Even with braces like mine, someday Mayla Tschumi will walk
Prayers work, if you listen: The weather was sunny and mild, and we made it to Yverdon just in time for their sacrament meeting. It was a good feeling to be greeted by members as their friends rather than as strangers walking into the chapel. After the meeting, we gave Bastien his 11 birthday cookies (we had had to test 1 for “quality control”). Back in Geneva, because this will be the last Sunday of the Rive Gauche ward’s existence – before the creation of a Spanish ward – Bp Volpicelli concluded the meeting with some remarks that included the story of a man who hadn’t been very religious, who went mountain climbing and slipped and fell into a crevasse, dangling at the end of his rope, with no one around to help him. He prayed for help after admitting his sins, and a voice told him “cut your rope.” He didn’t believe it, so he continued to pray; each time, the message that came was the same: “cut your rope.” Unwilling to do that, he dangled there until he froze to death. Once on the other side of the veil, he asked the Lord why he hadn’t provided some real help. The Lord then showed him that firm ground was less than a foot below him, and that had he obeyed and cut the rope, he’d have been able to walk out of the mountains on his own. So often it seems we want to do things our own way, and we don’t realize that the Lord has a better idea. That evening, we went to see the Newman family. Br Newman, our High Priest group leader in Geneva greeted us, and told us he’s surviving, though he looked a bit haggard. For about a year now, he’s been the CEO of Transocean, the world's largest offshore drilling contractor, whose company leased the oil rig to British Petroleum that exploded in April, killing 11 men and generating an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that may be the worst in history. He leaves tomorrow to participate in the company’s memorial services for the men who died, and then on Wednesday goes back before the US Senate to testify about his company’s role. A tender mercy was Sister Newman’s telling us that they have felt tangible support from the Lord as a result of prayers being offered in their behalf by family and friends. As she observed, it’s too bad it may take a catastrophe to get people to bond together in prayer for one another. So often, we wonder if our prayers for friends in need make any difference, and in this case, they seem to be efficacious.
Unintended consequences: Jeff and Allie told us that baby Abby is starting physical therapy to strengthen her muscles: to avoid “sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)” parents have been warned not to let babies sleep on their tummies. But the result of that is a 600-fold increase in muscle problems and delayed development. But the doctors say that Abby has no signs of autism, which is a great blessing.
Pentecost Monday: Monday for France and Switzerland was “Pentecost Monday” = a holiday that shuts down all stores and keeps our parking gate closed. The ward was having a final party along with family home evening (that's where the first picture, of Mayla, was taken).
Harry Valdivia (on the left)and his family
We were met by a young man who seemed very glad to greet us. It was Harry Valdivia, now 19. His medication for depression had been stabilized, and he is able to study and perform well at school. He was thrilled, and so were we. This was a real tender mercy for us, since when we’d visited him a couple of times at the psychiatric hospital, we hadn’t known if things would work out for him. He also promised to bring his family to church regularly, and to participate in Institute classes and activities.
Speaking Chinese on a Geneva tram: Thursday at District meeting, Sister Smith related a little miracle that she and Sister Allred had experienced. Having been impressed with a comment Dede had made at the previous District meeting, she looked around their apartment for cards containing an invitation to view testimonies of Christ that they could give to people they met that day. The only one she could find was printed in Chinese. But she put it in her purse anyway. As they were on their way to a rendezvous, they got onto a tram and came face-to-face with a Chinese family. It also “just happened” that Sister Smith’s family had spent time in Taiwan, and she spoke a little bit of Chinese from those childhood years. She conversed with the family, and in the few minutes available before the family got off the tram, she was able to give them the card and invite them to learn more (interesting how these coincidences “happen” to occur so frequently to missionaries).
Unbelievable: 9 desserts for 20 of us after Institute
“Let them eat cake…” Marie Antoinette would have been proud of us: The activity after Friday’s Institute classes was a “soirée gateaux,” where 8 of the 18 young adults had brought a cake or cookies or fruit tarts to sample. Somehow, we polished off about half the pastries. Sister Vigliotti had not just made two tarts using cherries from her garden, but she made an extra one just for us. We were very glad that Serge was able to take Lorenzo and Jenny to the train station to go back to Neuchâtel, since we had to leave for Lyon the next morning at 7:40 am. We got home shortly after midnight.
THE TRIP TO LYON WITH THE SENIOR MISSIONARIES
"Oh deer, what can the matter be?"
