Wednesday's incredible dinner (and its beautiful chef) - based on recipes from a Swiss grocery store: mussels over rice plus a cheese and prune salad! (with milk or grape juice as a beverage)
Cookies seem to have a magical effect on young adults: We drove up to Yverdon for their Sacrament meeting and to deliver to Jenny and to Eve, hopefully, the cookies we’d made. To our great joy, both of them were at church (so we didn’t have to try to track them down later). After the Rive Gauche ward sacrament meeting, we dashed home to enjoy a pork chop and gravy (over sweet potato) dinner before going to pick up Shannon Walch and her chocolate pie for the CES broadcast by Elder Rasband. He spoke about the need for and the need to be mentors/friends.
Spanish family home evening is going to go hi-tech: A special meeting after Monday’s Spanish home evening had been requested by Br Bustamante, and it turned out to be special. He and his wife (who had accepted the calling from Bp Volpicelli to direct and supervise the Spanish family home evenings) simply wanted to express their appreciation for our support and to ask what we thought they might do to make the home evenings more beneficial. Dede wisely observed that the several children who come (ages 4-13) ought to be involved in both the lesson and the activity at each home evening, rather than being sent to another room to play (under adult supervision, of course). Her counsel was graciously accepted. When Br B asked if it might be possible to use the projector and computer for power point presentations, Elder Jones nearly fell off his chair. (Just because many of these folks seem to live in poverty in Geneva – and they sort of do, they may be quite technologically advanced). Of course they could – and then the Jones showed them the set of pictures used in teaching seminary and institute classes.
It doesn’t take long for some of our young adults to get lost: Tuesday, we drove up to Yverdon to meet the elders at 2:30 and to try to track down some likely refugees who had been baptized some years earlier. When we got to the building we thought was #10, Rue des Casernes, it turned out to house some government offices. A lady in the “prefecture’s office” told us that we had the wrong street. The street we needed was very short, and the building that might have been numbered #10 no longer existed.
Count the hairpin turns going up the mountain between Vuiteboeuf and St Croix - no wonder it was treacherous last week in the snow when I spun out
After a teaching appointment with the elders in a village called “Vuiteboeuf” (population of 477), we decided to do some more scouting to see if perhaps there was a Rue des Casernes in some other nearby village, instead of in Yverdon itself – since we’d seen a sign indicating “Caserne” on the way to St Croix.
Do YOU think the Indians survived the winter in Vuiteboeuf?
We found a little village called Chamblon that had a road named “Route des Casernes” and we were excited until we discovered there were no houses that actually faced that road. The caserne turned out to be a large Swiss Army post, and when we inquired at the guard house, the fellows joked with us but told us no non-Swiss would be there – especially not in the age range 23-41 (which our converts supposedly were). The sun (which had nearly blinded us during our search that late afternoon) went down around 7 pm, and we stopped at McD’s for dinner before going back to the Yverdon chapel to have the Center for Young Adults “open” that evening.
A “Japanese picnic” in the park (nursery room): Thursday’s “picnic” at Yverdon for the young adult family home evening was fun. Because their ward relief society was celebrating the RS birthday and using the kitchen and RS room, we set up shop in the nursery. Eve had gone to Canada for 5 weeks, Jenny G was in the RS celebration, Andres and Bastien didn’t make it, but fortunately, we were able to pick up Anthony, and Jenny Pike came on the train from Neuchâtel. We set the food on the nursery table (which is only a foot or so above the ground) – it was like eating at a Japanese restaurant. Elder Borges drew several images on the blackboard to illustrate his lesson, based on a verse in Alma 48 regarding the types of fortifications Captain Moroni established to protect a city. Our challenge was to examine what we can and should do to protect ourselves against the forces of Satan when his attacks are launched. Because of their sacrifice to get here, we gave both Anthony and Jenny Pike a ride home. We left Neuchâtel around 10:30 and got home just before midnight.
Anthony Lopez and Jenny Pike enjoyed our "Japanese picnic" and then Elders Borges and Bellamy shared 1000 words' worth of pictures
A reconstructed picnic followed by a picnic in the car: Friday, because we had forgotten to take pictures of the “Japanese” dinner, we packed up the remaining potato salad and the one sandwich left from Thursday’s FHE, and the plasticware, and headed back to Yverdon. We stopped at the COOP store to buy a giant baguette and 6 clementines to replicate the appearance of the meal, and then took a few minutes to eat dinner at their cafeteria. After Institute classes, we took the pictures. Dede then gave a brief lesson to the faithful YSA who stayed regarding their registering for newfamilysearch.org. A tender mercy was her selecting Sarah Walzer to demonstrate how to do this. Sarah had her temple recommend with her membership number, and she remembered her confirmation date. That alone might have been a wee miracle, but what impressed us even more was that a considerable amount of her family’s work had already been done, so Dede was able to demonstrate several features of the program, using actual information from real ancestors of one of the young adults present. Unfortunately, we had forgotten to bring the German chocolate cake for refreshments. But fortunately, we had the leftover potato salad and two of the six clementines and the loaf of bread, so after taking Sabrina to the Yverdon train station (around 10:30 pm), we sat in the parking lot and had our own little picnic in the car before heading home. It was 1 am, after putting away the food and reading scriptures and saying prayers before we turned in.
Institute teachers and leaders: Lyon, Geneva, and Yverdon
Seminary and Seuss (really 'Institute,' but it didn’t alliterate): Saturday morning, we managed to stagger out of bed (Dede had had some aches and pains and stomach upset, and had only slept a total of about 3 ½ hours) and go down to the Geneva Institute for training by Br. L’Hommel, the CES director for our mission. We were particularly touched by the message given by Pres Eyring to Seminary and Institute personnel, and the need to have the guidance of the Holy Ghost in our teaching and interactions with our Heavenly Father’s children. We excused ourselves from the afternoon training and walked around the block to a theater
for “Seussical the Musical” (for which we’d purchased tickets before we knew about the training session). The actors were young people age 6 -16, one of whom was Parker Bryan (age 11) from our Geneva 
Ward. The play was indeed fun.Elder & Sister Doyle aren't the only kids who enjoyed
"Seussical the Musical"
No comments:
Post a Comment