb the fence, cross the freeway, climb the other fence to get to where I could walk back toward home. All in all it was a good walk.

We transferred the February birthdays into our planner so that we wouldn’t forget anyone and then looked up the addresses and made sure we wrote down the bus number and bus stop name so we’d know how to get to each one. Diana also tried to call Sylvain to check on him and to report her progress, but he didn’t answer the phone. She left an encouraging message on his answer machine. That done we got ready for our lunch appointment and left to go there.

Dorothea is an older lady who has never been married and lives alone. She greeted us very warmly and, since she had everything ready, invited us to sit at the table. First, she served us a green salad followed by a dish of tuna fish balls (looked like meatballs only made with tuna fish) that were surprisingly delicious, a side dish made with ground popcorn (also very good) and some different colored sauteed sweet peppers. Everyone knows Diana is trying to not eat any sweets or sugar and they are very careful to not use it in their cooking. For dessert she offered us fresh fruit; grapes, pears, bananas and apples. During our discussion we found out she is blind in one eye and has the possibility to lose vision in the other eye as well. She bumped her glass of water over which didn’t disturb her too much. She said she often does that because of her blind eye. She says she has MS and a few years ago she had some kind of a stroke that has affected some parts of her brain, such as the part where mathematics is learned. She takes these things in stride and is a very happy and faithful person. She laughed often and when she did, she kind of made an endearing snorting sound along with it. The unhappy part of this visit was that she told us about some problems between some members in the ward. She felt we ought to know, not to gossip, but to enlist our help in trying to resolve some of the conflict. It’s hard to understand why in such a small branch there has to be conflict. We’ll just love them all and hope we can be of help in some way. It was amazing how four hours just slipped away.

As we got ready to go I noticed my wallet wasn’t in my back pocket. Now what were we supposed to do? Our bus passes are in the wallet and, if we rode the bus and we caught without our passes, we’d each get an $80 fine. We hoped I’d just left it home because we had other stuff in there as well including a debit card and money. Since it was all downhill to our apartment, Diana decided we’d try to walk home, in the rain of course, relying on me to know the way. I got a little confused in a place or two, but in the end without too much trouble, we made it back home okay. And yes, my wallet was sitting on the desk, right where I had left it.

It was raining and it was too late in the evening anyway to try and do other visits so we read, looked at emails and then did some research on the internet to find some learning English reading websites for our meeting with Kofi tomorrow at 5:30. Sylvian returned Diana’s called tonight and reported that he was still stone cold sober. That was good news. Diana has also kept her part of the bargain in not eating any sugar or goodies. It hasn’t helped her lose any weight, however.

A tender mercy is that my wallet was sitting home and not lost on the bus. Another is that we weren’t checked for our pass. Another is that Sylvain is still sober and seems happy.