These are photos we've posted before, but we wanted to put something cheery on today. these were taken at Minau Gardens near Konstanz earlier this spring and the lake ids Boden Lake.

NOVEMBER 15, 2009 SUNDAY

Our correlation meeting started late as usual because Brother Daehler came late again. We just got started when the other members of the council arrived, including Pres. & Sister Matern. We have three progress reports to go through, the AP’s, the ZL’s and ours, and ours always comes last. When the meeting starts late, since we come at the end, often we get short schrift and don’t have time to discuss the people we are working with. Today was especially bad; we only had three minutes to go over our list. About all we were able to say was that Tony Dkere, a less-active we’ve been working with, promised to come to Church today, and the Elder’s Quorum should be on the look-out for him to greet him and show him where to go. Pres. Matern was not happy with the way things went and told us missionaries to combine our reports so there’s just one, and to make sure we list them from the most important to the least important. If we run out of time, only the least important will be omitted from the discussions. And therein lies the problem. The Lord loves all of his children, and how do we determine who is the least important? But there was another change made today that gives us hope. Marcel Daehler was released as our Ward Mission Leader and Bodo Rueckauer was called and sustained. He is the son of Pres. Rueckhauer (counselor in the Stake Presidency) and a recently returned missionary who still has the fire in his heart. We’ll see how things go.

After the meeting Diana went to Relief Society and I to the Priesthood meeting. I kept an eye out for Tony, but he didn’t come by the start of the meeting. I tried to call him, but he didn’t answer his phone. When we broke for our quorum instruction, I went to our HP group meeting. I was still thinking of Tony and felt I needed to go out to the foyer again to check and see if he had come. Elders Nilsson & Irick were there and told me Tony had come and was now in the Elders Quorum. What a relief. He has broken so many promises, but we’re glad he kept this one.

The HPs were late getting out of class and Tony was already sitting by Diana when I got to the chapel for Sunday School. He stayed for Sunday School, but then he had to leave. We were just about to ask him if we could come visit him this week, when he asked us if we could come visit him. Of course we could! The evening he wanted us to come was Wednesday which is our turn to go to the temple, so we’ll have to hustle to get there at 6:00 on time. There is also a Relief Society activity that night at 7:00 that Diana should go to.

Sacrament Meeting was extra special because Eric Hanson, our high councilor, and our stake patriarch, Elder Robert Koch, spoke to us. Both are excellent speakers who bring the Spirit into the meeting and we (all the missionaries) had a lot of investigators and some less-active members there. Some of the ones we know are: Gabrielle Rodriguez, Cornelia Schaer, Agnes Mwuangi, Madeline Schwitter, Hildegunde Schroeder, and Christiana Sigrist. We just wished that Tony could have stayed, too.

We knew the missionaries were coming over after the meetings because they asked us if they could and bring Agnes with them. There were so many people we wanted to talk to after that it was hard to get away. We always try to visit with our little friends, Nikolas especially, but also Loic & Jasmine Viegas-Hawes and others. A new family, the Parkins, from the States moved in and we got acquainted. We met Anthony Mascaro’s parent who are going to begin serving a mission in the Family History in Italy soon. We also found out that his wife, Rachel, had their baby girl last Thursday. I forgot that we were supposed to bring Sister Bader a Book of Mormon she asked for last week, but fortunately Diana reminded me in time to get one from Elder Dockstader before she asked me for it. After the meeting we took it to her and she had totally forgotten about it, and thanked us for remembering. That was a close one. Thank you, Diana. We also gave Brigitte a small flashlight because we found out her’s was broken when we visited her the other day.

We finally broke free and hurried home to see what we could cook up in a flash. The missionaries said they only had about 45 minutes to come, eat and leave, so we had to be quick. Diana is an excellent soup maker and so that is what we did. She got it going and I cut up the already cooked potatoes into chunks to put in and fried some hamburger we already had thawed in the fridge to add to the soup, too. It ended up that Agnes wasn’t able to come, but the four missionaries enjoyed the meal.

