Timing is everything (especially when it comes to wee miracles): Sunday morning we drove up to Neuchâtel. Similar to Bastien Bonny mentioning Thursday in our Council meeting that some of the young single adults feel isolated – everyone says hello, but then no one includes them in conversation after that – Aude mentioned that they’d been advised NOT to participate in YSA activities – or dances – since they’d recently been married (in the temple –and thus would be good examples for other YSA). Dede’s wise advice was for them to form their own little group of young marrieds. We then drove down to Yverdon to give the missionaries copies of the flyer we’d produced. Fortunately, we arrived in time to find them. As we were about to leave, we realized Dede had left her leather jacket in Neuchâtel. Even though it was now 12:40 pm, and we had no phone numbers with us for any of the YSA in Neuchâtel, we decided to drive the 30 minutes back up there in the hopes that someone might still be at the chapel. A great tender mercy was that as we arrived, the Canonica family was just getting ready to leave. Bastien C had found the jacket in the chapel and was hanging it up as Dede walked in. Had we been 5minutes later, we’d have missed them and would have had to wait until Thursday at least to recover the jacket. Interestingly, things certainly didn’t have to happen that way, but they worked out incredibly well for us. The extra trip (a total of 313 km = 200 miles - that day) made us miss all but the last 50 minutes of the Rive Gauche ward sacrament meeting (since we slept through the alarm we’d set to allow for a brief nap)..
Outdoor chess anyone?
Would you believe this is the door to our humble missionary apartment? - Neither would we
A lost parking stub may not seem like a miracle, but … : After Monday’s French class, we made hotel reservations for Sisters Hanson and Gutherie from Frankfurt, who were coming by train to give us some additional training to be YSA Center directors. We picked them up at the train station at 4:45. Another tender mercy involved the loss of the parking stub. I checked all my pockets several times, even taking things out one by one and putting them on the front seat of the car – to no avail. We wondered if somehow I’d left the “caisse” (the payment machine) without retrieving the stub. Dede suggested looking in the trunk to see if by any chance it had been dropped when I helped load a suitcase. As I came around the back of the car, there it was on the ground; sure enough, when I picked up the suitcase, the stub had slipped out of my hand. The reason it was important to find the thing is that we’d learned at the airport that without being able to use a validated stub, one has to find an administration office and pay cash; otherwise, the gate will not open to allow an exit (and the drivers lined up behind us would be less than happy). We shared dinner with the sisters before taking them down to the Geneva YSA Center to see our Spanish family home evening (there were 38 people there, of whom 15 were not members of the church, plus ourselves, the Jones, and the elders – who are members).
Why 8? With the sisters, we strolled up to St Pierre cathedral on Tuesday to visit the 2000 yr-old archeological site. We were impressed with the remains of 8-sided baptismal fonts – (different ones built over several centuries) – perhaps related to circumcision at 8 days or baptism of children after age 8. That evening, we drove to Yverdon to meet with President Maerki. The sisters provided some training, and President Maerki had a few questions. We felt a spirit of cooperation and love, and hope to show that we can have someone wander in if we do have our Yverdon center open on Tuesdays.
How about that!
The excavated 4th century baptistry (left) is much larger than the 7th - 8th century baptistry
A model showing the 7th - 8th century
8-sided baptistry
Sisters Hanson & Gutherie think they're ready to depart at 8 am
Sisters Badger & Hanson at the Lyon Center
An unexpected 325 km drive to Lyon and back: Wednesday we met the sisters at 8 am to take them to the train station for a trip to Lyon, where they would train the Badgers plus a couple from Grenoble, where a new center may be starting. On the way home, we thought it wise to phone them to verify that they’d found the correct platform/track and had safely gotten underway. They didn’t answer at first, but soon returned the call, only to tell us that the French train workers were on strike, so no trains were running. We offered to drive them to Lyon, but asked if we could eat breakfast first. Soon they called again to say that they could take a bus. But then about 15 minutes later they called once more to say that the bus wouldn’t get them there on time, and to ask if we could be good Samaritans, as we’d previously offered. This was also missionary transfer day, and several were stranded in one place or another. We arrived at the Lyon Center for YSA about 12:30. Miraculously, I waited in a bus slot until a parking spot opened up – and one did, just as a bus came around the corner to drop off passengers where I’d been waiting (Dede and the sisters had gone upstairs to visit with the Badgers).
We took the high road home from Lyon
An amazing (literally) family home evening lesson: Thursday’s lesson (in French) had to do with ways to tell if impressions we receive are from the Holy Ghost. We then set up a labyrinth so someone blindfolded would have to choose which voices to listen to (also in French) to get through the maze. If the person followed instructions from one of the two “wrong” voices, he would run into the back of a chair.
To include or not to include: En route to Yverdon on Friday, we discussed a question raised by some of our young adults regarding whether recently married young adults were permitted to participate in our family home evening or the activities after Institute classes. Dede identified a possible reason for the likely church policy that would discourage their participation: older young singles might feel hurt (or jealous, or ‘defective’) having to associate with younger people who were already happily married – to the extent that they themselves would stop participating. Sometimes the immediate presence of a positive example (the happiness of the married couple) might induce an overwhelming sense of inferiority among a struggling young adult. On the other hand, now we have two young couples (Pierre and Dana in Lausanne and Jeff and Aude in Neuchâtel) who feel excluded from the very group where they were active just a few months ago.
The artists and their works
The activity that evening was called “You and Me and all my pencils.” Sabrina separated everyone into pairs with the instructions that each person in the pair was to draw a picture of the other person (simultaneously drawing while modeling). After about 20 minutes or so, the pictures were collected and taped to the white board and the whole group reassembled to try to identify the person represented in each picture. It was a blast. Meanwhile, we went around to each team and distributed desserts – which were very well received.En fin (that’s French): After a busy day Saturday, we turned in tired but happy after another great week. Both of us are feeling melancholy about having to leave the mission in just 3 ½ more months.
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