Week of 18 April 2010:

Warning: a boa is digesting his dinner (from chapter 1, "Le Petit Prince")



Beautiful frilly pink tulips at the Yverdon chapel, and the pansies aren't bad either






A volcano wasn't in their plans. We had planned to go to Yverdon, but with the need to talk with Sister Jones about leading Friday’s service project and to coordinate getting the materials from Sister Newman, both of whom we hoped would attend the Geneva ward, we decided to go there instead. The eruption of a volcano in Iceland (whose name was too long to pronounce) had put a cloud of dust and ash over Europe such that airline flights to or from the US have been grounded for three days already – so several of the people in church were parents who had come for the blessing or baptism of a grandchild. Rive Gauche Ward also had its monthly birthday celebration for those lucky ones whose birthdays were from mid-March to mid-April. That evening, we drove out to the Newman’s to pick up the materials for the Friday service project in Yverdon.

Even small miracles are important: Monday at District meeting, we watched part of a DVD entitled “On the Lord’s Errand,” about the life of President Thomas S. Monson. It was very touching, and we felt strongly an additional spiritual witness of the reality of his prophetic calling. We hope to be able to hear and respond to the influence and promptings of the Holy Ghost in our own lives, especially as opportunities to serve or to help another person arise. We also learned that not only were significant materials lacking for the service project, but also that Sister Jones did not have them at their apartment. Dede was impressed to call Sister Newman again and ask her to search once more for the missing items. When she did, the materials turned up in a bag beneath other things that were to be donated. Her finding the things saved us at least a full day of searching, buying replacement materials, and then cutting fabric – and we really just didn’t have an extra day to use in that way.













Except for the one in the woods, the cows are lined up for inspection; the cows' "inspector general" is a heron

Elder Jones told me something interesting (while he was preparing a lesson for the young adults): President Joseph Fielding Smith had served his mission in Great Britain, but although he had distributed more than 10,000 brochures and many copies of the Book of Mormon, he had not had ANY baptisms. President Monson had not even had the opportunity to serve a mission because of World War II. It seems we sometimes only count success in terms of tangible outcomes, such as converts baptized, forgetting that true conversion comes by the Holy Ghost, not by the persuasive powers of a missionary. It is NOT our work that convinces; it is the Lord who speaks to the heart of a listener.




Monday turned out to be "Let's wear purple" day, even without a memo

Tuesday evening in Yverdon, we watched a DVD Heidi had sent us regarding North American archeological evidences of the Book of Mormon. The types of fortifications attributed to the Hopewell Indians, who were finally exterminated shortly after 400 AD in the area of Southern Ohio, were quite interesting: for example, in some places, 30-foot high mounds of earth had been used to enclose hilltop “places of refuge” with highly constricted single places of entry so that an attacking army would repeatedly have to pass thru narrow passages between earthen walls (perhaps topped with timbers and sharpened pickets) from which positions the defenders could hurl rocks and shoot arrows at their attackers.

The dinner Dede prepared for the young adult home evening Thursday in Yverdon was chicken-broccoli casserole, salad, and a lemon cake over a base of crushed raspberry. We met a young lady named Katiana, who had been baptized in Haiti this past December and who had just come to Switzerland in March, following the devastating earthquake in her city in January. She had found the church in Yverdon and had even come the prior week to Institute class.