We had a couple of hours before the CES Fireside began at 5:00 so I read a little bit and took a short cat nap while Diana read emails and the blogs from our friends, the Doyles and Kroffs. I woke up in time to get ready and we went to the fireside and we were glad we did because Pres. Uchtdorf was the speaker. Of course his talk was focused on the Young Single Adults and he gave them great instruction on how to approach life, and especially some good counsel on how to find a mate and have a happy marriage. The counsel was really appropriate for our YSAs because we have at least a half dozen who are in their late twenties and seem to have no prospects or interest in getting married until they are finished with their education and well settled in a profession. After the fireside they had what they call a “spaghetti plausch,” which is a buffet of several kinds of toppings to put on their spaghetti.

While in the meeting, we got a cell phone call from Charlotte who wanted to know what we had decided to do for our P-day tomorrow. I had forgotten to turn the silent function on and couldn’t get the phone out of my suit pocket, so I had to run out of the chapel to answer it. Embarrassing! After telling her we hadn’t decided yet and telling her we’d call her later, I went back into the meeting.

The home evening tomorrow is going to be in our apartment and our assignments are to provide the refreshments, both the before and after, and organize the game. Diana promised Neide brownies, if she would come, and so she was making those in the kitchen. I was just starting to write our journal when someone rang our doorbell. Instead of calling, Charlotte came over to discuss our P-day plans for tomorrow. The day doesn’t look too promising because we’ve been in a cold, rainy period for a few weeks now and it doesn’t look like it will clear up tomorrow. We decided we’d go to the north side of Zurich to Uetliberg, climb the overlook tower to see what we can see of Zurich and then take the two hour walk along the ridge and then come back home. Diana plans on staying in bed all day to see if she can shake the cough that has plagued her for the last few weeks. Diana offered to let her use our computer to catch up on her emails because she hasn’t been able to get hers fixed yet. We reserved tickets to go see “The One Good Man” being shown in a theater in Kloten on December 14. The Church reserved the whole theater for any members who want to pay the $10.00 admission. It’s in English with German subtitles and it’s been approved by Pres. Matern for missionaries to go, if they take either an investigator or a less-active member with them. We’ll try to take Tony Dkere with us. Charlotte wanted to go, too, so we reserved her a seat. So that is how our evening went and now it is 11:00. Time flies when we’re having fun.

We feel it was a tender mercy that Tony attended Priesthood and Sunday School meetings today and that he asked us to visit him rather than visa versa.

Ramp and then stairs going down to our tram stop. We go up and down these many times in a day. Norma and Diana after the dancing.

NOVEMBER 14, 2009 SATURDAY

I got up first this morning and showered, shaved and got ready for the day. Since the missionaries and the two girls finished off our banana bread and poppy seed cake, we wanted to make some more just to have on hand. It’s convenient to have something to serve someone on the spur of the moment, if someone drops in. We didn’t have enough eggs and bananas to make a couple of loaves and we needed milk and bread to tide us over until Monday, so while Diana showered and did her hair, I walked into Schwamendingen to buy the things we needed. When I got back, we read our chapters in Third Nephi looking up the German words we didn’t quite understand. After we were through with our reading, we made some phone calls to some of our less-actives. We were thrilled when Tony Dkere answered his phone. We told him we missed him and had tried to call him, but his phone always sounded as if were busy. He said his phone was broken and he’d just got it fixed yesterday. We invited him to Church tomorrow and he said he would come. We’ve heard promises before, but we pray for him that the Spirit won’t let him rest until he’s active again. We also left Charles Aboussou a voice mail inviting him to Church, too. We tried to call Liz Bouso again, but she didn’t answer. We also called Cornelia, but she was busy and couldn’t talk. She said she’d see us tomorrow.

