Our little garden is coming along. Next week we’ll report on whether the spring onions we planted are already dead. This week we also planted fennel and zucchini and squash and tomato. Our neighbors’ garden plots really look good–we are going to be the ghetto of the garden.

Elisa sang in church today. It sounded really good. She sang in English. All of the ward could understand because the song was “I Stand All Amazed.” She’s indispensable in the Primary too. Teaching lessons in German is going to cause a lot of anxiety though. I tried to bear my testimony today in Primary. We’re learning the song, “Im Glaube Ich Folge Ihm,” (“I’ll Follow Him in Faith”). I was able to say one or two sentences about the message in the song. I still have a long way to go. Next week is our stake conference, so she’ll get a short break. And I got to use my Portuguese today at church. A Brazilian sister got food poisoning and wanted a blessing. She doesn’t speak German, or much English. BTW, one of the weirdest sensations today was when I was talking to Telma (the Brazilian) in Portuguese, and 2 feet away an American was talking to Elisa in German, and my brain just about shut down trying to take in both conversations. I thought I was going to start seeing spots.

Since I’ve been struggling with Primary, I joined a Yahoo! group for Primary Choristers. One of the things that is hard is that Elisa likes to share her testimony, and she doesn’t know all those words in German. Also, she was asked whether she would lead the children in a song that a leader had found off a CD. It made Elisa kind of uncomfortable because it wasn’t church music. So she took the CD home to listen to it. Then she was really uncomfortable because it sounded like rock music. 🙂 So she was torn between doing rock music in the Sacrament program or else turning down the Primary presidency’s request. The Yahoo group asked me to write a little bit to introduce myself. I explained my situation and the challenges I’m having and asked for some counsel. The next day, I had seven long responses full of ideas. And each one of them were so encouraging and many of them said that they’d be praying for me. It meant a lot to know that people who don’t even know me want me to be successful, and are asking Heavenly Father to help me be so.

We went to Bern yesterday. Tony and Rachel went to a temple session while we watched their kids. We all played on the rope swing and the slides at a playground nearby. There wasn’t time for us to do a session also, but we didn’t care because it had been a fun day for us anyway. (The last temple session is at noon on Saturday. Bern is two hours away, so you kind of have to plan ahead.) We planned to wake up early so we could both get a session in while we took turns watching the kids. But around midnight, Emeri (1 yrs old) woke up very sick. So we didn’t know if we’d go at all.

This week has been a roller coaster for me. I feel like I am being pulled in too many directions. But over all we are doing really well. I am sure you’ll get sick of hearing this–but we are just so happy to be here in Switzerland. Things are challenging in so many ways. But they are good ways. It is absolutely gorgeous right now.

German is still going well. I leave everyday with my brain stretched a little more. Elisa is a really good teacher for our friends and me. I should probably get more done during the day but after German I am pretty exhausted.

On Saturday we went with Tony and Rachel to a ridge called Uetliberg. It’s so close that it’s practically in town. One of the best parts was this great play area at the top. There was one of those miniature swing rides and a very unique slide of some sort. Some very big kids in our group were playing on them. We had a blast!

• Photos from this week
  

I did singing time for the second time in Primary. I am trying so hard to make it fun and still teach the gospel. It is such a challenge when you can’t put more than 4 words together in the language everyone speaks. It makes me really eager to keep working hard on learning German. It’s kind of cool to see Elisa learning the language to teach the gospel.

Elisa has had a busy week. (I haven’t done anything at all). Elisa just had her first Sunday as the primary chorister in the ward–speaking German. She’s doing really good because all the other leaders are glad to have her in there. Her second German class just started. It makes me tired just thinking about all the studying she does.

Our new place feels like home. It doesn’t smell raunchy like it did just before we left on our honeymoon. I guess it was cleaning up the meat-soaked wood under the sink that did the trick. That’s so gross. It’s 80 degrees here and we’re eating on our patio. The fields next to our house are blossoming with some yellow flowers. Anyone that thinks that sounds good is welcome to visit. We just walked downtown and saw a 40-foot tall pyre with a snowman on top. It’s going to be burned tonight for the Sechseläuten festival, to welcome Spring.  Everyone is walking around with big beautiful bunches of flowers.