Bern Temple Trip

June 29th to July 6th we traveled to Bern, Switzerland as part of the annual Adriantic North Mission temple trip.   We left a few days early so we could stop over in Venice.  Pres. Melonakos wants us to take advantage of the beautiful surrounding when possible and Venice was very beautiful.   See the photos below for proof!   It is easy to get lost so don't do like we did and find yourself lost in the dark with dead cell phones and no paper map.  We eventually found the Rialto Bridge and got back to the bus terminal to catch the last bus to our Airbnb in Mestre. 

We heard a podcast several months back about the first female gondolier in Venice.  We kept an eye out and actually found her.  She is on the right side of the photo in the red and white striped shirt.  We first recognized her by her noticeably higher pitched voice.

View this video for a better idea of what it is like to walk the streets of Venice.

No trip to Venice would be complete without Gelato.  We had it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.   Melon became one of our favorites!

We attended church in Treviso on the mainland near Venice.

We arrived at the Bern Switzerland temple in the afternoon and then near sunset we took this wonderful photo.  Merritt's grandfather served a mission in Switzerland as an adult and was here during the temple construction in 1953. 

Our main responsibility was to help cook meals for the youth and young single adults and to organize evening time activities for the YSA's.  The first night we did a "Scripture Tournament" to have the YSA's determine our theme for the week.  We started with sixteen motivational scriptures and the winner was Isaiah 61:3   (click here read it)

The speaker for one of the evening firesides had to cancel at the last minute so being the new guy Merritt was asked to fill in and used this scripture as his theme.  Amazingly it went pretty well and several of the members connected with the topic of this powerful scripture. 

One of the nights the Senior Couples cooked 300 crepes for all the members.   It was quite a feat.  We cooked about 75 crepes at our station.  The members really appreciated the effort and of course the taste!

We took some photos of the YSA during some of our minute-to-win-it activities and made a quick video which you can view here.  They are a very interesting, varied and fun group.  They also did lots of temple work during our four days there. 

No trip to Switzerland is complete without a trip to the ancestral Durtchi home in Wimmis, it was a short detour on our drive back to Italy.