Yesterday we made an appointment with Suwang to visit her today at 2:30. We climbed on our tram #7 at 1:30 expecting we would arrive at her apartment by 2:30. If something interferes with the trams, a voice over a loudspeaker explains the problem and delay, and sometimes gives a detour routes one can use to get to where he want to go. Evidently, there was a demonstration of some sort in downtown Zurich and our tram was detoured. The announcer almost always speaks fast and in Swiss German, so it’s hard to understand what they say. We stayed on the tram expecting it to just detour around the problem and then get back on it’s own route. It never did and we ended up some other place. We had no idea how to get to Suwangs so we stayed on the tram when it turned around and went back the other way. We got off on Paradaplatz hoping another tram #7 would get through the problem which we could get on and ride to Suwangs. We thought that maybe it was the tram driver who made the error and never got on the right track after detouring around the problem. We waited and waited, but no tram. We decided the problem wasn’t going to be a quick fix so we got on the next tram #7 and started back towards home. So sooner did we get underway when a tram #7 passed us going towards Suwangs By this time it was too late to get to Suwangs and still get to our 7:00 appointment tonight. We called Suwang and apologized that we wouldn’t be coming today, but we’d call her tomorrow to see how she was doing. We still have our lunch appointment with her next Tuesday.

We stopped in Schwamendingen and, because we had a little time, we went to Denners and bought a few more groceries. We also went to a vegetable stand and bought a 20# bag of spuds. We used up the last twenty pounds in about a month. It wears us out carrying all of this stuff back home. When we got home, we wrote our “Progress Report” for our correlation meeting in the morning before we left for the dance recital.

While we were on the tram, Elder Nilsson called to ask if we were home and could they come over to burn a copy of Elder Holland’s last talk, the one where he bore testimony of the Book of Mormon. We had to disappointment them this time. They also called us later in the evening wanting to borrow the picture of the temple that hangs on our wall at home. This time we were in Oerlikon and had to disappoint them again.

Norma Bachmann and Anita Weiss, members in our ward, belong to a dance club and tonight they were going to perform, kind of like a recital for kids learning the piano or an instrument. They were excited that we would come and support them, and we were excited to do it. We were committed or it would have been easy to not go out in the cold, dark and rainy evening. We didn’t have too much trouble finding the place, but when we finally got to the right floor and dance hall, it was absolutely crowded, with little or no standing room either. We met Witney Weibel in the foyer and we went up together. We were lucky and got in a back door that someone opened, so we at least got in. We had to stand the whole time and were on the side, a little in back with people in front of us, but at least we could hear the music and see a little bit. As time went on, people left and came and by the time Norma and Anita performed, we could see okay. We were able to take some videos of them dancing and hopefully they’ll load on our blog. We also saw Felix Locher there, but he was an observer and not a dancer.

We watched a few more dances after Norma and Anita were finished and then we decided to leave. As luck would have it we ran into Norma on the way out and were able to congratulate her on her performance. Then we went back out into the rain and made our way home. We forgot to mention that as we got on the tram going over to the dance, a young woman was going to stand up to let Diana sit down. That’s unusual here in Switzerland; almost no one stands up to give old ladies or old men their seat. We were only going one stop so we thanked her, but declined. As a reward, we gave her a Book of Mormon pass-along card.

The tender mercy for today is that it seems everything worked out wonderfully for Roxsan and Brad to get the house they put an offer in yesterday. The offer of $216,000 was accepted and they have a closing date of December 14, if all goes as planned for the closing of our 1031 exchange. The house is located in Sandy on a third of an acre, has a detached double garage, extra RV parking and is over 4000 square feet.

Here we are standing at a bus stop to go home after lunch today. This is what they typically look like out away from the city center.

NOVEMBER 13, 2009 FRIDAY

No trouble here on Friday the 13th! Our day went along as normal. Sister Helena Roffler invited us to lunch today with her, Heinz & Lily Locher and Silvana Gianatti. Missionaries are expected to give a spiritual thought on such occasions and so this morning we prepared a lesson for Silvana to give her after the lunch. The last time we met with Silvana at her home we taught her the Plan of Salvation, but never got finished. We felt we needed to start from the beginning again and re-emphasize that we were taught the Plan by our heavenly parents and EVERYONE that is born onto this earth said “yes” to His Plan. We accepted Christ as our Savior and we shouted for joy that we would have the opportunity to come to earth and have this experience. Those that said “no” and followed Satan were thrust out of heaven and won’t have the opportunity to receive a body. We just need to help them recognize and feel the spirit and that connection with Heavenly Father. We also wrapped the poppy seed cake in tin foil we made for Sister Roffler and got it ready to take with us. We left our apartment at 11:30 so we could arrive there at noon.

