Feeling Buster in Switzerland

                                         

When we arrived in Switzerland everything was so astonishingly beautiful, orderly, and pleasing to the eye. Every neatly piled stack of wood, every smooth, symmetrical tunnel, every tidy chalet made me think of Buster.  In Italy, there weren't as many things to remind us of him, but in Switzerland, this place of patterns, symmetry, order, beautiful crystal blue lakes, and mountain hikes- it practically screamed "Come Buster! Come". He would have loved to be there.  I had a few good cries on the daily missing him, but one day I felt him really close.  On this day we were on a quest to find a good swimming spot.  We had looked one up on google, but couldn't find any parking. We had circled and circled and finally decided we would first drive down to the swim spot to see where it was before deciding where to park.  This was a big mistake! We drove down the hill onto a road, that all of the sudden became a narrow walking path with a drop off on our left leading down to the lake, and a stone wall on our right.  The rental car we were in started bumping and rubbing up against the stone wall (luckily it was just the tires bumping and not the actual car).  It seemed to us to just get narrower and narrower, and with no ability to turn around or reverse safely there was nothing to do but slowly inch our way forward and pray our way out of there.  Even Jaron was feeling tense because he said outload "I don't like this. I don't like this".  We pretty much all held our breath and silently prayed until eventually we popped out onto a road, drove up a hill and found a perfect parking spot.  Jaron turned off the car, let out a big sigh, which the rest of the car echo'd, and just then a tiny, orange butterfly came and landed gently on our windshield just in front of Jaron's face.  It sort of hovered there a moment before flying off.  It made me think that Buster was aware of us, and that he was praying and trying to help us too.  

Another time I felt Buster was one of the first days we were in Switzerland. We did a beautiful hike up to Chilthorn valley.  It was mostly just us the whole hike, and it was pure joy hiking past grazing cows, passing waterfalls and streams, and walking through meadows of wildflowers.  Oh it was so beautiful!  When we got the the end of the hike we were surrounded on all sides by mountains and waterfalls.  Warner found a huge boulder to climb, and Jaron followed. When they reached the top I shouted "Boys turn around and smile for a picture" then I lifted up to take the picture and just then a laser beam of light landed right next to Warner on the rock. I snapped the photo, and I now I look at it and think "Here's a picture of my boys. All of my boys".