Week of 16 May 2010:

Every yard should have a golden rain tree
(or maybe a tree that rains gold)





Rive Gauche Ward’s “reincarnation” will be Spanish: Sunday afternoon in the Rive Gauche Ward sacrament meeting, Stake President Bonny closed the meeting with his remarks and testimony, during which he informed the congregation that in two weeks, they would convert the ward into a Spanish ward so that all those who wished (and the many new people who come to investigate the Church) could hear the gospel in their native language. That would be about 75% of those who regularly attend. As we spoke with some afterwards, we learned that the Bustamante family wants to attend the French ward, since they want their children to integrate into Swiss society, and they too need to learn better French. Fr Gillet was quite sad, since we’ve had such an integrated international ward, with Spanish, French, Portuguese, and other languages represented; we’ve gotten along very well, and we’ve had great experiences together. He’s been the best ward mission leader we’ve ever seen. Following the meeting, there was another birthday celebration for about 10 of the ward whose birthdays occur in May, including Dede. Songs were sung in 4 languages, and many pastries were consumed. Monday morning, Dede and I both awoke with sore throats (we suspect either Anthony or Elder Robinson from last Thursday’s family home evening might be the culprits). As a result, we stayed home until evening. Dede baked treats for the young adults for Friday, and cookies for Sister Bustamante’s birthday, which we took to the Spanish family home evening. Meanwhile, I worked to catch up on the blog for the past two weeks. Happily, it was possible to modify and then include a “Smilebox” story (mostly furnished with pictures taken by Elder Doyle) with nearly 50 slides from the trip to the Cailler chocolate factory and the Gruyères cheese factory afterwards. After the FHE, Dede helped Sisters Ortiz, Alcozar (Esperanza), and Gauthmann (Sonia) with “Newfamilysearch” so they could prepare names for Saturday’s temple trip. That took until after 10 pm, but we made it home before 11.





Sister Murdock and the Asay's join us for lunch

Amazing car technology (do they do this at home?) Wednesday morning at 8:30, I drove to the Renault dealership near the town of Gex to pick up Elder Doyle, who had dropped his car off for its standard service. He was amazed that they were able to scan his “key card” and learn things such as the total number of kilometers the car has driven, the amount of fuel still in the tank, and maybe even the tire pressure. After breakfast (cooked muesli), we picked up E & S Doyle to take them to French class (since he’s our instructor). After class, the senior couples and Sister Murdock piled into the Murdock’s new van to go into Geneva for lunch at “Chez ma Cousine,” a place where they serve half a chicken and fries for a reasonable price. One-way streets made it an adventure, and after we finally found the place again, and eventually a parking spot, we discovered that they were so busy, they couldn’t serve us – without a reservation in advance, we’d have to come back another day. We survived by finding a nearby cafeteria.

Home to Haiti, and miraculous protection for us:
We were really happy to have Br and Sis Crisinel (who will replace us in August) come to see what family home evening is like in Yverdon. Before it started, we got a very surprising phone call from Katiana. We let Anthoni take the call because he speaks better French than we do, and he told us that she had returned to Haiti, from where she was calling. (When we got home, we verified that the international call had indeed originated in Haiti.)



We enjoyed a stir-fry for the young adult family home evening dinner



It was about 12:30 am when we got home, and then we stayed up another hour to email Jenny Pike (who will travel to Vienna on Friday) with places to see that we’d forgotten to mention while we were giving her a ride home to Neuchâtel. As we had arrived in our parking lot and were trying to decide how far or near to park, we didn’t hear a car zooming up behind us and then passing us on the right, just as we were about to make a right turn into a parking spot. It was a miracle that we had only turned the wheel but hadn’t begun moving forward; else Dede would surely have been killed when he’d have plowed right into her door. Life can be so fragile – and we tried to express our gratitude for the Lord’s protection.

While most of the girls visited, the guys made cards for missionaries serving from the Lausanne Stake:





Noemi helps the fellows make cards


Mostly the guys cut out pictures from grocery store ads and local newspapers – or just out of construction paper – to build cards to be sent to the 6 missionaries serving from our 3-Lakes region. Lorenzo actually made a cut out of a white shirt that he decorated with a 3” long red necktie in which he had carefully cut a hole in the shape of the Swiss cross.




Lorenzo's cards to send to missionaries - we're trying not to envy his artistry







This card says "Use this to take your friends to church"




Dede’s “cookie bars” (made with butterscotch drops and muesli – because we didn’t have enough oatmeal) were again a hit. Things wound down around 11, and we finished cleanup by 11:30. We gave Eric a ride home to Lausanne, and then took Laetitia (a young French intern with Fr Gillet’s architectural firm) back to Geneva to the Volpicelli’s, where she is staying for the summer. That got us home around 1:30 am.

In Europe, getting gas after 10 pm is not a trivial pursuit: After recovering from the past two late nights, Dede began baking again: this time a lemon pie for the Jones’ anniversary and then two batches of cookies for young adults in Yverdon whose birthdays were this week. We had a great visit with Elder and Sister Jones Saturday evening. As we left for home about 10 pm, we realized we didn’t have enough gas to get to and from Yverdon in the morning. Rather than buy gas on Sunday, even from an automated pump system, we decided to drive into Switzerland to see if any stations were open. This is because we’d learned that automated pumps at the French stations (operated by large grocery chains – LeClerc or Carrefour) didn’t recognize our credit or our debit cards – even though during regular hours, our cards work for the attendants in a small booth. we’d learned that automated pumps at the French stations (operated by large grocery chains – LeClerc or Carrefour) didn’t recognize our credit or our debit cards – even though during regular hours, our cards work for the attendants in a small booth. Fortunately, there’s a BP station only a few km away, and when we tried the card, it not only worked, but the machine somehow realized the card was American, and so all the instructions automatically came through in English. With $20 worth of diesel fuel, we had enough to travel the 200 km to Yverdon and back. So we slept well Saturday night.






Lemon pie for Elder and Sister Jones' anniversary