Aligator waits for dinner to walk in (like Paul quoted Indians saying the white man waits for roast duck to fly in)
We can’t always help: An interesting phone call came to President Murdock as we were en route to Lyon with all the senior missionary couples. A missionary called to ask how they could help a “golden” investigator who with her two children needed to escape an abusive husband. President M wisely asked the following questions (and received the following answers): Do you have enough money to rent her an apartment for a month? (NO) Do you have the expertise to arrange for her to get the legal documentation she needs to be able to work in Europe? (NO) Would you be able to let her and her children stay in your apartment? (Absolutely NOT) His answer to the missionary was: then there is NOTHING you can do, except to pray for her and the children; it’s an ecclesiastical not a missionary problem. The only other thing you might do would be to contact the local bishop and ask him if he might be able to help her find temporary shelter. It is then up to him to do what he feels appropriate. Even though we may want to help, sometimes that’s beyond our capacity, and so we need to go and do the things we can. I very much appreciated his calmness, cheerfulness, and clarity of thought, and hope to be able to give similarly appropriate counsel when needed.
What a great way to take the family on a tour of the park
What's our body for? We walked nearly 5 miles through a beautiful park in Lyon (Sister Badger uses a pedometer) under wonderful weather – a mild breeze but not too hot. When someone observed what great exercise we’d had, someone else quoted Winston Churchill as having said that the purpose of the body is to move the brain from one place to another.
Dinner at Le Grand Café (note the salmon/cod wrap)
Our lunch was at a place called “Le Grand Café.” Most of us ordered a “menu” of the day, with a Lyonnaise salad (having croutons, chunks of bacon, and a warm, sweet-sour balsamic dressing) followed by a fish plate that featured a mixture of large pieces of salmon and cod pressed together and wrapped in a phyllo dough covering. It was delicious, as well as being beautifully presented. No wonder Lyon is the gastronomic capital of France.
Inside Notre Dame de Fourvière (Lyon)
A couple of interesting stories that ought to be retold: After lunch, we battled heavy Saturday traffic and wound our way up to the magnificent Notre Dame cathedral of Lyon, atop a hill overlooking this second largest city in France (Marseille is its nearest competitor, and the ranking changes periodically). The cathedral was built in the late 1800’s in gratitude for the city’s being spared in a major war around 1870. A couple of things during the ride home: President M told us that a friend of theirs, Steve Kohlert (whom we’d known when he was mission president in Cleveland, Ohio a few years ago, and whose parents had been in the Oregon City, Oregon Ward when I was a teenager), had arranged with another good friend of ours, Karl Andersen (who, in addition to being in charge of seminaries and Institutes for northern Ohio –and driving 3 hours each way every month to train us – while I was on the high council with similar responsibility – and who is a former stake president, regional representative of the Twelve Apostles and is now a stake patriarch – and has written a scholarly work entitled “Joseph Smith’s Kirtland”), to give President and Sister Murdock and their family a special tour of Kirtland that he called the “John Murdock” tour [I think this is one of the longest sentences I’ve written in quite a while]. Among other things, they were shown a somewhat decrepit old church, in the basement of which were rows of pictures of all the ministers who had preached there since the early 1800’s, including Sidney Rigdon and even eventual US President Warren G. Harding. A brother of John Murdock was among them, whose family had such strong ties to the Campbellite religion that when John’s wife died at childbirth, he asked Joseph and Emma to care for their twins, since his own family refused to have anything to do with him (Joseph and Emma’s own twins had died the same day). One twin became the first “martyr of the Restoration,” having died due to illness that followed exposure when Joseph was dragged out of his home by a mob. John himself was tarred and feathered because he had supported Joseph. Another interesting story President Murdock told us concerned a legal case that he himself had worked on some years ago, before he was hired as President of the OC Tanner Corporation in Salt Lake City. He was to represent the petroleum company AMOCO against a lawsuit contesting the rights to subterranean oil and gas in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. The stakes were high, involving perhaps trillions of dollars. The main question was the thinking of the people who wrote wills and deeds back in the 1850’s – 1880’s in these states – their concepts of minerals (the plaintiffs argued that since oil was not considered valuable back then, the term “mineral” didn’t apply to oil or gas). In addition to hiring an expert historian from Ohio, the law firm decided to hire Leonard Arrington, the foremost authority in Utah, both to serve as expert witnesses. In his law firm’s building, instead of having a separate room as a library, the books were on shelves on various floors. One night about 2:30 am, while President Murdock was taking a break, sipping a soda and leaning against a row of books three or so floors down from his office, he picked out a book and began to leaf through its pages. To his astonishment, it contained wills and deeds recorded back in the late 1800’s that established the thinking of the people in those days. When his company presented this information to the federal judge, the lawsuit was summarily dismissed, without their ever having to go to trial. This just confirmed that we’re not the only ones who receive little (or large) miracles in our lives. We got home around 8:30 pm and prepared for the next day’s adventures.
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