Week of 29 November 2009:

Not only does this parking center show the number of spaces open in different areas, but occupied spaces are indicated with a red light and open spaces have a green light (the strip below the numbers), so that one quickly sees what’s available


A winter walk in the rain without an umbrella is a bad idea. Saturday evening, the fever hit. Dede was spared for just a couple of days, but I went down – slept all day Sunday (11 hours, then later a 2 ½-hr nap). Monday, I felt much better, so we loaded Thanksgiving dinner fixings for the Spanish FHE group into our little car and went to District meeting at the Institute, after which we stayed and leisurely prepared for the evening’s festivities, including making the jello salad, the stuffing, and the mashed potatoes, and heating up the turkey, the gravy, the sweet potato casseroles, and the green beans. Meanwhile, Sister Jones made 40 fabulous homemade crescent rolls, and Dede decorated the two pumpkin pies with star-bursts of whipped cream on the 16 pieces each. We also set up chairs around the ping pong table and two other classroom tables to seat 14 each. When the folks came in for family home evening, their eyes swelled with anticipation.

“I’ll take some mashed potatoes,” says Br Ortiz at Monday’s Spanish Thanksgiving dinner

In addition to the 28 or so from FHE,we invited the missionaries and the people they’d been teaching in the library and the office – another 8, which with us and the Jones brought the total to around 40 for the feast. Unfortunately that night, after the pressures subsided, Dede relaxed enough to succumb to the cold which had hit me Friday thru Sunday.

The Castillo and Bustamante kids seem happy with their dinner

While she rested Tuesday, I caught up on our monthly financial accounting of expenditures; somehow she still had enough oomph to practice singing “Hope of Israel” in French, which the senior missionary couples are scheduled to sing at Saturday evening’s session of Stake conference. Wednesday, we hope, was the worst day for Dede’s cold. While she rested, I went to Elder Doyle’s French class, where we learned Christmas vocabulary. After class, Elder Jones effusively praised Dede’s efforts to provide Thanksgiving for the Spanish FHE.

When you’re sick, you forget last year’s exhibit of France’s “santons” (little saints). So here are a couple of pictures, one that shows a nativity set, with figurines getting progressively smaller, so as to confer perspective and depth to the scene,

2008: For a “mere” $2000, you can become the proud owner of this nativity set

and the other showing a local lass making crepes for the senior missionaries who attended the exhibit in the Geneva suburb of Grand Saconnex.



2008: Crêpes will be ready in 30 seconds

Wednesday afternoon, Dede suggested she’d like some chicken noodle soup, and asked if I’d throw a chicken from the freezer into a pot of water to boil for 90 minutes. After it cooled down, she de-boned it, finishing just as our doorbell rang. Our neighbor from upstairs, Elizabeth Brown, had come to let us know the movers had packed just about all her stuff in preparation for Thursday’s move. We invited her to stay for dinner – the chicken noodle soup plus a toasted baguette. She visited with us until about 8:30, which allowed us to get ready early for bed. Thursday was another day for recovery and for working on transferring information from our journal to our blog. I phoned the elders in Yverdon to cancel our appointment to go with them to locate some of the less active YSA there. We also caught up on laundries (a total of 9 loads) from the 4 thanksgiving dinners over the past 10 days. Friday there was not enough improvement in Dede’s condition to allow her to make the trip to Yverdon for our meeting with President Maerki and the YSA Advisory Council. We nevertheless thought we ought to be represented, so I went ahead and made the 60 mile journey.

A Swiss-German Stake President gives good advice to the French-speaking Swiss young single adults. Although Eric conducted our Advisory Council meeting in French, with some rapidity, I still understood when President Maerki gave us inspired counsel to: keep the vision in mind – always; follow-up with the newly baptized young adults; develop and use measurable goals in the various areas of responsibility. He also suggested (in response to Eric’s question) that he is interested in the young adults from eastern France, all of Switzerland, and nearby regions of Germany getting together (perhaps every 4 months or so) to have a giant Sunday Service – a one-day “singles’ ward” event. This would not only allow greater mingling but also provide spiritual refreshment and a strengthening of faith. Sabrina showed us the prototype Christmas card the YSA will be making after classes. She’d forgotten to bring her scissors, so on the train ride down from Basel, she had carefully torn out a Santa Claus from a sheet of red paper and glued it to a black background, which she then decorated with a white beard, a little hat, and some white trim. We were impressed.

Annual caroling is better when it’s not in the rain. Saturday, it was dry and near 50 degrees for the traditional Rive Gauche Christmas caroling in Geneva. (Last year, the first Saturday of three such events, it had rained heavily and was miserably cold, in addition to which only a few missionaries were available to sing – and then the elders all seemed to start on different notes – and we’d gotten a $120 parking ticket when I hadn’t noticed a temporary no-parking sign). This time, I parked under the lake (Dede stayed home to take care of herself), and there were a dozen missionaries to sing. People stopped to chat; some accepted a free Christmas CD; and generally, we had fun.

2008: “So which carol do you want to sing?” (see if you can spot Dede next to Bishop Volpicelli)

Shortly after noon, we quit because of the 1:30 baptism of Janet, a lady from South America. After taking Dede back to our apartment, I met the elders from Gex and we walked over to visit with Mme Kitua, the lady from Seychelles (MD malaria researcher husband is from Tanzania) who is returning home for 3 months for her daughter’s wedding and to take care of family business after her brother’s recent death.

2008: The Salvation Army takes pity on frozen elders


Taught by a servant of God: We had just enough time to get ready to go back to church for choir practice in advance of Stake conference. Fortunately, all the local young and senior missionaries participated, and at 6 pm, we sang “Hope of Israel” in French to start the evening session. It seemed to go quite well. Our conference authority was Elder Eric Kopischke of the Quorum of Seventy. He taught us for about an hour, pointing out that the first two great commandments (Deut 6:5, Matt 22:37; and Leviticus 19:18, Matt 22:39) were given to Adam: to choose our Heavenly Father to be our God and to love one another (Moses 7:33). The important thing in life is NOT the challenges we face, but rather the way we choose to respond to those challenges – whether in the face of any challenge, we will continue to choose God above all other things. He referred to the trials of Job, who after losing all his worldly wealth still chose God; after losing his family, he still chose God; and after losing his health, he still chose God, and maintained that choice even when his “friends” kept berating him. In Job 38:1-7 the Lord reminded Job that there was a plan established from before the foundations of the earth were laid, in which we knew we would experience suffering and sorrow, but that we needed to be tested to see if we would choose God, and that we “shouted for joy” at having that opportunity. Elder K referred us to trials of Joseph Smith, who after having been imprisoned all winter in a dungeon not tall enough to allow him to stand up straight, was told that if his enemies tear him from his parents and siblings, if they tear him from his wife and son, if they ‘prowl around [him] like wolves for the blood of the lamb,’ if he is cast into the hands of murderers and the sentence of death passed upon him, and ‘if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after [him],’ that ‘all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.’ The Savior descended below all things. “Art thou greater than he?” The limits of these challenges are “set” and will not be exceeded; therefore, “fear not what man can do …” (D&C 122). Elder K further reminded us that our goal in life is not simply to return to that God who gave us life (Alma 40:11), since we lived in His presence before we came to earth, but rather to be able to life the life that God lives, to make choices that He would make, to become like Him and His son Jesus Christ (Matt 5:48; 3 Nephi 12:48). It was indeed a wonderful experience to be there Saturday evening.