Week of 18 April 2010:

Warning: a boa is digesting his dinner (from chapter 1, "Le Petit Prince")



Beautiful frilly pink tulips at the Yverdon chapel, and the pansies aren't bad either






A volcano wasn't in their plans. We had planned to go to Yverdon, but with the need to talk with Sister Jones about leading Friday’s service project and to coordinate getting the materials from Sister Newman, both of whom we hoped would attend the Geneva ward, we decided to go there instead. The eruption of a volcano in Iceland (whose name was too long to pronounce) had put a cloud of dust and ash over Europe such that airline flights to or from the US have been grounded for three days already – so several of the people in church were parents who had come for the blessing or baptism of a grandchild. Rive Gauche Ward also had its monthly birthday celebration for those lucky ones whose birthdays were from mid-March to mid-April. That evening, we drove out to the Newman’s to pick up the materials for the Friday service project in Yverdon.

Even small miracles are important: Monday at District meeting, we watched part of a DVD entitled “On the Lord’s Errand,” about the life of President Thomas S. Monson. It was very touching, and we felt strongly an additional spiritual witness of the reality of his prophetic calling. We hope to be able to hear and respond to the influence and promptings of the Holy Ghost in our own lives, especially as opportunities to serve or to help another person arise. We also learned that not only were significant materials lacking for the service project, but also that Sister Jones did not have them at their apartment. Dede was impressed to call Sister Newman again and ask her to search once more for the missing items. When she did, the materials turned up in a bag beneath other things that were to be donated. Her finding the things saved us at least a full day of searching, buying replacement materials, and then cutting fabric – and we really just didn’t have an extra day to use in that way.













Except for the one in the woods, the cows are lined up for inspection; the cows' "inspector general" is a heron

Elder Jones told me something interesting (while he was preparing a lesson for the young adults): President Joseph Fielding Smith had served his mission in Great Britain, but although he had distributed more than 10,000 brochures and many copies of the Book of Mormon, he had not had ANY baptisms. President Monson had not even had the opportunity to serve a mission because of World War II. It seems we sometimes only count success in terms of tangible outcomes, such as converts baptized, forgetting that true conversion comes by the Holy Ghost, not by the persuasive powers of a missionary. It is NOT our work that convinces; it is the Lord who speaks to the heart of a listener.




Monday turned out to be "Let's wear purple" day, even without a memo

Tuesday evening in Yverdon, we watched a DVD Heidi had sent us regarding North American archeological evidences of the Book of Mormon. The types of fortifications attributed to the Hopewell Indians, who were finally exterminated shortly after 400 AD in the area of Southern Ohio, were quite interesting: for example, in some places, 30-foot high mounds of earth had been used to enclose hilltop “places of refuge” with highly constricted single places of entry so that an attacking army would repeatedly have to pass thru narrow passages between earthen walls (perhaps topped with timbers and sharpened pickets) from which positions the defenders could hurl rocks and shoot arrows at their attackers.

The dinner Dede prepared for the young adult home evening Thursday in Yverdon was chicken-broccoli casserole, salad, and a lemon cake over a base of crushed raspberry. We met a young lady named Katiana, who had been baptized in Haiti this past December and who had just come to Switzerland in March, following the devastating earthquake in her city in January. She had found the church in Yverdon and had even come the prior week to Institute class.

Birthday missionaries receive snicker doodle cookies and a new toothbrush
Friday morning we were up at 6 am (after getting home after 11 pm Thursday) to go back to Yverdon for a missionary zone conference with President and Sister Murdock. Among other things, President Murdock challenged the missionaries to devote 4 hours per day to finding new investigators, and to plan in advance how to accomplish that goal (a goal without a plan is worthless). He told them: You will not lose self-esteem if you don’t achieve your goal, provided you’ve done all that you can. It’s when you know you could have done more but didn’t that you lose self-esteem and begin to fabricate excuses. After the conference, we drove the 95 km down to Geneva to pick up Sister Jones and bring her back to Yverdon for the young adult council meeting, institute class, and the service project which she had graciously agreed to lead. The institute class was taught by Stake President and Sister Maerki. There were 25 young single adults in attendance plus two young married couples and four missionaries. After a lively group discussion about friendship, the Maerki’s moved the conversation to progressing from friendship to courtship. They even shared personal stories and read from their personal journals regarding that day when they told each other “I really like you.” I wish I had better been able to understand the French, because it felt as though the counsel and encouragement they gave our young adults was tremendously important and inspired. The class went until 9:30 pm, but no one lost interest. Then we shifted to the room across the hall to build dolls, under Sister Jones and Dede’s tutelage. The project went until a bit past 11 pm, and most of the dolls still were not completed. Pizza kept everyone going, and the kids cheerfully pitched in to clean up afterwards. We got home shortly after 1 am.

Sisters Hinman & Jones, & Geraldine,
dollmakers extraordinaire





The guys help make dolls for the children, too










Saturday was a day of recovery, after which we did some “shopping.” The lining of my wool suit (now 15 or so years old) was totally shredded; the black suit had two iron-on patches where my wallet had worn thru the fabric and where the seam in the seat was splitting. And the pants of the green suit were getting so thin that we feared they would tear any day – and almost certainly wouldn’t make it these final 3 ½ months of our mission. Thanks to a suggestion from Elder Doyle, the first stop was at the mission office; down in the basement laundry room, discarded missionary clothing is available for free.



Elder Hinman in the mission's used clothing department

If the suit fits, wear it! - and so I am
We looked at the three or four suits that were there. One didn’t look too bad, and it had two pair of pants, one of which was in good shape. The miracle was that the pants fit me exactly, and so did the coat. Some salt stains from winter snow treatment were rather easily washed away. This saved us having to buy a suit at European prices. Other shopping targets were met, and we finished our travels around 7 pm. Dinner was good, if perhaps unusual: 7” pan-fried sardines, Wednesday’s stove-top stuffing, Thursday’s salad, and ratatouille. A thirty minute walk at dusk (9 pm-9:30) helped us get a bit of exercise.