Birthday missionaries receive snicker doodle cookies and a new toothbrush
Friday morning we were up at 6 am (after getting home after 11 pm Thursday) to go back to Yverdon for a missionary zone conference with President and Sister Murdock. Among other things, President Murdock challenged the missionaries to devote 4 hours per day to finding new investigators, and to plan in advance how to accomplish that goal (a goal without a plan is worthless). He told them: You will not lose self-esteem if you don’t achieve your goal, provided you’ve done all that you can. It’s when you know you could have done more but didn’t that you lose self-esteem and begin to fabricate excuses. After the conference, we drove the 95 km down to Geneva to pick up Sister Jones and bring her back to Yverdon for the young adult council meeting, institute class, and the service project which she had graciously agreed to lead. The institute class was taught by Stake President and Sister Maerki. There were 25 young single adults in attendance plus two young married couples and four missionaries. After a lively group discussion about friendship, the Maerki’s moved the conversation to progressing from friendship to courtship. They even shared personal stories and read from their personal journals regarding that day when they told each other “I really like you.” I wish I had better been able to understand the French, because it felt as though the counsel and encouragement they gave our young adults was tremendously important and inspired. The class went until 9:30 pm, but no one lost interest. Then we shifted to the room across the hall to build dolls, under Sister Jones and Dede’s tutelage. The project went until a bit past 11 pm, and most of the dolls still were not completed. Pizza kept everyone going, and the kids cheerfully pitched in to clean up afterwards. We got home shortly after 1 am.

Sisters Hinman & Jones, & Geraldine,
dollmakers extraordinaire





The guys help make dolls for the children, too










Saturday was a day of recovery, after which we did some “shopping.” The lining of my wool suit (now 15 or so years old) was totally shredded; the black suit had two iron-on patches where my wallet had worn thru the fabric and where the seam in the seat was splitting. And the pants of the green suit were getting so thin that we feared they would tear any day – and almost certainly wouldn’t make it these final 3 ½ months of our mission. Thanks to a suggestion from Elder Doyle, the first stop was at the mission office; down in the basement laundry room, discarded missionary clothing is available for free.



Elder Hinman in the mission's used clothing department

If the suit fits, wear it! - and so I am
We looked at the three or four suits that were there. One didn’t look too bad, and it had two pair of pants, one of which was in good shape. The miracle was that the pants fit me exactly, and so did the coat. Some salt stains from winter snow treatment were rather easily washed away. This saved us having to buy a suit at European prices. Other shopping targets were met, and we finished our travels around 7 pm. Dinner was good, if perhaps unusual: 7” pan-fried sardines, Wednesday’s stove-top stuffing, Thursday’s salad, and ratatouille. A thirty minute walk at dusk (9 pm-9:30) helped us get a bit of exercise.

Week of 11 April 2010:

Timing is everything (especially when it comes to wee miracles): Sunday morning we drove up to Neuchâtel. Similar to Bastien Bonny mentioning Thursday in our Council meeting that some of the young single adults feel isolated – everyone says hello, but then no one includes them in conversation after that – Aude mentioned that they’d been advised NOT to participate in YSA activities – or dances – since they’d recently been married (in the temple –and thus would be good examples for other YSA). Dede’s wise advice was for them to form their own little group of young marrieds. We then drove down to Yverdon to give the missionaries copies of the flyer we’d produced. Fortunately, we arrived in time to find them. As we were about to leave, we realized Dede had left her leather jacket in Neuchâtel. Even though it was now 12:40 pm, and we had no phone numbers with us for any of the YSA in Neuchâtel, we decided to drive the 30 minutes back up there in the hopes that someone might still be at the chapel. A great tender mercy was that as we arrived, the Canonica family was just getting ready to leave. Bastien C had found the jacket in the chapel and was hanging it up as Dede walked in. Had we been 5minutes later, we’d have missed them and would have had to wait until Thursday at least to recover the jacket. Interestingly, things certainly didn’t have to happen that way, but they worked out incredibly well for us. The extra trip (a total of 313 km = 200 miles - that day) made us miss all but the last 50 minutes of the Rive Gauche ward sacrament meeting (since we slept through the alarm we’d set to allow for a brief nap).
.






Outdoor chess anyone?