We were the first to arrive and when we did, we realized we didn’t have the loaf of poppy seed cake anymore. Holy Cow! We left it in a bag sitting on the tram seat; how could we have done that? We told Sister Roffler our sad story and apologized, but told her we would make her another sometime. Shortly after Sister Locher and Sister Gianatti arrived. Soon after Brother Locher arrived. He spent the morning assisting a kindergarten class on an excursion into the woods to renovate bird nest boxes and get them ready for the birds to use next spring. He personally made 30 new boxes that they set out and they renovated another 200. The lunch was especially good consisting of salad, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, gravy, peas and carrots, and string beans. Dessert was chocolate chip cupcakes and fresh pineapple slices. Before lunch was served we noticed a fig tree outside her picture windows that still had figs on it in various stages of ripeness. She said that none of them were any good because when the cold sets in, the ripening process stops. I went out an picked a few anyway and tried them. They weren’t as sweet as they could have been, but they were still good enough that I enjoyed them.

After the meal we launched into the lesson and Silvana surprised us with an answer to our first question. We asked her what name we use when we talk to God? She answered, Heavenly Father, but said he is the same as Jehovah, right?” It took us a little while to help her understand that Jehovah was the Son of Heavenly Father and the same person as Jesus Christ. From there we went on with the lesson until she had to go to a doctor appointment. Our purpose today was to help her understand that she was taught the Plan of Salvation in the pre-earth life, voluntarily came to earth, that God calls prophets and apostles to lead and guide us, that he has given us the Light of Christ to help us know right from wrong, that since she is baptized, she has the Gift of the Holy Ghost, that the Church is organized and we can partake of the Sacrament every Sunday and so on and so forth. We wanted her to understand that all these things are there to help her, along with the scriptures and the blessing of communicating with Heavenly Father through prayer. But we emphasized she has to do her part. She needs to have the desire to know the truth, study, ponder and pray. But there is still more she has to do and we emphasized this as well. She must live what she knows and she must exercise her faith and be willing to act on the answers and feelings she receives from Heavenly Father through the Holy Spirit. That means she must actually read the Book of Mormon, attend Church and live better as truth and light are revealed to her. If she does this, the confusion and doubt will disappear and will be replaced by a burning testimony of Christ and His gospel. We’re not sure she got it all, but the Lord is patient with all of us and we’ll be patient with her.

When we got back to our apartment, we made some phone calls hoping to catch someone home, but didn’t. Later on in the afternoon I took my cleaning to the big super COOP store in Oerlikon that has a cleaners in it while Diana stayed busy at home. Keeping a suit clean while wearing it everyday is a little bit of a trick, but I was pretty successful for a long time. When I got back, we started writing our journal when we were interrupted by Elder Nilsson & Irick who came to pick up the DVD they burned on our computer yesterday. They didn’t stay long, but said they would be back after their meeting if the invitation for hot chocolate was still good. We said it was. About an hour and a half later they came back with Agnes and a recently returned sister missionary who helped them team teach Agnes. We fixed them hot chocolate and gave them poppy seed cake and banana bread as well. The missionaries have been working with Agnes a long time and we’re hoping that she will decide to get baptized soon. She says she knows the Church is true, but just wants to be sure that she can live the gospel before she commits.

About 9:30 Suwang called to invite us to lunch next Tuesday, but also told Diana of a problem she was having with one of her neighbors in her apartment building. Suwang said she is trying to be friendly with all her neighbors and one male neighbor took it as a come on and won’t leave her alone. So Diana said we’d come visit her tomorrow to try and help her figure things out.


We can only hope that one of the tender mercies today was that the Lord had us leave the poppy seed cake on the tram to be picked up by someone who needed it more than Sister Roffler did.

