Neuchatel 1929

From Grenoble I was transferred to Neuchatell, Switzerland. This is a little swiss town located on lake Neuchatell in a beautiful setting. It had a branch of about 100 members. It was quite a change from working in branches with few members where most of our work was proselytising. In Neuchatell it seemed that our biggest problem was to keep peace among the saints and to keep the various factions from warring among themselves. The saints were all very good to the missionaries, but frequently they would not come to church if sister so and so was going to be there. It was a job to keep harmonu but I do believe that we had at least minor success. When I was notified of my transfer I was told to come up to Geneva on my way as the mission president wanted to talk to me.

The mission president was a brother Rulon Christensen from Ephraim, Utah, who I later learned to know and respect. Actually he was just one of the older missionaries and when Brother Rossitor left the mission they had no one to replace him and brother Christensen merely filled in. Originally it was to be for a few months but I believe he was there as mission president for more than a year.

When I stopped at Geneva, brother Christensen told me that he was sending up to Neuchatel as my companion a missionary who had not been able to make the proper adjustments to missionary life and asked me to do everything possible to help him out. His name was Roy Ross (Roy later became and now is one of my best friends) Needless to say I had many misgivings entering into a new branch and with a companion that I knew in advance may be somewhat of a problem. Although we had many arguments and some disagreements as to what was to be done and how, we got along quite well and had some very interesting experiences together.

LETTERS
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(L290202) Rulon Christensen to John Griffin
(L290212) John Griffin to Mother / Neuchatel, Switzerland
(L290218) John Griffin to Mother / Neuchatel, Switzerland

There was one sister at Neuchatel that had the missionaries up to dinner each week. The first week that we were invited to her home she came in to the dinner table to announce that she had a delicacy for us, that she had been up since six that morning gathering dandilions with which to make a salad. After some struggle we got down the initial serving and sound found out our mistake as she promptly heaped another serving on our plates. My companion became ill from eating this salad but it did not seem to have any effect on me.

While at Neuchatel we had a missionary conference with missionaries gathered from all of the swiss district. On a Saturday afternoon after our meetings, we went down to the boat dock and found that they were renting sail boats Four of us decided to rent one and go out into the lake. None of us had ever operated one before, but one of the four had been out in another rented boat. The man who rented the boats asked us if we knew how to operate a sail boat. The missionary who had been in one assured him that he did so we climbed in and were shoved off. We had not gone more than a few feet in the harbor before the man renting the boats could see that we knew nothing about operating a sail boat. He called for us to come back but we didn't even know how to get the boat turned around. Finally we drifted out of the

(MISSIONARY JOURNAL OF JOHN GRIFFIN - page 29)

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