Would you believe this is the door to our humble missionary apartment? - Neither would we







A lost parking stub may not seem like a miracle, but … : After Monday’s French class, we made hotel reservations for Sisters Hanson and Gutherie from Frankfurt, who were coming by train to give us some additional training to be YSA Center directors. We picked them up at the train station at 4:45. Another tender mercy involved the loss of the parking stub. I checked all my pockets several times, even taking things out one by one and putting them on the front seat of the car – to no avail. We wondered if somehow I’d left the “caisse” (the payment machine) without retrieving the stub. Dede suggested looking in the trunk to see if by any chance it had been dropped when I helped load a suitcase. As I came around the back of the car, there it was on the ground; sure enough, when I picked up the suitcase, the stub had slipped out of my hand. The reason it was important to find the thing is that we’d learned at the airport that without being able to use a validated stub, one has to find an administration office and pay cash; otherwise, the gate will not open to allow an exit (and the drivers lined up behind us would be less than happy). We shared dinner with the sisters before taking them down to the Geneva YSA Center to see our Spanish family home evening (there were 38 people there, of whom 15 were not members of the church, plus ourselves, the Jones, and the elders – who are members).

Why 8? With the sisters, we strolled up to St Pierre cathedral on Tuesday to visit the 2000 yr-old archeological site. We were impressed with the remains of 8-sided baptismal fonts – (different ones built over several centuries) – perhaps related to circumcision at 8 days or baptism of children after age 8. That evening, we drove to Yverdon to meet with President Maerki. The sisters provided some training, and President Maerki had a few questions. We felt a spirit of cooperation and love, and hope to show that we can have someone wander in if we do have our Yverdon center open on Tuesdays.







How about that!




















The excavated 4th century baptistry (left) is much larger than the 7th - 8th century baptistry








A model showing the 7th - 8th century
8-sided baptistry










Sisters Hanson & Gutherie think they're ready to depart at 8 am





Sisters Badger & Hanson at the Lyon Center









An unexpected 325 km drive to Lyon and back: Wednesday we met the sisters at 8 am to take them to the train station for a trip to Lyon, where they would train the Badgers plus a couple from Grenoble, where a new center may be starting. On the way home, we thought it wise to phone them to verify that they’d found the correct platform/track and had safely gotten underway. They didn’t answer at first, but soon returned the call, only to tell us that the French train workers were on strike, so no trains were running. We offered to drive them to Lyon, but asked if we could eat breakfast first. Soon they called again to say that they could take a bus. But then about 15 minutes later they called once more to say that the bus wouldn’t get them there on time, and to ask if we could be good Samaritans, as we’d previously offered. This was also missionary transfer day, and several were stranded in one place or another. We arrived at the Lyon Center for YSA about 12:30. Miraculously, I waited in a bus slot until a parking spot opened up – and one did, just as a bus came around the corner to drop off passengers where I’d been waiting (Dede and the sisters had gone upstairs to visit with the Badgers).






We took the high road home from Lyon






An amazing (literally) family home evening lesson: Thursday’s lesson (in French) had to do with ways to tell if impressions we receive are from the Holy Ghost. We then set up a labyrinth so someone blindfolded would have to choose which voices to listen to (also in French) to get through the maze. If the person followed instructions from one of the two “wrong” voices, he would run into the back of a chair.

To include or not to include: En route to Yverdon on Friday, we discussed a question raised by some of our young adults regarding whether recently married young adults were permitted to participate in our family home evening or the activities after Institute classes. Dede identified a possible reason for the likely church policy that would discourage their participation: older young singles might feel hurt (or jealous, or ‘defective’) having to associate with younger people who were already happily married – to the extent that they themselves would stop participating. Sometimes the immediate presence of a positive example (the happiness of the married couple) might induce an overwhelming sense of inferiority among a struggling young adult. On the other hand, now we have two young couples (Pierre and Dana in Lausanne and Jeff and Aude in Neuchâtel) who feel excluded from the very group where they were active just a few months ago.

The artists and their works
The activity that evening was called “You and Me and all my pencils.” Sabrina separated everyone into pairs with the instructions that each person in the pair was to draw a picture of the other person (simultaneously drawing while modeling). After about 20 minutes or so, the pictures were collected and taped to the white board and the whole group reassembled to try to identify the person represented in each picture. It was a blast. Meanwhile, we went around to each team and distributed desserts – which were very well received.

