Check out the curved spoon that came with Sister Hinman's hot chocolate (the quiche has chunks of salmon and sweet pepper)
Even a prophet doesn’t get between the Lord and the person who needs to receive the revelation: In the Geneva ward combined priesthood and relief society meeting, Br Kimball stressed the need for each of us to avoid becoming “lazy saints” and simply waiting for the prophet to tell us what to do before we act; rather, we should do the things necessary to get revelations; based on our lives and attitudes, we should develop the faith to expect revelation and knowledge to come to us. Interestingly, he related a couple of stories that confirm how the Lord expects us to seek and receive revelation for our own areas of action and not defer questions to the prophet. The first came from his own missionary journal (some 20-30 years ago), where he had repeated a story told the missionaries assembled in the Provo Training Center by Thomas S Monson, then an apostle: Elder Monson was in the process of assigning elders to their various missions when young elder Kimball’s name came up. When he realized that this was the grandson of the current prophet, Spencer W Kimball, he asked the prophet if he had any preferences where his grandson should be sent to serve. President Kimball smiled and told him to pray about it and then send him where the Lord felt he ought to serve. He would not intervene and rob Elder Monson of the need to get his own revelation.
Birth of a Spanish Ward in Geneva: That afternoon, when we returned to the chapel, there were probably 300 people in attendance, waiting to see what would happen. What happened was that President Bonny read a letter in which he indicated that their decision to develop a Spanish-speaking ward had been ongoing since last December. They had had consultations with Area authorities (Elder Kopischke was quite excited about the possibility for people to learn the gospel in their own language), and when the plan was ready, they obtained approval from the First Presidency of the Church. He then asked us to thank the two bishops who were being released. Immediately after that, he asked a vote of appreciation for ALL the ward officers in both wards, who are also released. (Wow!! – That will make things interesting for next Sunday, with no leadership in place.) The two new bishops were then sustained. Each part of this process was translated first into Spanish and then into Portuguese.
A Paris Mission tradition = writing encouraging slogans on sweats for a new elder (Bastien C), who departs next week
Finally, we’ve meet the requirements for recognition as a “Center for Young Adults:” After spending half the day Friday working on potential hotel reservations in Madrid and Bilbao, Spain, around 2 pm, I felt rather strongly impressed to quit doing that and get all the paperwork ready to give to President Maerki that evening in our YSA Advisory Council meeting – and also copy everything to a flash drive so that he could have an electronic version to modify as he saw fit. He will need to make the formal application for certification, and so he needed copies of the prior 4 months’ reports, and a letter answering numerous questions, including a request for funding specific items of equipment to furnish the center. Getting everything together, printed, photocopied, and copied electronically took until time to leave at 5:30 (a tender mercy - to have been prompted to change gears). Another tender mercy was that the car behaved well on our drive north (we’d asked earlier in the week to get it serviced, since the fuel filter again seems to have clogged – as it had when Rob and Crystal were here over Christmas – and which had resulted in the car’s losing power and then the engine quitting, with no apparent reason – which on a busy freeway when we’re travelling at 80 mph can be rather distressing – but the earliest that we could get an appointment was 2 weeks down the road).
Bastien C and Jérémie roll out tortillas for the burrito fest
Burritos and some little miracles: After the final Institute session for the year (a test for the students), the 14 remaining YSA gathered in the kitchen to make burritos. They even made their own tortillas, using equal amounts of water, milk, and oil, and then adding enough flour to make a non-sticky dough that could be rolled very thin before frying in a dry pan (sprinkled with some salt to keep the tortilla from sticking).
Roxanne mashes beans the old fashioned way (she washed her hands first, we hope)
Roxanne and Serge hand-mashed canned white beans in a large pot to make a paste, and the other kids chopped onions, tomatoes and red, yellow and green sweet peppers – or fried hamburger and onions to put into the bean paste. The burritos were delicious, and we all stuffed ourselves. A wee miracle occurred during cleanup afterwards. I’d lost my magnetized name tag the night before and had not found it in searching the car, the parking lot, the McDonald’s restaurant, or the chapel.
It's called "McDo" in Europe, but we didn't expect to see it in lights
An impression came to me to look in the box of plastic ware in the young adult closet – and there it was, upside down in the bottom of the box. Apparently, as I’d lifted the box the night before, the edge had caught the name tag and pulled it off my shirt pocket without my noticing. After we dropped Eric off in Lausanne, Dede suggested we pull over and plug in the Magellan GPS in order to find the best route home. When we did so, it turned out we were just a block from where we needed to make a sharp right turn. The last time we’d taken Eric home, we’d gone considerably farther down the same hill and had gotten lost in one of the Lausanne suburbs. We were very happy to be able to head home without any further complications, and we rolled into our parking lot soon after 1 am. We unplugged the phones so we could sleep in and recover somewhat.
The Doyles grace this image of the
symbol of Geneva, seat of the
Protestant Reformation
("After darkness, light")
Ramses gave his permission for a picture with him
Art is in the eye of the painter before it’s in the eye of the beholder:
This painting, from the late 1400s,
suggests it was harder for the Apostle Peter to walk on Lake Geneva than on the Sea of Galilee
By 2 pm Saturday, we were ready when the Doyles came by to pick us up and take us to the Geneva Museum of Art. This is something Dede had wanted to visit, and we were impressed with the beautiful paintings and sculptures, some dating to the 1400’s. One painting that was particularly impressive depicted the Lord walking on the water with Peter sinking when he tried to do the same. What was fascinating was that the scene was set not on the Sea of Galilee, but rather on Lake Geneva, with the medieval town in the background, and the easily identifiable mountains as a backdrop. After a dinner in Franch at McDonald's, we visited a converted barn where antiques were sold. One of the most impressive pieces was an incredibly carved armoire.
We were thinking of buying this antique armoire for a "mere" $5000, but only William Randolf Hearst would have been able to afford the shipping costs
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