Seeing the sites

Only 3 weeks left of language school for us, and then we're off to Africa!! It's hard to believe how quickly the time has flown. A few weeks ago, we realized how short our time is, and so we decided to make a few last minute trips around Europe to take advantage of our time here. And these trips were not without a little adventure!

For those of you who want to skip the stories and just see the pictures, please click on the link underneath "Our online photo album", which on the right side of this page. Then, on the right side of the screen, you will see two pictures labeled "Skiing in Grindlewald" and "Venice". Click on the picture you would like to see, and it will take you to our collection of pictures. In the upper right hand corner, you will see the word "Slideshow" - if you click on this, it will take you through a slide show of all the pictures. To see the labels for each picture, click on "Show info" in the upper right hand corner of the slide show. Otherwise, you can just look at the pictures shown in our photo album, but they are all mixed up and out of order. :)

Ok - now on to the stories!! Our first trip was to Grindlewald to do a little skiing in the Alps. Our plan was to leave early in the morning, ski all day, and then return late in the evening. It started off a little rocky for us. We wanted to catch the 6:13 train from near our place so we could make the 6:30 train from Neuchatel to Grindlewald. We got to the train stop in time, but 6:15 passed, and then 6:20, but no train. We decided that the train just decided not to come that hour, so we hurried up to the bus stop - our backup plan. We didn't end up making the 6:30 train, as scheduled, but thankfully another one left at 7:00. But this may have been ordained by God. Because of the delay, we had the chance to share the gospel with a guy who was also waiting for the train with us. He didn't accept Jesus, but hopefully he is one step closer, thanks to the train not coming.

When we finally made it to the train station in Neuchatel, two missionary friends of ours (Rachel and Mandi) we patiently waiting for us. They were going with us to Grindlewald (to site see, but not ski). They were very understanding, which is impressive, given that we asked them to get up so early and then being late ourselves!

The train ride to Grindlewald was uneventful. It was a nice time to just sit back, relax, enjoy the views, and chat with our friends. When we got to Grindlewald, we got off the train, and our first stop was the Winter Festival area. This was the weekend of the winter festival, and there were people making very large snow sculptures. You can see some pictures of them in our photo album (mentioned above). They were impressive, but something bigger was calling us - skiing in the Alps!!! So we quickly made our way to the ski rental shop and got our skis and boots.

Then we took the train again up to Kleinescheidig (doesn't sound French, does it? It's German for small "scheidig" - whatever that is!) This was the hub of much of the skiing. After puzzling over the map showing a maze of different lifts and ski slopes, we asked someone, and they directed us to an area that had some supposedly "easy" trails. But I don't know if I consider a trail to be "easy" when it is narrow and if you accidentally veer off the trail, you fall down a cliff to your death!! (Ok, maybe not death, but at least a bunch of broken bones.) Needless to say, I (Eric) slowly made my way down this not so steep slope trembling a bit in my recently rented boots.

After surviving the run (the first miracle of the day), Wendy decided it would be wise to find a wider run so that I could get more comfortable with my skis. This helped immensely, and we enjoyed the next few hours of skiing, making our way down numerous runs, which are definitely a bit more difficult than ones in the US. We stopped and had a late lunch, and then decided to try to make one more long run before things shut down for the day.

So, our first task was to find our way to the top of the mountain. This was not an easy task, but after asking many people, we finally found our way to a remote lift. It seemed a bit strange, but there was practically no one by this lift. Instead of being a chair lift, it was a sort of T bar that you put behind your legs, and it pulls you up the hill. Wendy got on one side and I got on the other. The T bar was a bit unsteady, but we figured that if we were careful, we could handle it. All was fine until we approached an extremely steep slope (maybe a 75 degree angle or so!). As we went up, we found that we were basically hanging from this rope, with only a T bar being between us and a fall of 50 feet! We breathed a sigh of relief at the top of that slope, when another equally steep slope loomed ahead. We both did our best to hold on, with Wendy shouting "keep your legs straight, keep your legs straight!!!" the whole way up. The picture to the right is the look I gave Wendy, saying "I'm moments from death here - please be quiet and let me concentrate!"

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Praise be to God, we made it to the top alive! This picture shows us a bit wearied (notice my wrinkled brow) but happy nonetheless. Now we had a nice, long, leisurely slope ahead of us. Or so we thought. Day was turning to dusk, and the clouds were coming down upon us. We started down the slope, but realized very quickly that the slope seemed quite steep. Wendy looked over, and found that we were on a black slope (meaning extremely difficult), instead of the medium we had wanted to be on. Wendy went to check a slope over to the side while I looked down the slope we were on, wondering if I would die in the land of chocolate. When she didn't return after several minutes, I went over to check on her. I found her, and apparently she had been calling me to come, but I hadn't heard a thing.

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So, there we were, on the medium slope. Wendy called the gals we had come with to tell them we might be a little late for dinner. In fun, I screamed for help in the background, thinking it would be a funny joke. All is well - or so we thought. As we looked down this slope, we realized that we had no idea where the actual path was. Poles, which are supposed to mark the path, seemed to be spaced randomly about the mountainside. And clouds made it almost impossible to make out the contours of the snow.

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As we contemplated what our next step was, someone came up from behind us. He noticed that we were a little confused and came over to help. Unfortunately, he didn't know English or French - only Swiss German, which was uncomprehensible to us. Eventually he pointed to himself, pointed to us, and then pointed down the mountain, meaning "Follow me - I'll show you the way". For the next hour (yes, I said hour!), we skied behind this fellow. He maneuvered around many difficult spots and checked back every few seconds to make sure we were ok. It was obvious he knew this mountain like the back of his hand, and with all the forks in the path we came across, he knew exactly where to go. Near the bottom of the mountain, he pointed us off in one direction, communicating that he was going in the other direction. And then he skied off into the distance.

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Was he an ordinary person, or was he an angel sent by God? We will never know in this life. All we know is that without his help, it would have taken us hours to get down (if we would have made it at all!) Praise God for getting us out of the messes that we often get ourselves into! We eventually met up again with our friends, who had picked out a very nice restaurant for us to eat in, where were able to sit back, enjoy the recounting of their day, and rest assured that we had survived another day.

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I guess I've rattled on long enough - we'll have to wait until the next blog to tell you about Venice. But the pictures are all up and labeled for Venice, so feel free to check those out right away. :) May you look to God to provide in the adventures you face this week.