Last day in Switzerland

11 July
While looking forward to our two days in Rome, I was at the same time sad to think that today we would have to farewell the group of friends who had shared our 15 days on the "Share the Heritage" tour. We departed from Burtigny and set off for Geneva, an hour's drive around the lake. Today our tour guide was Tom Bloomer, one of the leaders at the YWAM base in Burtigny. He took us on a two hour walking tour of Geneva, along with another 12 or so people who joined our group. The previous day Geneva had held a huge celebration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of the Reformer John Calvin, so in our tour today there was an emphasis on his influence. The cathedral is one of the places where he preached. I've included a photo of the pulpit, as I was interested to learn that the very ornate canopy actually helps the preacher's voice to project more effectively to the congregation.
Another person we learned about was Henri Dunant, a Swiss businessman and social activist, whose experiences in the nineteenth century lead to the founding of the International Red Cross organisation, and the writing of the Geneva Convention.
The afternoon ended up in a park where we saw a sculpture that had been commissioned for the Calvin celebrations. As you can see in the photo, it consists of a circle of ten fingers, representing the Ten Commandments. The sculptor had accompanied us on the walking tour and now told us about his work. I was interested to learn that he was also commissioned to do a sculpture for the North Shore hospital in Auckland, and it was unveiled by Helen Clark last year.
After an emotional farewell to our tour buddies, Gordon and I were driven to the airport, and it wasn't long before we were winging our way to Rome via the magnificent Alps, of which we got an amazing view.
Now here we are back home in little ole NZ, and we've almost recovered from jet lag. It has been a wonderful 5 weeks (just under, actually), and on the tour alone, we covered 3,500 kilometres by vehicle across Europe, not to mention the 2-4 hours a day walking around places of significance. It's going to take a while to process all that we have seen, learned and experienced, but I feel so much the richer for this wonderful time we've been privileged to enjoy.