En fin (that’s French): After a busy day Saturday, we turned in tired but happy after another great week. Both of us are feeling melancholy about having to leave the mission in just 3 ½ more months.

Week of 4 April 2010:

He is singing: "Spring is officially here!"
{Click on the picture to enlarge it}













Food for the soul and for the tummy: General Conference was wonderful. As President Monson said, the priesthood conference may have been one of the best ever. During several of the talks, I was strongly impressed that these church leaders are indeed authorized servants of our Heavenly Father. Elder & Sister Doyle had kindly offered to provide a beef stew for lunch in the hour between PH and the Saturday afternoon rebroadcast, and we were going to provide a salad. Elder Doyle picked me up for the pH session, and Dede was going to pick up Sister Doyle and then Shannon Walch. The hitch was that our cell phone didn’t work, so Dede waited for Sister Doyle in their parking lot, while Sister Doyle waited upstairs in their apartment for Dede to call. Dede gave up and drove back out to the street before she thought that maybe she could find the correct doorbell to ring. Fortunately, the mailboxes had numbers corresponding to the bells, so they were able to get together. When they arrived, it turned out that Sister Doyle had also made a peach cobbler and brought drinks and rolls – and the stew was plentiful. But they hadn’t received a response to the email to ask if they could pick Shannon up an hour earlier than arranged on Saturday. Consequently, Dede and I drove out to get Shannon at the originally appointed time, while the Doyles shared dinner with the missionaries. But there was still plenty when we got back, just as the session was beginning (so my wife and I sat behind the table and ate while watching the broadcast).

A face smiles at us from this wee flower













A stay-at-home mom (and dad): Because our car was VERY low on gas, the Doyles had let us use theirs for the last session (10-midnight because of the 8-hr time difference). Monday morning, I went to get gas for the car so we could go to our missionary district meeting at 10:30 am. But the French celebrate Easter on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, which meant that no one was available to sell fuel – and the machines wouldn’t accept an American credit card – any of the three I tried. When I drove over to the Carrefour station (the large grocery store itself was open) the same result – without a European card, no gas! We phoned the Doyles to see if they might give us a ride to District meeting, but they were already on their way to pick up the sister missionaries, and there would not have been room for 4 passengers besides the Doyles. We then phoned the Jones, but their daughter had just arrived and was suffering from allergies, so they were not planning to attend. So we were “stuck” at home for the day. We thus studied some French, rescued – we hope - a little weeping fig someone had thrown into the garbage, went for a walk in the spring weather (taking pictures of colorful cars and birds), and had time for a recovery nap. I worked on the three monthly reports for the Centers for Young Adults that had to be sent to Frankfurt that evening. The specific tender mercy here was that had we gone to district meeting, we’d not have been able to get the plan rewritten nor the reports prepared – an incredible blessing – which at first I’d thought was simply my stupidity for not buying gas on Saturday when we had the chance.

Spring heather blossoms in early April













Pride plus bad decisions can be disastrous: President Murdock had asked that Elder Doyle and I serve as his counselors for a disciplinary council for a young missionary who needed to be sent home. The eternal salvation of the individual who has transgressed, by facilitating repentance, is the main reason for holding a disciplinary council; the next most important objective is to protect potential victims from an aggressor; the third priority is to protect the name of the Church. During the Council itself, a spirit of love was palpable. The missionary was advised that his parents themselves would go through different stages of grieving, including hostility and anger. When the Council ended, we all embraced the missionary. The day was sad, yet we all felt Heavenly Father’s love for this young missionary. Looking back, I recall some instances of pride and lack of a willingness to submit to authority that had been displayed prior to the transgression. Then, instead of stopping inappropriate communication immediately, it was allowed to continue, and eventually led to the missionary’s downfall. After all that, Dede and I still had to prepare dinner for the family home evening in Yverdon. It was a Middle Eastern casserole with ground beef, eggplant, pine nuts, and diced tomatoes, served over rice. For salad, we had tabbouli. Dessert was a chocolate fondant with Crème Anglaise.

