Would you believe, they gave us a new mission car?(We wouldn't either)
Sunday we went up to Yverdon for their sacrament meeting and to promote our first family home evening for Thursday. We expect that only one or maybe two might come (there are only two active young single adults in this small ward). We ate our peanut butter sandwiches on the way back to Geneva, but there was not time for a nap before going to the Rive Gauche Ward block of meetings. The Doyles and the new missionary couple, the Asay’s, joined us for Sis Chapuis’ Sunday School class – one of the things that makes her a good teacher is that in addition to having pre-printed passages for people to read, she uses pictures and large-print quotations that she puts upon the board – held with magnets, and she asks questions that stimulate discussion.
Whoever said “no good deed goes unpunished” was probably right: Monday, we drove up to Lausanne to pay the first ($240) of two speeding tickets from Oct 18 (see previous week’s blog). When we found the police building (which we assumed held the “bureau of radar,” where we thought we were supposed to pay the fine, we were told that we couldn’t pay at this spot, but had to go to a post office. The good news was that the lady handed us a pre-printed form which had the required information in opposite sites from where we had originally been instructed to put it. So had we tried to pay at a Geneva post office, who knows what would have happened to our shekels? We drove up the hill to a small village, found the post office, and paid. After returning to Geneva, we went down to the Center for Young Adults, where Dede helped the recent convert, Donna Freemantle, with her family history – from 7:30 – 9 pm. Then Fr Shahkar came in, and she helped him until about 10:20 pm. He was thrilled to be able to clear 5 male names and 3 female names for the temple. He had felt that his ancestors were pushing him to do their work. We got home (or nearly so) by about 10:45, when we realized Sister Hinman had left her purse at the Center. So back we went, this time, getting home by 11:30 pm.
Diamonds in our own front yard (but they may take some polishing): Bishop Volpicelli asked some interesting questions in our Tuesday meeting with ward priesthood leaders. One was what we could do to get the Spanish folks who participate in French classes and in home evening at the Center for Young Adults to come to church with us. The solution seemed to be to INVITE THEM in writing each week: use pass-along-cards – in Spanish – with labels identifying the address, bus line, times of meetings, and upcoming activities. He also asked us to identify families in the ward where there are unbaptized individuals. We came up with a list of 14 potential families where people could be taught; even Fr Gillet suggested that his own wife might be a candidate. The ward’s goal for the year is to baptize 40!
Blessings after some struggles: Besides the tender mercy of getting to the Geneva zone conference just in time to hear our departing missionaries’ testimonies, a miracle occurred when we tried to prepare our family home evening for the young adults in Yverdon. We had planned to use the 20 pictures Elder Doyle had prepared for Thanksgiving to share a message and a challenge regarding the need to express gratitude. We struggled with the translation of the 20 quite simple sentences that we wanted to use to explain each picture. But then, as we began to formulate a lesson plan, thoughts and words just seemed to flow into our minds, and we were able to develop our lesson in a rather short time, in French, no less – that’s how we knew it was a miracle.
Elder Welch and the "fabulous four" young adults at Yverdon
The 1st Yverdon young adult home evening exceeded our expectation: After another zone conference, in Lausanne, we gave Elder Welch and his companion, Elder Borges, a ride up to Yverdon, and treated them to dinner at McDonald’s before our first family home evening (FHE) with the young adults there. These two elders, along with Bastien Bonny had visited the young adults and personally invited them to FHE. As Dede said, they had been “our men on the ground.” Some minor (?) miracles: 1) Finding Anthony: we had offered Anthony a ride in from St. Croix. It turns out that it’s a village rather high up in the Jura Mountains above Yverdon. The roads were narrow and winding: there were 10 hairpin switchbacks along the way. When we finally arrived and located his apartment building, he wasn’t there. He did not answer his cell phone either. We drove to the train station, thinking maybe we’d said we’d meet him there. But after two tries, we couldn’t even find it, in spite of our Magellan GPS. Finally, as we were about to give up and go back down the mountain, we phoned once more. Voilà! He answered; he’d forgotten, but he was willing to come, and said we could meet him in front of the store COOP. He did, and we got back in time for our lesson. 2) In addition to us and the two elders, FOUR young adults came: Anthony (whom we brought); Bastien, whose car had broken down, which led him to call Eve and ask her for a ride; Eve, who brought her son Noah, and (3) they stayed, even though she’d rather emphatically said on Sunday that she didn’t WANT to come); and Andres Gomez, the return missionary who’d been inactive since coming home in June. 4) We had exactly 4 color pictures of the 20 icons of Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims (1 for each young adult), and 6 quotations about gratitude (so the elders could each have one); 5) they all liked the flan that we brought for a treat. 6) They stayed and played ping-pong afterwards. We were very, very happy at the success of this first family home evening; we could hardly believe how well things had “worked out.”
The word "LOVE" seems to be universal
A picture (when it’s done) will be worth a thousand words: After Institute classes on Friday and after treating them to fresh cornbread Dede had made, the young adults worked on decorating for the Valentine Ball the following Friday.
In spite of making friends with the heroes,
Elder D still had to pay: “It’s elementary, Watson:”
The Doyles & Hinmans can hardly wait for the show to begin
Saturday’s main events were associated with Elder Doyle’s birthday. When we couldn’t obtain opera tickets to hear the famous tenor Placido Domingo, we all decided to go to a movie instead – “Sherlock Holmes.” It was full of action and unbelievable deductions that finally were explained near the end. After that, we went out to dinner at the Ferney-Voltaire Buffalo Grill. The buffalo steak kebab was quite tasty, and the prices were better than at most restaurants in France.
Sister Doyle enjoys a rack of ribs at the Buffalo Grill . . ."Ummmm" skewered buffalo is great!
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