LETTER SEPT POUR LE 15 AVRIL 2012

Lundi was a holiday for the French and the Swiss but not for the Americans.  We worked alone all day in a cold office.  We found out later that we could have turned up the heat, but we didn’t know how at the time.  We have needed to turn up the heat all week because it has been rainy with temperatures in the 40’s.    Sister Jeppson has been trying to get warm at the office and at home all week.  Because their children were out of school this week, most of the office workers took the week off while Sister Jeppson worked on her many responsibilities including preparing a lot of correspondence, working on travel arrangements for outgoing and incoming missionaries, and helping me organize and label files while I continued to try to catch up with the many financial projects. 

I had been asked by the human resources manager before he took the week off to lead the office devotional on Tuesday and give a five minute spiritual thought.  I diligently prepared to deliver the thought in French the night before.  However, when only four other people were there at 8:30 a.m. in the morning with one of them anxious to leave on a business trip, I decided to defer my thought until another time.  One person did come into the office for one day.  As I introduced myself and got acquainted, I learned that he was Frère Rimli from Genève.  He had been working with human resources as a service missionary and was cleaning out his office at the conclusion of his service term.  I found out  that he had been ordained an elder by my mission president so you can guess that he was probably close to my age but he looks a lot older (Ha, Ha).  He said that his next assignment is to be a counselor in the Swiss Temple Presidency.  He will be serving with a temple president from Germany. 

Our most exciting adventure this week was a visit to the post office on Samedi which is near the outside market that we visit every week.  The Ferney-Voltaire post office is very modern with a machine that allows patrons to weigh their letters, obtain necessary postage and pay with a credit card.  However, a postal worker still helped us through the process.  We braved the rain to purchase our customary assortment of fruits and vegetables.  This week we purchased a new kind of cheese called Emmental from the Savoie region in France.  The vendor cut off a large slice from a large round chunk of cheese.  We ate some of this kind of cheese with holes later for lunch.  It was magnifique.

Because we had worked so hard this week, while everyone else was enjoying their vacation time, we decided to reward ourselves with two activities.  We ate dinner on vendredi soir at the Buffalo Grill which is just a few blocks away.  We had noticed for some weeks that a lot of people were eating at this restaurant.  The restaurant has a cowboy and rodeo theme with waitresses dressed up as cowgirls, a menu that includes different platters with cowboy names and several kinds of hamburgers, chicken dishes and steaks.  Rodeo films are shown at various locations around the restaurant.  The food was not quite as good as the Texas Roadhouse, but it was a change of pace for us and interesting to see how the French have tried to emulate western themed restaurants in the United States.  Finally, we splurged and purchased our first éclair from our favorite patisserie.  We split it in half for lunch dessert,  It was délicieux.  We thought of you, Emily and Liz, as we ate it and the last time that we enjoyed an éclair in France during our visit to Paris.

NOS PETITS-ENFANTS

There is a large rock wall that is probably hundreds of years old that divides our apartment complex from a playground.  We often see children at the playground.  There is a ladder that someone has placed against the large wall.  However, the top of the ladder only reaches half way up the wall.   Steven R. Covey, a well known author, has taught that to be successful when we set goals we need to have the ladder in the right place.  If we work for something that has no chance for success or is headed a direction with no lasting value, it is like this ladder that is against a wall that no one can ever climb over and only arrives at a bunch of worthless rocks instead of reaching the playground on the other side.