If advertising for 1 thing will pay,
doesn't it make sense that advertising
for several things will pay more?













The un-sewing was painless: Friday began with a visit to the surgeon to have Dede’s 3 stitches removed. We also gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon in which Dede had inscribed our testimony and reminded him of his first surgical patient, who was LDS. He graciously accepted the book and thanked us for our interest in him. After printing 28 photos of our young adults in activities at family home evening or after institute classes, we took our rice pudding and headed up to Yverdon. This time, in order to make sure we had an accurate record of those attending, Dede went to Sister Vigliotti’s class, and I went to Aurélie’s class. In all, 24 participated.

The Swiss use forsythia for freeway dividers
(oops! At 120 km/hr the buildings were in focus)



Our stab at marketing the Yverdon Center: Most of Saturday afternoon was spent working on a brochure the missionaries in Yverdon could distribute to young single adults they meet on the streets or as they contact people door-to-door. It is printed on both sides of a sheet of paper that is then folded to make three sections; color pictures of the chapel and of some young adults at a fondue party are included, as are class schedules and a list of activities for the rest of the spring term. A dinner at the mission home was to honor the new couple, Elder and Sister Asay, by treating them to the Swiss traditional dinner of “raclette,” which means the scraping of cheese that is then melted and added to boiled potatoes. After dinner, President Murdock shared recent experiences from the mission in towns that were once very “dead” but which become invigorated as missionaries catch the vision of what can happen when members invite the missionaries to help them introduce their friends to the gospel message.

Week of 28 March 2010:

This picture was NOT artificially staged:
We had to move the toaster to keep it from throwing toast behind the washing machine, which serves as counter space between the stove and the sink







The worth of each soul is great: Since we had heard that our friend Lam (a refugee from Ivory Coast) would be moving to Vevey (where a branch of the church had been closed), we thought it important to go up to Renens to visit him at that ward and let him know that we care for him, but also that he would need to come either to Lausanne where there are a number of other young single adults – or to Renens itself, where he already knows the ward members. A tender mercy was that when we arrived, a rather amazing 20 minutes early, there appeared to be no place to park, but a member of the bishopric had seen us and actually came out and directed us to a legal spot. Lam was thrilled to see us again. After the meeting, we met a friend Lam had brought, named Clement. Monday we learned that presenting the Plan of Salvation should involve much more than simply using a set of circles to represent different states of our existence: we really did live in our Heavenly Father’s family, and we knew Him well, and loved Him. And (as Brigham Young said) when we return, we will be amazed at how familiar we are with his countenance. And we will again feel His infinite love when He embraces us.

A doctor was able to see us the day after we asked: Monday, Elder Jones helped me administer to Dede regarding a cyst which was hurting more and more. A little miracle was that after lunch, Dede was able to phone Dr Malmberg and get a recommendation for another surgeon who might be able to see her sooner than April 6th. And then she phoned that office and made an appointment for the very next day! It was pleasant and sunny (and warmer than 60 degrees), so we took about an hour and a half to stroll through the field along the stream across from our apartment building and take several pictures, including some of some mistletoe growing close to the ground on a tree branch.

Mistletoe in March














We drove down to the Centre to see if anyone needed help with their family history, and Dede was able to help Donna. About 10-11 of the 26 people who attended the Spanish family home evening were non-members.

And the doctor will whittle: Tuesday we met Dr Pierre Meyer, the surgeon referred by Dr Malmberg. After scheduling the operation for the very next morning, so that Dede’s recovery should be OK by Easter this weekend, he noticed our nametags and began to chuckle. He told us that about 20 years ago, he had just finished his medical training in surgery in Geneva and had rented the office we were now in, where he could begin a private practice. As he sat behind his desk, all alone in the empty space, he wondered if he would ever have any patients. Then the phone rang. A man asked if Dr Meyer might be able to perform an emergency appendectomy. The man was also from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was his very first patient, and “launched” his career. Because there was no time to arrange for insurance coverage for Dede’s operation, we needed cash; it was quite challenging to get the amount needed, since our credit card has a $200/day limit on withdrawals. Three ATM’s and one bank later – and after trying all three cards, I finally succeeded (with a fee of $10 per transaction).




