Week of 10 January 2010:

Anyone thinking of summer snowcones?


It was a good thing to have gotten up at a decent hour in preparation for our trip to Yverdon; clearing the car and its windows of the snow and ice that had accumulated during the night’s snowstorm (3 or 4 inches) took us an unanticipated 15 minutes. We arrived safely, a definite tender mercy, especially since the car stalled a few more times – remarkably, at the same spot where we’d had trouble on Tuesday with Rob & Crystal. Another tender mercy was that Dede was able to speak with Jenny and Nicolas about possible schedules for a family home evening in Yverdon. When Nicolas said he wasn’t a member and Dede started to explain how FHE would help them raise their child, Jenny told her that N spoke English; then Dede was able to explain things to him and he translated for Jenny, which sort of made him more of an ally than an enemy. But the real miracle happened on our way home. The car worked perfectly, but that was not the miracle. Dede wondered if we had time before the Rive Gauche sacrament meeting to drive to the Renens chapel to see if by chance Mikaël Mayer might be there. He had left his winter gloves in the back seat of our car on Friday night when we dropped him off at his apartment. We hadn’t emailed him about our possible coming, and his cell phone had died, so there was no way to contact him (also, we had no idea which building was his). By the time we got to Renens from Yverdon after our visit there, it was 1 pm, a full hour since their sacrament meeting had ended, and it seemed unlikely that he would have stayed that long at the chapel. We figured it would only take an extra 5-10 minutes, so we exited the autoroute. As we passed his apartment complex on the way to the chapel, we saw a tall young man with blond hair walking on the sidewalk towards us. It was Mikaël. We hailed him and were able to give him his gloves. This may not have seemed very important, but that fact plus the timing of things made the experience even more miraculous.





Donna, her mother and Helen, with Elder Jones

Monday’s highlight was the baptism of Donna Freemantle, the English nanny. The previous Saturday she had told Elder Jones she was so terrified of water that she would not be able to be baptized. Sister and Elder Jones subsequently practiced with Donna and showed her how she could kneel and be momentarily immersed. And so it went very well, without any fear. Another wee miracle began 6 minutes before the service started: I received a phone call from the Gex elders who had missed their bus connection and were bringing an investigator to see the baptism. They asked if the office elders could come to Ferney to pick them up, but the office elders were still teaching someone. I felt that it would be more important for the young missionaries to attend the services than for me to be there, so after notifying Dede I headed to the car. I started the engine at 7:56, and by 8:03 I saw the elders coming down the street by the Doyles’ apartment in Ferney (normally, this would be a 15-minute trip). We got back to the chapel before the baptism and in time to hear a group of 8 sisters sing a beautiful song about what one would do if the Savior were seen “standing nigh, watching over me.”



After 30 minutes, we'd gone half a mile


Tuesday night, at least 4 inches of snow fell on us. Traffic was so backed up (probably all the way into downtown Geneva) that instead of the usual 4 minutes to enter Switzerland, it took more than an hour.




Crystal had wanted a bath, but instead of bubbles, all she got was snow.














After French class, a tender mercy was our being able to put together a booklet (from their Christmas program Dec 18) for the Yverdon young adults – in 30 copies, with plastic covers and plastic spiral binding (the mission home has the machine that punches and binds such things – we’d learned to use it last Christmas when we made booklets for each of the 96 missionaries). We finished by about 5:45 pm and headed north to Yverdon. More tender mercies were that the roads were now clear; the windshield wiper continued to work just fine, even though the clip was on backwards; and the car behaved well, with no problem at all (I did keep the speed down to 110 km/hr) – and we arrived in just 55 minutes.

Thursday, while Dede worked on emails to YSA in Yverdon, I reviewed a manuscript regarding beneficial effects of cobra cardiotoxin on shrinking rat prostate (prepared by the Selman group in Toledo, for which I’m an author – and made a few editorial suggestions). That afternoon, it cost 17 Euros (about$25) for three loads of laundry (since our washing machine’s shock absorbers had broken last week), but a very kind young man who works at the dry cleaning place on the other side of the wall (in our grocery store) showed us which machines worked best, how to use them – and then helped finish the drying – at no charge for the money he may have put in himself. We spent Friday afternoon making chili, a couple batches of cornbread, and a giant salad, hopefully enough to feed the 30 or so we anticipated would come for classes in Yverdon. The young adults did consume most of the cornbread and the salad, and much of the chili. We got home around midnight.

Saturday, I spent much of the day preparing a lesson for Sunday. Around 4:30, Elder & Sister Doyle picked us up for the baptism of Richard Okengo, from Tanzania. He had learned about the church from his roommate, who had been told about it by Deus Mremi, the fellow from Fribourg whose baptism we had attended in November. And Richard had then been coming on his own to the Geneva ward for at least 4 or 5 weeks, which was rather impressive. We donated a raspberry torte for the reception afterwards.



The French know how to make a raspberry torte

Around 6:30, we and the Doyles walked from the chapel over to the theater in the Balexert mall where we had tickets for the opera “Carmen.” And the front two rows were not nearly as bad as we’d feared, since the lounge-type chairs reclined and were tall enough to provide ample head and neck support.



The Doyles and the Hinmans await the start of "Carmen"




The music was fantastic, even if the first act should have been R-rated for immodesty and immorality. The rest of the mall was locked up when the opera finished, so we had to walk the long way back to church in the rain. But it had been a good week.