Week of 18 October 2009

Mt Blanc stands behind Lake Geneva
(photographed from above the mission home
by President Peterson)

Sunday was busy but happy: We decided to return to Moudon, now that we knew where to find the Scout cabins where the Yverdon young single adults were staying. They would be having church services, and we wanted to share that experience with them. To our amazement, the three piles of firewood and logs (about 4 feet wide and three feet high) that had been stacked against the cabin for the prior evening’s bonfire had been completely consumed, and only some ashes were still smoldering. As we entered the cabin, we were touched nearly to tears by the singing of the young adults while they waited for preparations to be completed for the meeting. The young adults shared their testimonies for about an hour. We just love these young people; they are not only the future leaders of the Church in Switzerland and in France, but they will be leaders and great examples to others in their local communities.



Snow has melted, but it’s still chilly up here at the weekend campout in Moudon with our Young Adults



After some group pictures, we needed to return for church services in Geneva; for lunch, we munched our peanut butter and jam sandwiches as we drove back to town, arriving one minute before the meeting started at 2 pm. Sunday evening, after our light meal of mushroom soup and a tuna sandwich, Dede invited our neighbor Elizabeth Brown down for “dinner,” since we still had some left. She was still recuperating from several eye surgeries, and was grateful to come. She’s been here 15 years as a librarian in Switzerland, but is from northeast Britain, near Newcastle. With all our conversation – about language, about English history, etc., it took her nearly two hours to eat her sandwich.

Historic “coincidences” highlighted midweek: Wednesday, we toured Geneva’s “old town” with the two senior missionary sisters who had come from Frankfurt, Germany to train the Jones and us regarding the Outreach Initiative for young single adults in Europe. The “Reformers’ Wall” in a park at the base of the hill celebrated men of the Protestant Reformation in the 1500’s, and at the end of the park were giant chess sets.



The real queen wears gloves when it’s chilly


Men were playing chess, pondering their moves, and then sliding the 2-foot tall pieces to new positions with their feet. We were amazed. In the states, sadly, such pieces would be immediately stolen or vandalized, but here they seem safe. During our walk, we learned that Sister Guthrie had attended the LDS Servicemen’s conference in Berchtesgaden, Germany in 1969, when President Hugh B Brown (counselor to Church Pres David O McKay) had been the featured speaker. This was interesting since Elder Doyle and his wife had also attended, having come up from his Army post in Italy. And that was the conference where my US Air Force buddy George Hopkin had been in charge of transportation for Pres Brown, and had loaned me his Mercedes 300 SEL to take some friends to Salzburg while he and others met Pres Brown at the train station. During the trip over the mountains from Berchtesgaden toward Salzburg, we’d hit a patch of ice that threw the car toward the guard rail.



Alpine violets (cyclamen) grace a window box



At that moment, I think I offered a silent prayer: “Please protect everyone else but me; I can’t afford to pay George for this car!” As the car left the pavement, the loose gravel (but mostly divine intervention) helped propel us back onto the road, potentially saving our lives – and the car. Then Sister Hanson (Kaye Terry during her mission) told us that she had served a mission in South Germany around 1964-1965. She knew Elder George Hopkin quite well; the Germans had trouble pronouncing his last name, so they called him “Elder Popcorn.” What an incredibly small world!

Later that afternoon in the mission home, we noticed the beautiful family statue in which crouching parents with outstretched arms wait to embrace a child that is running from one parent to the other. Sister Murdock then told us how back in the 1980’s, when President Monson had been asked to go to East Germany to see if it might be possible to improve church relations with the communist government there, he decided to present a copy of this family statue to Erich Honecker, the head of the East German government (who incidentally was later accused of having ordered anyone shot and killed who tried to cross the border into West Germany or into West Berlin). Pres. Monson's inspiration was realized when Mr. Honecker, on receiving the statue, broke down and began to cry; his own granddaughter had just died a few days before. From that point on, the church was allowed much more freedom – even to the point of being able to build a temple in Friberg, in East Germany.

It was raining heavily by 11 pm, on our return from the training meeting in Yverdon. Tender mercies involved not only an impression to stop for gas, but also that our credit card worked (it had not been accepted in France), since people manning the station had all gone home for the night. According to the gas gauge, we would NOT have made it home had we not stopped for gas when we did.

At the Mission Home: Senior missionaries surround President & Sister Murdock at a Farewell Luncheon for Elder and Sister Harvey (who had to leave their mission early to take care of some family problems).


We call these coincidences “tender mercies from our Father in Heaven:” A tender mercy occurred Thursday when we went to a large hospital complex to deliver cookies to Harry Valdivia for his birthday. When we arrived just before 6 pm, we started to ask some of the hospital staff if they could direct us to Harry’s room. Official visiting hours didn’t start until 7:30, and they seemed less than eager to assist. Then we heard a voice off to the right “I’m here.” It was Harry himself. He’d come down the hall at the moment we entered the building. How many “coincidences” are we allowed in just one week?

Saturday morning we drove to the Bern Temple, 2 hrs. away, to do an Endowment Session for the father of one of the Geneva young adults. It was beautiful. As we left the Celestial Room, the Temple President was waiting to shake our hand in appreciation for our service. We wish there were some way to impart the feeling of love and peace we feel in the temple to those who haven’t yet been there, so that they might taste some of the joy we experience.

Then, that evening, we drove an hour back up to Lausanne for the wedding reception of one of our young adults.



Take my advice: make sure the bride has a chair at her own reception



Our arrival at the chapel provided more tender mercies. 1),There was a parking spot at the end of the driveway, even though the rest of the places were already filled. 2) The chapel was packed with those participating in a pre-reception event, which allowed us ready entry to the kitchen to locate the ward’s glass bowls and arrange, without interference, the ten pounds of salad Dede had prepared . 3) By transferring the salad to the ward’s bowls, we were then able to wash our own and take them back to the car before the reception officially began. The amount of food in the kitchen was unbelievable – there must have been several dozen different kinds of salad, along with 8-10 boxes of cold cuts and cheese - and so was the number of people in attendance - probably a couple of hundred or more. We very much enjoyed seeing many of our young adults from Yverdon, Fribourg, Neuchatel, Renens, and Lausanne.

Beacause of the above 'tender mercies,' we were able to leave the reception early, so we could finish preparing our talks for the next morning at 9 am. Our ideas had to be combined into a single presentation that would last less than 3 minutes in French (mine) and 3 minutes in Spanish (Dede’s translation) and yet try to convey some sort of idea related to encouraging ward members to invite their friends to ward activities. We finally finished around 1 am, having gone thru 13 pieces of paper to finally get 1 page each with our type-written messages.

This is officially part of next week, but we got to church about 10 min. early, only to find the building locked, even though there are two wards that meet there at 9 am! Finally someone arrived who opened the door and let us in. So we waited a while in the chapel until another missionary couple arrived and informed us that the time had changed the night before! Europe's Daylight Savings Time ends a week earlier than in the US. That'll teach us to be early! Our talks went well, but we went home and slept for 2 hrs. after Sacrament Meeting. In spite of that, Mom/Dede/Soeur Hinman managed to get a cold, and had to go home again after our 2nd Sacrament Meeting in the Geneva (English-speaking) Ward in the afternoon.