"I'm ready to go home" she said







Dede tells her nurse (Elodie) that the operation was a success








A new friend and a successful operation: Wednesday’s surgery took only about half an hour, but they wanted Dede to wait a couple of hours to make sure all was well. Our Swiss nurse, who had a big friendly smile and whose name is Élodie, noticed Dede’s name tag and asked about the church. We told her a bit, and gave her three pass-along cards (in English, sadly): one about Easter and our faith in Christ, one about how families can be happier, and one about the Book of Mormon. She’d never heard of the book, or of the church. We wrote the address and meeting times on one of them and invited her to visit us sometime.

Jenny and Amandine actually acquired their outfits independently

Chicken Olé is this week's dinner for the family home evening group




From time to time, you’re supposed to ‘blow it:’ Thursday’s family home evening in Yverdon was a day of tender mercies. Not only did Andres and Bastien arrive, but Hans and Jenny brought Amandine (the young investigator from Neuchâtel) with them on the train. They plus Anthony set a record: we had 6 YSA for dinner and family home evening, plus the elders and ourselves. After dinner and Hans’ spiritual Easter lesson, Jenny led us in a fun activity, a “ping-pong ball blow,” where we all knelt around a table and competed in trying to blow the ball off the table against the efforts of others not to let it go off near them (no hands allowed, though several used their foreheads).


It's hard not to laugh when you're supposed to be blowing, but it's even harder to blow when you're laughing





Miracles can sometimes be recognized by the timing of events: Friday brought more miracles. As she was waking up, Dede was inspired to carefully plan a schedule for the day, since we’d been asked the day before by Eric to prepare bag lunches for the 30 young adults expected to go to Bern for Friday’s temple trip. She calculated that we needed to leave the apartment by 9:30 am, take 15 minutes each way to drive to the Swiss grocery store at Balexert; 1 hour to purchase the food and supplies, take an hour to make the sandwiches, and another hour to prepare the bags with all the food, have a quick lunch and a nap, and then leave for the temple by 2 pm so that we could arrive by 4:30 for the fireside with the temple presidency which they had invited us to have, during a 5 pm endowment session for some, and followed by a 7 pm baptismal session for all participants. Everything went well until we arrived at the shopping mall at 9:45 am. All the stores, including the large Migros grocery store, were closed for Good Friday (“Holy Friday” in Switzerland).



My lovely lass is the one on the left


Mildly distraught, we then drove to another chain grocery store, COOP, but it was also closed. Not yet willing to panic, we hoped that the Migros store at the airport might be open for weekend travelers – and to our great joy and relief, it was. Not only that, but they had lots of 7” rolls we needed for sandwiches. And even more, they had paper bags to put the sandwiches in (we’d never seen such bags anywhere else in Europe thus far in our mission). And they had plastic bags with handles that could hold the other lunch contents. We bought the things we needed, and were well within the budget Eric had quoted us. And we got back to the apartment by 11:05, just minutes off Dede’s schedule. Eric phoned again to ask if we could give our friend Lam a ride from the Renens chapel. We called him and arranged to meet at 3 pm. Another minor miracle was that we actually left the apartment and were on the road by 2:25 pm, 5 minutes ahead of the schedule Dede had calculated before we learned we needed to make the extra stop to pick up Lam.
Yverdon Young Adults at the Swiss Temple
Traffic was light, and we arrived at the temple by 4:15 pm. What an incredible joy it was to see the 28 young adults who had come. Seven of them were from Southern France, and Eric had invited them to join our group when he had learned on Thursday that they too had hoped to attend the temple. To have 21 young adults from the Lausanne Stake – when we only average about 24-25 at Institute classes on Friday – travel an hour and a half to participate in a Friday evening temple service was just amazing. We got home shortly before midnight.