Week of 7 February 2010:

Sunday at the Geneva Ward, Dede saw a young lady in Relief Society she didn’t know. When the girl introduced herself to the group as Shannon Walch, Dede wondered whether she might be related to my cousin Victor Walch. As they visited after the meetings, she said “He’s my great uncle.” (In case a bit of genealogy is needed, my Mother, Mae Bean Hinman, was born Dec, 1908, the youngest of ten children of Victor Emmanuel Bean, who was born in 1864. Her next older sister, Lila Bean Walch was born July, 1907; her eldest son, Frank Walch, was born in 1930 and married in 1955. His son had a daughter named Shannon, who was born around 1985. Thus Victor Emmanuel Bean is my grandfather and Shannon’s great-great-grandfather - so she is my 1st cousin twice removed). She’s an intern at CERN, the nuclear physics research facility; she’s working on her PhD in physics at the University of Michigan, after having graduated from BYU a couple of years ago. She had just arrived in Geneva this past Thursday and had found her way to church at 9 am via a bus and then a tram. After church, we returned home for a dinner of beef tongue, rice, and broccoli. We’d boiled it 3 hours on Saturday with various spices, cut it into small pieces for an anticipated post-church buffet (which didn’t happen), and it was quite delicious.


Cousin Shannon Walch with Elder & Sister Jones

Free parking? It depends: When we arrived for District Meeting Monday, someone had taken our assigned parking place in the underground structure – for the 2nd time. We left a note on his windshield and then drove over to the Migros grocery store lot to find a place. The first hour is free, and I should have left our meeting to move the car – but I didn’t. We stayed after for lunch with the Jones and the missionaries, and then Dede helped Sister Jones register with “new.familysearch.org” and begin entering her family history information. When we got back to the car, the cost for 5 hours’ parking had gone up to 14 CHf ($14).

Our tallest (and one of the best) young adults
gets set apart for his mission

Missionary Tuesday: Mikaël Mayer and his family were in Yverdon for his setting apart as a full-time missionary to Toulouse, France. The subsequent meeting with the High Council and Stake Presidency was impressive (all in French): each member of the council was invited to take about 5 minutes to present and explain the mission plan for the unit they represented, along with what they perceived were the strengths of the plan and any reservations they might have; then President Maerki asked them to go around again and, having heard the input from each of their colleagues, to take a few minutes to share any further counsel they might give to further the efforts of members and missionaries in the stake. He then turned the time over to President Murdock for his thoughts. I learned the next morning from Sister Murdock that during the preceding discussions, her husband had been praying fervently that his comments would not “step on any toes” or otherwise detract from the spirit of the meeting. He had told her later he felt that his mouth had been filled and thoughts provided that he should share.

What sort of people would patronize a “Kook" Inn? The highlight of Wednesday was going with Elder and Sister Asay to lunch with the Doyles to celebrate Elder D’s birthday (again), this time at a restaurant called “Kook’s Inn,” near Thoiry. Interestingly, the only choices for lunch were haunch of rabbit (colored purple with a red cabbage sauce) over chopped cabbage and some other unidentified vegetables, or Monk fish (which Sister D thought was fine – in the places where it had been completely cooked). Alternatively, Dede opted for the appetizer buffet (mostly seafood and salads). Except for Elder Doyle, we all took the dessert buffet that featured many kinds of French pastry.













What can you say about purple rabbit? . . . . . . (Except that after lunch we're all still smiling)

Thursday’s highlights involved the family home evening in Yverdon. Much of the day was spent getting ready, including making a pot of chili, baking cornbread, and preparing a salad to take to the young adults. We arrived in Yverdon around 5:30 pm, to see several YSA putting up decorations for Friday’s Valentine’s dance. Shortly after 6, I went to the train station to pick up the Elders to take them with me to get Anthony in St. Croix (since they could converse with him in French much better than I could). Fortunately, in spite of snow storms earlier in the week, the roads were clear until we’d gotten past the 10 hairpin turns. The family home evening lesson was taught by Andres (our “hopefully soon to be returning to activity” return missionary), on the subject he had chosen (repentance). We were thrilled to have now had two family home evenings in a row, with 4 YSA attending each one, and with Anthony having accepted the opportunity to teach the lesson next week.

