Elisa was woken up at 5 am today by contractions. She’s been having them almost all day, anywhere from 5 to 40 minutes apart. We’ve been going on walks to stay busy and keep her body relaxed. We’re hoping that real labor starts real soon now. Elisa added, “Ouuuch!” 😥

Everybody that saw us this week gave us wide-eyed looks and asked why the baby isn’t here yet. Sorry, folks, we aren’t in control of that. Elisa promises not to pop in front of you if you promise not to stare. BTW, updated pictures of the maternal gut are online. (I hope that’s not irreverent to her sacred gift of life).

We tried to stay active. We had my new manager Pal’s family over for raclette. On Friday we went out with Alvin and Dani. Elisa went on a lot of walks this week. Everyone who called while I was out got all suspicious.

Today marks our 4th Annual Cereal Party. This year’s theme was mixology. We didn’t invite a lot of people over because we didn’t know if labor would interfere.

Tara and Sophie are scheduled to arrive here in Zürich this Saturday. But there’s bad news. The stress levels around the Church household are running too high right now. Mom’s got the shingles! 😡 Poor thing was told by the doctor right before she left that she should stay away from pregnant women and infants. What the jimmy? We are still hoping that by Saturday Tara won’t be contagious anymore. Otherwise we don’t know exactly what the backup plan will be.

Maybe it’s the pregnancy hormones talking—but it is true anyway—I am just so happy to be with someone that I think the world of. Chad gave an amazingly good lesson today in church, in GERMAN! He is doing so fantastic. I have so much fun seeing him and knowing he is mine and I am his. I am super proud of who I married and feel so lucky and blessed to get to share everything with him. Plus he’s dang sexy.

First of all, Elisa and I did a stint of babysitting yesterday for the Jacksons. We ended up running around a lot! Their kids are so well behaved that it is hard to say no to them about anything. Chad did most of the work since I couldn’t run up and down the hill by their house. It was so fun seeing how good of a dad Chad already is. He’s very inventive. Both kids thought they were afraid of bugs, but I convinced them otherwise.

Elisa created an amusement-park looking toy for the primary kids. It’s a real attention-getter. The kids have to punch through holes in a board and find the song hidden behind the hole. Chad and I were wondering if the onomatopoeia words were the same in German. As soon as the kids saw the poster their eyes lit up and they knew exactly what was going on! It was awesome.

We had a family visiting from Brazil at church. I tried to translate into Portuguese for them, which is funny because I only understand 20% of the German lesson. (It will just make them appreciate their home ward more). At the end of the lesson, the teacher, Jessica, was looking at me for help calling on someone to say the prayer. But my head was all full of Portuguese, so I couldn’t help her. Then she asked me to say the prayer. I couldn’t remember the first word I knew in German. I walked all the way to the front of the room, hoping that I would remember how to say “Heavenly Father” by the time I got there. I guess it was a really confusing prayer. Elisa told me afterwards some of the things I said, and I was switching languages in the middle of words–German to Portuguese! “Nós… Wir… grat… danken… que… hab-emos… dass… hab-emos….” I was trying so hard not to laugh out loud. He was such a good sport and so brave to try it in German when his mind was so messed up in the first place. It was a great ice-breaker for me.

Right after that came Elisa’s initiation into the ward, with a German talk in sacrament meeting. She has been preparing so well all week. She wrote it in English, then translated it, then had Dani correct it. Last night she read the German to me, and it took 30 minutes to read in German. I was assigned 8 minutes. The English only takes that long. 🙁 So she had to do some last-minute edits. That’s German. Today she was all ready. She sounded very German. I was very nervous but I felt like it went really well. I heard lots of ward members commenting on it. They also liked the stories about us meeting.