Week of 15 November 2009

Singing softens the heart: Sunday, the Primary children (age 3-11 years) presented the program in both the Rive Gauche and Geneva Wards. We were not only touched by their spirit of love, but we were actually astounded at the quality of their singing and speaking. Some of the kids in Geneva Ward even sang a descant part. In contrast to other programs we’d seen over the years, where many of the children needed to be assisted by a parent or a teacher whispering words for the child to repeat, here most of the children had memorized their parts and delivered them distinctly. Several times both of us felt tears coming to our eyes; no wonder the Savior loves little children who are so pure and so sincere. After dinner, we got to speak with our own kids. We saw our second granddaughter Abby for the first time; she’s a cute one (of course) with lots of dark hair. Dede’s sister Connie was there to help, and we also got to speak with her.



Two cars share a single parking space



Sister Hinman is no longer nameless: Monday we went to the American Market to get food for the Thanksgiving dinner we’ll prepare for the 30 young adults who come to Yverdon. Even though things are outrageously expensive, it’s the only place to find stove-top stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie filling. A tender mercy that day was Dede’s finding both of her lost name tags. The one with the alligator clip had disappeared several days ago, and searches of the car, the apartment, and the parking lot had failed. Then as she took her overcoat from the rack in our apartment (for the nth time since the tag had been lost), it fell to the floor – somehow it had come off and lodged somewhere –perhaps between the coat and the lining.

One ancestor with five mothers? When we got back to the apartment after Spanish family home evening, we started to try to unravel a family history question regarding an email we’d received from a lady in Utah whose husband is a descendant of Christian Baum (born 1738, and one of my Mom’s ancestors). It seems that the Church’s computer system has a person with that name presumably having had 21 children, being married to 7 different women in Germany, London, and Pennsylvania, five of whom were somehow supposedly the mother of my ancestor John Jacob Baum (which seems rather difficult to explain, other than that people probably submitted information without any basis in fact). We finally quit at 2 am. Tuesday while Dede worked on her emails to the Young Adults and to Bishop Bonny, I made a double batch of sweet potato casserole for Friday’s dinner (1 pound of butter for the casserole, and another pound of butter for the topping, along with a cup of sugar for each). Wednesday, after Elder Doyle’s French class,we went with the Doyles, Jones, and Sister Hanson to take the 5 sister missionaries to a little village in France called the “Hamlet of Father Christmas.”




Mrs Santa teaches her husband to be careful








Sister Hinman is glad she doesn't have to wash dishes for Santa's elves






Although Elders Jones, Doyle and I had serious misgivings about spending our money at such a place, it turned out to be so fascinating that we’ll try to take rob and Crystal to see it when they come. An old farmhouse had been converted to St. Nickolas’ home, with rooms for the elves and even with Santa himself snoring in his bedroom, with multiple alarm clocks to waken him in time to deliver presents. There were real reindeer in the yard, a couple of whom literally wrestled with locked horns while we watched them try to resolve some sort of disagreement.

An early Swiss Thanksgiving plus “tie buddies:” Thursday was spent cooking: turkey, pumpkin pies, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Friday we loaded everything into our little car and headed up thru very thick fog to Yverdon. During the classes, Dede and I set about trying to re-heat the food and to make the stove-top stuffing. We also put up half a dozen pictures I’d found on the internet that portrayed the first Thanksgiving. The first challenge was getting the oven to work. Fortunately, Eric had a key (it’s protected so that kids or young adult leaders can’t accidently turn it on). The next challenge was to get it to heat. We again had to ask Eric to leave class and help us. He finally figured out that not only did we need to push the “set” button and then enter the temperature, but then we needed to push the “set” button again to get it to start. We also learned that the burners on the stove automatically turned themselves off periodically – again as a safety (or frustration) feature. When we put the oval pan into the microwave to re-heat the mashed potatoes, when it wouldn’t turn, it nevertheless burned a three-inch diameter circle in the surface at one side while leaving the rest of the potatoes stone cold. By some number of minor miracles, we got everything ready just a little after 9 pm when the classes finished.



Yverdon Young Single Adults celebrate Thanksgiving


After a prayer of thanks, the girls filled their plates and then the guys followed suit. Together, 20 of us consumed much of 8 pounds of de-boned turkey, 1 ½ 9x13” pans of sweet potato casserole, three boxes worth of stove top stuffing, 5 pounds of green beans, a 9x13 “ pan of jello salad, plus cranberry sauce and other goodies. By 10 pm (a rather typical time for the French to finish dinner), we began the service project because the kids were too stuffed to start on the two pumpkin pies with whipped cream topping. We were astounded at the ways they decorated the tie buddies (which for the uninitiated are 4” long strips cut from the button-hole panel of a white shirt such that two button holes are in each strip.




The tie buddy factory cranks up production



They are then tapered at each end so as to slip thru the label on the back of a necktie and button to the shirt to keep the tie in place). They drew and colored Swiss flags, or hearts, or footprints, etc. and/or wrote positive short messages on each. Some also decorated the envelopes that would be used to distribute the tie buddies to the young elders in the mission. One fellow drew a Christmas tree ball, with shading, against a background of a pine bough, with detailed needles, etc. And they all pitched in and seemed to have a great time. It was nearly 3 am when we finally got home, put away the leftover food, and staggered into bed.

Fog can’t stop intrepid senior missionaries, but pizza can: Saturday, I left at 8 to take Elder Doyle to the mission home to put our leftover pot of mashed potatoes into the mission home fridge and to pick up the van for our senior couple trip to the medieval walled town of Murten ("Morat" in French, near Bern, Switzerland).





The entry to Murten is thru the clock tower







It’s a foggy day in Murten






Fog puts dew on a cobweb on the ramparts of the village

The fog hadn’t relented, but we were determined to try anyway. Elder Doyle drove us and the Jones and the Hanson’s to the town. The fog gave things an eerie appearance. We enjoyed strolling along the archways covering the sidewalks and doing some window shopping. In one store, we saw a woman’s leather coat trimmed with ermine fur that would sell for a “mere” 4000 francs. They also had a nifty Christmas tree in an inverted umbrella so as to catch the Styrofoam pellet snowflakes that gently rained from a little fountain at the top of the tree – for “only” 500 francs (currently a Swiss franc is worth about a dollar – 0.995 when I checked). We also took pictures from along the old city wall. For lunch, we headed back to Yverdon, where we located a hotel/restaurant called “the White House” ('La maison blanche' in French).

I thought I ordered a salami pizza, not one smothered with leaves


I’d recommended the calzone to Elder Doyle (which I’d had last June). He commented that the next time he came, he’d bring a team to help him eat it. It was an arc about 13 inches long, about 4 inches wide, and perhaps 3 inched high at its center. My salami pizza was interesting in that it came covered with fresh green leaves of a plant Dede called Arugula, which has a sort of mild onion flavor. When we got home around 4:30, we sacked out for a couple of hours to recover from the past two days’ activities. “And thus ended . . .” our week, as someone once said.