A little ice can be a lot treacherous (and expensive): Friday was curious. We slid on some snow/ice while turning into the street for the mission home and the left front wheel hit the curb of the sidewalk, which seemed to throw off the car’s alignment, since the steering wheel began vibrating rather vigorously. While Dede stayed home to bake a peach/apricot cake for the Yverdon young adult Valentine’s ball, I took the car in for repairs (I’d practiced a bit on how to say things in French). They replaced the burned out headlight and windshield wipers, but told me that I’d actually broken the wheel’s rim when the car hit the curb – even at only 1-2 mph (or so it had seemed). And the front tires were so worn that there was not enough tread left to drive safely. I told them to go ahead and replace the tires, and the process took almost 3 hours at a cost of 273 Euros. But if it saved our lives, I suppose it was worth the wait and the $.

“Don’t ‘fence’ me in:” As we tried to leave for Yverdon, we’d forgotten that the gates to the parking lot are locked every night by 7 pm. We tried calling the Jones and then the Doyles on our cell phone, but each time, the calls failed. Finally, in mild desperation we went back up to our apartment to call using our “land-line.” Incredibly, the Jones were still in Geneva. Elder Jones said they’d be at our place within 10 minutes to help lift the gates off their 18” posts so we could drive to Yverdon. Meanwhile, we also called Elder Doyle to see if we could enlist his muscle, and he also said he’d come right over. The miracle came a couple of minutes later, as we were explaining the procedure to Elder Jones. A man walking his dog approached us and in French asked if we wished to leave. I told him we really would, and he said he’d go see if he could find a key to unlock the gate. Why the man had just “happened to appear” at the precise moment we needed help, so that Elders Jones, Doyle and I didn’t pull a muscle or suffer some other consequence of our deviousness, we don’t know.



Young adults at the Yverdon Valentine dance


The dance was lots of fun for the 50 or 60 young adults who came, from as far away as Heidelberg, Germany; Zurich, Switzerland; Belfort, France (by Strasbourg – about 4 hours by car). Something very special occurred while I was speaking with Philippe Huber. He had returned from a mission in Germany about 3 years ago, and had served in Kaiserslautern, where I had served as a missionary in 1965 (and had returned in the Air Force, and had served as branch president there from 1968-1970). Back in 1965, on a good Sunday we might have had 20-25 people attend services. When I returned in 1968, only 12-15 were coming. We finally built that back up to 20-25, but the outlook for growth was not exactly exhilarating. Philippe told me that now the ward is really strong: they have probably 40 or more active young adults; about 150-180 people attend services; and there are more than 20 kids just in primary. What a thrill.

Great food; great company: Saturday was a day of recovery, in addition to baking a lemon cake for the 4 pm baptism of Mlawa, from Tanzania, cookies for Ana Gomez (Yverdon), who turns 18 tomorrow, and making a giant salad for the missionary couples’ dinner with Presidents Murdock and Bonny (and their wives) at the home of former Stake President Franz Gaag. The occasion was the celebration of Sis. Gaag’s and Elder Doyle’s birthdays on Feb. 6. The dinner was incredible: green salad – brought by us. (Not needed! And the lettuce was tough); Italian Mozzarella and tomato salad (with Ital. herbs, lemon juice, olive oil, & some balsamic vinegar); potato salad (German?); macaroni salad with chicken, pineapple, celery, etc.; green beans, asparagus, & peas mixed with rice (& maybe some onions?), all lightly (at least the veggies) sautéed together; chicken breasts in bread crumbs & baked or fried – done by Bro. Gaag; good French breads. Then there was a cheese course featuring a tray with about 5 different cheeses, more bread, grapes, green olives, and a basket of cracker-type items. For dessert, we had chocolate-raspberry heart cake with a chocolate sauce flowing over it, strawberries Romanoff (with sour cream & brown sugar dips) – brought by Sis. Jones; peach crisp with vanilla ice cream – brought by Sis. Doyle; chocolate fondue sauce to drizzle over the ice cream; and gold-wrapped chocolate-noisette (hazelnut) candies in a bowl. It also turned out that Br Gaag was about 12 years old and living in Frankfurt, Germany when I served there as a missionary from July to September of 1964. He later served his mission in Austria and served both in Graz and in Vienna. He knew the Luschin family quite well. Br. Luschin was a linguist who retranslated the Book of Mormon into modern German, who taught us while I was a missionary in Frankfurt, who later served as President of the Swiss Temple, and whose widow Heidi introduced us to in Graz when we visited her home in 2006. It was a wonderful evening where all of us enjoyed the company and the stories we shared, even if we did overly enjoy the delicious foods.

We had no idea this was just the first course!