Week of 21 February 2010:

Alps near Lausanne have their toes in Lake Geneva



We find friends in faraway places: We drove up to Fribourg, mainly to learn the name of Valentine Ruppen’s fiancé, but also to visit the branch, see recently baptized Deus (who, we heard, has to return to Tanzania) and generally to offer support to the young adults. As we walked in, we saw Elder Behunin and learned they were having their annual Branch Conference, presided by our friend President Buhlmann. Also there were other YSA from the stake: Michael (Stake Exec Sec) and Bastien Cannonica, Br and Sis Gomez (High Council) from Yverdon, Christian (Stake YM Pres) & Aurélie Buhlmann from Lausanne and Sabrina & Barbara Keck’s mom (Stake RS 1st C). We also met a man who had been on a week’s ski trip with his cousin, a Br Bill Burgi, who is serving with his wife at BYU teaching family history, but who would like to serve in his Swiss homeland if possible. They also have had YSA CES experience in Arizona. We will certainly forward this information to President Murdock. After the meeting, we got some information from Deus, whereby we might be able to write a letter of support that might help him be able to remain here (he fears the Muslims will kill him if he returns, since he has been a very outspoken Christian). {The name of Valentine’s fiancé is David.}



New bikes for the Yverdon elders




A son-in-law worth his weight in gold computers: During the Monday evening French class and family home evening, I tried to help Elder Jones, whose laptop computer keeps freezing every 10 minutes or so. Various attempts only increased the window to about 15-20 minutes, so we decided to call Dave Perez when we returned home (we’d alerted him earlier in the day). The Jones brought their computer to our apartment around 10 pm, and Dave helped us from Provo by taking control of their computer remotely. After 45 minutes, his best judgment was that there was no virus or other software malfunction, but rather that probably the hard drive was overheating (it’s a low-end Dell – about $400-500, rather than the $1000 - $2000 needed for a high quality one) and had damaged the circuitry. The hope is that they can “baby” it along until they finish their mission in June. He also told us to turn off our laptops whenever we will be gone for 3 or more hours.

We finally beat the computer, but not without a fight: Wednesday, Dede dropped Shannon Walch and me at the mission home for Elder Doyle’s French class, while she went on down to the Institute to help a new convert Janette Chango prepare names to take to the temple this Saturday. Unfortunately the lady overslept, but Dede was able to help the sister missionaries and then bring them to the mission home as our class ended. After taking Shannon back to CERN, where she would attend more physics conference and visit two potential apartments, we did our grocery shopping for the week and then returned to the Institute to try again with Sister C. Unfortunately, just as they were about to print out the temple ordinance request form, the computer balked: first, it simply refused to print – anything. Then it told them that there was some kind of incompatibility with the program Acrobat Reader-9. Finally, we had to open “new.familysearch” on the other computer, print the request to a “pfd file”, copy the file to a thumb drive, transfer the file from the thumb drive to the new computer, and then print (having solved the no-print problem encountered earlier). The other computer wouldn’t print anything either – until I finally noticed (in the French menu labels) that the printer command to print “offline” had been checked. By un-checking that line, things worked once more. Instead of an hour – 90 minutes, the process had taken nearly 4 hours – so we got home around 10:30 pm.

Fog, clouds, fish head soup, and werewolves: Bastien did a great job with the home evening lesson Thursday in Yverdon. He had asked us to bring a list of all the Yverdon young single adults (about 28 of them), and after sharing scriptures about how the Savior directed us to find His lost sheep, Bastien gave us each a copy of the list and challenged us to bring one of these YSA to FHE next week. After FHE, we took Anthony back to his apartment in St. Croix and then headed home. The tender mercies involved here were that the brakes on the car were screeching because the pads had worn terribly, but we couldn’t get an appointment until a week from Friday. But by down-shifting, they only had to be applied occasionally during the 2000 foot descent. The other tender mercy was that we made it safely up and back in spite of very dense clouds we had to drive through. It was interesting to suddenly go from a clear night sky to total fog, and then back to clear skies, along the hairpin turns and in between. Sometimes we could only see a few meters worth of dashed white lines ahead of us in the roadway. This probably happened a dozen or more times both going up and coming back from St Croix.

A mighty cook (left) and her assistant in a tiny kitchen



Friday, we learned how to make “fish-head soup” with Sister Ortiz (from Ecuador). We went shopping with her to buy some yucca root and some very green bananas; she already had the salmon thawing. Dede took careful notes through the whole process. Br Ortiz arrived just in time, and we had a great lunch. We’d never tried scraping meat from the head of a fish, but because it had been well cooked, it was easy to do, and it tasted just fine. Dede asked Sister Ortiz if people really ate the eye of the salmon, to which Sister O replied “some do.” When asked if she did, she said she didn’t, but her husband does.


















Are we really going to eat this?? . . . . .I can't believe something in my soup bowl is looking at me

By removing it and mixing it with the vegetables, other pieces of salmon, and the lime-drenched sliced onion and tomato topping, I was able to eat it without knowing where it was. After institute classes, the young adults played a game called “Werewolf,” a French/Swiss version of a game called “Mafia” in the US. Each participant was given an identity card which was to be placed face down on the floor in front of us so no one else would know who we were. Several of us were simple villagers; one was a hunter; one was a sorceress with special powers to kill or to bring back from the dead; one was a little girl who could see the werewolves in the dark; and two or three were designated as werewolves. There was also a judge/mayor. The narrator then told us to close our eyes for the “night,” during which the werewolves could designate people to “kill.” Then when the “morning” came and we were told to open our eyes, those “killed” had to leave the group. The rest of the group then had to discuss among themselves who might be the werewolf. The action repeated until the werewolf was identified or the people were all “killed.” It was quite a fun game, and would have been a lot more fun had we been able to understand the French. Another tender mercy was that in spite of rain all the way home, when we got to the parking lot in Ferney, the rain stopped and we were able to walk to the apartment building without getting wet.

Yverdon young adults try to identify the "werewolf"




Swiss Mission senior couples at the temple



Temple encounters of the best kind: Saturday, we went with the senior missionary couples to the temple. Sister Murdock’s back didn’t permit them to make the trip, but they wished us bon voyage as we left the mission home. It was the first trip for the Hansen’s and the Asay’s. What a joy it is to see our friends in the temple! We were again warmly greeted by all three members of the temple presidency – at different times while we were there. A young lady who took pictures of our group with each of about 6 cameras was from California, but she is a BYU student who is taking a semester off to study hotel management in Sion, near Martigny. She promised to look up our recent convert Ciara, and also Ruvimbo, who seems to have gone inactive, both of whom are presumably at her school there. What an amazing “coincidence” that she would “happen” to be standing in front of the temple at the moment our group came out for pictures.