We also looked at our emails late last night and saw one from Roxsan asking for advice on buying a home she’s been looking at. Now that our rental property looks like it will close within a week or so, she’s more serious about making an offer. We were just getting ready to go to Sister Rofflers when Roxsan skyped us. For some reason she woke up at 3:00 am her time and caught us before we left. We were able to discuss some important things that were time sensitive regarding the offer on the house and answered some other questions about pecan rolls and making fondant.

District meeting attendees: Elder Nilsson, Irick, Dockstader, Middleton, Vincent, Knight, Sisters Miron, Robinson, Wellborn, Larson and E. Larson; cute yard decorations by the Daehler family.

NOVEMBER 12, 2009 THURSDAY

Last Tuesday we got a call from Elder Harris requesting we send an email to his mother concerning his failed attempt on Monday to register at the U of U for the spring quarter. He’d forgotten his student ID#. He wanted his mother to try from her end to get his ID# and find out what he had to do to register. We got an email yesterday from his mother with the information and then forgot to forward it on to him. It was while we were enroute to Sister Frioud when Diana asked me if I had remembered to call Elder Harris. I called our apartment and Elders Nilsson & Irick were still there so I had them locate the email and call Elder Harris with the information. All this information is to explain that we got a call from Elder Harris late last night asking if he could come and use our computer to finish what he had to do with the U of U. They arrived at 8:30; he did his computer work while his companion did his personal study. When he was finished, they stayed and did their companion study until time to catch their train back to Winterthur. While they did that, Diana dipped the caramel wrapped pretzels in chocolate while I put the finishing touches on my part of our district meeting assignment. Right after they left we left also to go to our meeting.

Our district meeting had a few different faces today because the AP’s were on a split and because Sister Price went home, three sisters are currently together in Luzern. Sister Wellborn was in our district last spring and now she is with Sisters Robinson & Miron. Elder Middleton was here in place of Elder Richeson. Our regulars, Elders Nillson, Irick, Vincent and Knight, were also present. The pretzels were a hit with everyone as we knew they would be. We had some good training and the two hours went by all too fast. Sister Bea Rothmund was at the Church cleaning, as usual, and Edi Fuhrer was there also and we gave them some pretzels, too. It’s something they’ve never seen before.

After the meeting we came home and shortly after we were invaded by Elders Nilsson & Irick. They have a meeting with an excommunicated member who they tracted out some weeks ago. They wanted to find a conference talk and download it onto a DVD to help them with their lesson and to assist her in quitting smoking. It took them quite awhile to find the talk they were looking for and then they started the download and left, planning to come back later, or tomorrow, to pick up the disc. While they were doing that, Diana encouraged them to try contacting Liz Bouso and others we feel they would have a good impact on. I spent my time mostly in the kitchen making poppy seed bread for our visit to Helena Rofflers tomorrow. I also tried to find a good spiritual thought for our visit to Brigitte Roffler this evening.

We all had a prayer together and the Elders went their way and we traveled out into the county to Freienstein to visit Brigitte. It was getting to twilight when we got there and the skies were heavy with clouds and misting a bit. We didn’t have trouble this time in finding the group home which is located down in a hollow behind some businesses. We rang the doorbell and the Director came and then went to get Brigitte for us. Brigitte came and escorted us to her room after which we had a good visit. Tomorrow is her birthday, but she wanted us to come today because she’s working all that day. We gave her a fleece comforter that she really liked as well a couple of candles (which she isn’t allowed to burn in her apartment, but will take to her mothers next time she goes). The last time we visited her some months ago she was depressed and seemed to have a lot of problems coping with her situation. This time she was quite the opposite. She was bright, she was happy and she had hope for the future. She talked about maybe getting an eye operation to help with her one bad eye; she has a part time job she is happy with, and she really likes her group leader. Her right eye doesn’t track with her good left eye and she has only 30% vision and mostly just sees light. She said the operation would help coordinate the eyes as well as hopefully improve the vision somewhat. She still has the goal of maybe someday not having to live in a group home and being able to have her own apartment and live a normal life. We used the same spiritual thought Roxsan sent us about not letting our problems keep us from recognizing the many blessings we receive from the Lord. We followed that with a prayer and then left to walk back to our bus stop and travel home in the dark. When we are out after dark, we are blessed with good connections between trams and buses. We step off of one and the other is ready and waiting for us to get on again.

