We welcome you to our newest interview in our weekly series. Here we interview each week somebody from the community and learn a bit more about their lives. This week, from San Diego, USA:
 
Trinna Fletcher, an administration worker at a grill cleaning and repair service company in San Diego, California, has a deep connection to Switzerland. Her family originated from Saanen and Kölliken and lived there for centuries before emigrating to America and Canada in the late 1800s. She is telling us more about her ancestors and her own relationship with Switzerland.
 
What is your name and where are you living now?
 
My name is Trinna Fletcher and I live in San Diego, California. I work in Administration at a grill cleaning and repair service company.

 
What is your connection to Switzerland? Have you been born there, or do you have some roots in Switzerland? 
 
My family is from Saanen and also Kölliken. They lived their for hundreds of years and emigrated to America and Canada in the late 1800s.
 
My ancestors came to the U.S. as Mormon converts. After they were baptized, they traveled to England with their children and boarded a ship in Liverpool, in 1870. They sailed to New York, and then took a train all the way to Provo, Utah. There, they built a little house dug into the ground at the bottom of a hill. The dugout house they once lived in is now buried by the Brigham Young University Football Stadium.

I attached two more pictures of them. The couple is Johann Friedrich Mezenen and Maria Anne Rohr, my third-great grandparents. Their daughter, my great-great-grandmother Bertha Mezenen, is in the other picture. 
 
What is the thing that you miss about Switzerland the most?
 
I can't say just one thing because I really miss everything, but I guess the thing I miss most is the beautiful nature everywhere. Then of course the food, the music, the beautiful houses with lovely flower boxes in the windows, the shops, the people, etc.
 
What do you think is better or do you like more in your new country?
 
I hope I don't get kicked out of my country for saying this because America isn't bad at all, but Switzerland is so much better!
 
Do you have any plans of returning soon? For vacations or permanently.
 
My uncle and I plan on staying there for 3 months within the next few years. We have been there before but we would like to stay longer in the places our family came from. We are currently planning our next trip for August 2024.
 
Ps. I have sent you two pictures of my grandma, one at the church in Innerthal where she and our family used to live, and the other in Hunzenschwil where our ancestors came from. We also have ancestors from Saanen. The other three pictures are of our cabin in East Zion, Utah. We tried to give it a little bit of Swiss decoration, and I even built the flower boxes myself. I am in the picture with my dog. I forgot to mention in the interview that my family lived in Switzerland in the 70s in Innerthal.