"Gruezi mitenand!" is a Swiss German equivalent for "Guten Tag" when greeting a group, and it was an appropriate greeting for some old friends whom I met last weekend on a visit to Switzerland.

I served as pastor of the German-speaking church of God in Switzerland for 2 years in the mid 1970s and met many wonderful people during that time. Like Fred and Marti Wahlen (in the picture with their daughter Isabelle and grandson Philippe). When I met them in 1975, Fred was working as a gardner at a school near Bern. After we moved to Bonn in 1977, their 2 daughters visited us there. I hadn’t been able to spend much time with the Wahlens since returning to Europe in 1994, but last weekend provided a good opportunity when Isabelle invited her parents and me to have dinner with her. We had "raclette", a traditional Swiss cheese dish something like fondue – one that the Wahlens introduced us to when we served in Switzerland.

The evening meal was a delightful chance to catch up on our families. The Wahlen girls once babysat for our son Ted when he 2 years old! Fred is now retired, and he and his wife live in his original home area in the Jura region of Switzerland. There he can speak his mother language, which is French. Hopefully it won’t be another ten years until we can sit down again and enjoy another meal together!