The tender mercy for today is an experience Brigitte told us about a dream she had in which her group leader came to Church with her and she hoped the members would come greet her. But, rather than the members coming to greet her, the group leader went and greeted the members. Brigitte has such a good relationship with her group leader that she felt she could tell her about the dream, which she did. The group leader responded back to Brigitte saying, “then I’d better come to Church with you.” Brigitte invited her to the ward Christmas party on December 19. We’re excited to see if that happens.

E. Nilsson, Urs Wichtermann; E. Baird, Charlotte (dueling cameras w/Diana), E. Irick; Elders Irick, Richeson & Dockstader. We're all at the airport for Fabian's send off.

NOVEMBER 11, 2009 WEDNESDAY

Another week has slipped by and we note the passing time by how often our wash day comes around. We tried to get it done before we had to leave, but didn’t quite make it. The first (white) batch had to be done because my shirts were in it and I had my vest in the second one. I needed it because it was cold outside today. The towels we saved to dry later. In between batches we read our scriptures and did a little work on our assignment for tomorrow.

We had three people to visit for their birthdays today and each of them lived in a different direction. We knew it was going to take most of the day because, in addition to the trams, buses and trains, each one required a good amount of walking. The first one was Rafael Ryser, a 10 year old who lives in Opfikon out by the airport. Diana and I had a discussion about who we should visit first and we followed her inspired suggestion to go to Rafael’s. It’s a good thing we did because he and his mother were just leaving to celebrate his birthday somewhere else. If we hadn’t of come just then, we would have missed them completely. Rafael was happy to get a present from us, but was more excited to be on his way to his big party.

We went back home to pick up the other presents and, just as we were about to leave, we got a call from Elder Nilsson asking if they could come and finish their report on our computer for their meeting tonight. We waited long enough for them to arrive and give them a key, and then we were on our way to visit Cynthia Frioud. She lives out in Ebmattingen so went to Stettbach by tram, transferred to bus #743 and went to Maur, transferred to another bus, #747 and went to Ebmattingen. We had a nice visit and got to play with little Aline who is four months old now.

We retraced our steps back to Stettbach where we changed to a train and traveled to Schwerzenbach. We hurried from the train to the bus stop and got on #826 and rode it to the end of the line in Volketswil. We hiked uphill to the Mascaro’s home and were delighted to find them all home. We were wondering if Rachel had gone to the hospital yet to give birth, but she hadn’t. She is due Friday and so it could happen any time. Here in Switzerland the doctors won’t induce labor unless it’s an emergency, unlike in the USA where it is quite common. It was Anthony’s birthday and we congratulated him. Tony is in the Elders Quorum presidency and last Sunday, Pres. Patane’ mentioned he’d like to get together with us to discuss the less-active members in the ward. Tony had his list so we spent some time talking about the ones he didn’t already know. Tony offered to drive us home when it came time to leave, but we didn’t want to take him away from his wife just to drive us home. On the way home all of our connections were perfect; we didn’t have to wait in the cold at all.

We arrived home about 7:45, Diana had left over spaghetti for dinner while I had melted cheese, tomato and ham on a flour tortilla. Both were pretty tasty. Just as we were about to settle in for the night and write our journal, our doorbell rang. Elder Dockstader came up our stairs and Elder Middleton was right behind him. We are especially fond of Elder Middleton because he was Elder Pine’s companion when we first arrived in Switzerland. He got here just ahead of us and was still a little bit lost, but was the hardest studying Elder we’ve seen. He is now one of the Zone Leaders in the Bern District. It was good to see him again and to renew our friendship. After they left, Elder Knight called to make his mid-week “are you alive and can I do anything for you” call.

It’s impossible to list all the tender mercies, but here are the highlights. First, we caught Rafael just as they were leaving for his birthday party. Second, our connections from when we left sister Fiounds couldn’t of been more perfect. We arrived at the first stop just as the bus got there and it was the same the rest of the way until we got home. Third, we had a nice visit with Elders Middleton and Dockstader.