It is sad to leave loved ones behind.
Saturday, September 2, 2023
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Monday, August 28, 2023
Going to Croatia again. Mission #3
For the past year, we have been serving as Mentors to "Member and Leader Support" (MLS) senior missionaries. This was what is called a "SERVICE" mission: missions where you continue to live at home. We had 6, and later 4 more-concise lessons to teach each senior couple, via ZOOM, within about 6 weeks of their Mission Training Center (MTC) start date in Provo Utah. We really enjoyed working with those diligent, motivated, dedicated senior couples who were consecrating their time, talents, and energy to serving the people in their assigned mission. Our particular delight was to mentor couples who were going to the mission where we served in 2020 and 2021, the Adriatic North Mission (ANM). We had much better information about that mission than any of the others, so we felt we could share a more personal view for them. In one case, we even had photos of their apartment to share, because we had leased it while we were there.
For the past several months, we have gradually and casually spoken about the marvelous experiences we had. Then we began to talk about maybe going on another full-time mission, and gradually we began to think we should really do it, again. When we got to the point where we seriously sat down and discussed whether we wanted to go on another mission, and it became a conversation about WHERE would we like to go. We surprised each other a bit because we both wanted to go, and we both wanted to go back to the ANM. We looked on the church website that gives guidance for this kind of thing, seniormissionary.churchofjesuschrist.org. The website includes an option to "SEARCH OPPORTUNITIES", and I narrowed down the search to ANM. There were 3 or 4 slots in the mission, but there were two that were tagged "Critical Need". One was the same slot we had in 2020. I was OK doing the same thing again, but Liz said she wanted to be the Office Couple which was also critical need. I was OK with that, too, but last time we actually filled in for the office couple for about a month, and Liz was adamant that she didn't want to do that any longer. But her reticence was only because she had just retired and was tired of getting dressed up every morning to go into an office for the day. Now that she's been away from it for a while, she is anxious to do that kind of work again.
One of the things that made us think we'd enjoy doing another mission in ANM was that the current Mission President (Brian Cordray) used to be the Area Communication Specialist in Frankford, Germany back when COVID forced us to change the way the young missionaries were finding people to teach. He taught them how to use Facebook to find people to teach, and as we watched, we saw that he is a great teacher and leader. I can't say we are close friends, because we have yet to meet him face to face, but we had enough contact that we were comfortable calling him just before he went to Croatia to take on his new responsibilities. We asked if he would endorse our request to be the office couple. He was embarassingly excited to have us come and serve with him.
One of the things that happened in 2020 after COVID had reached its maximum impact on everything, was a major earthquake in Zagreb. President Cordray clearly remembered that. He kept asking us what he could do to get us to actually come and serve. We told him we were in, but he told us he was going to make sure we had a nice apartment in an earthquake-proof building, and that the mission home and the mission office would also be in earthquake-proof buildings. The mission home and office where we served in 2030 were condemned due to earthquake damage, so earthquake-proof is nice. We aren't afraid of another earthquake (they are actually quite rare in Zagreb) but we are happy to have a new-ish, modern apartment. A lot of the apartments we dealt with before were problematic for Americans who are used to plenty of room. Our first apartment had a shower that was round with a sliding glass door. It was about 3 feet wide, which would be OK, except that the water handle stuck out into the middle of the space, and a stray elbow could easily move it from warm to COLD, or to HOT! That's not so good. We feel confident that we will be happy as clams when they get us an apartment.
So, we applied to serve another mission. Senior missionaries can list missionary slots where they'd like to go, and prioritize them, but you have to list at least 4 and no more than 8. We put the ANM Office Couple as our first choice, and the other ANM critical-needs slot as our second. We had to list at least 4, so we also put in for office couple in Hungary and Austria, but really we expected to get the one in the ANM office. President Cordray called Salt Lake to request us for it, specifically.
And we got our mission call to ANM to be the office couple. YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We finished up our mentoring assignments for our service mission while we were preparing to go overseas, again, and now we are in our final week at home. We've done all the myriad things we have to do to live in a foreign country, and to take care of our home while we are gone. We are heading for Utah this Friday, and will enter the MTC the day after Labor Day.
We are absolutely delighted to be going on another mission for the church. It is pure service, and performing service gives people joy.
I will try to post to this BLOG at least once a week while we are on this mission.
Thursday, January 27, 2022
Back home
We have now been home from our mission for 6 weeks, so it is beyond time to post a wrapup.
First, the dear sisters in Maribor (I think it was Sister King) posted this photo of a swan on the banks of the Drava River. It is a gorgeous shot and worthy of posting. Especially since the sun was setting on our mission. I think the young people would say this is a meme?
On the right is a LEKARNA, while on the other side of the street, just beyong the green sign, is a sign for a PEKARNA. Lekarna is a drug store, and we used this one frequently. Pekarna is a bakery, our favorite Pekarna for white bread. When I wanted a seed bread, I went to a Pekarna closer to the riverside apartment where we lived at first.
Mission
Report
Frisco 5th Ward - January 9, 2022 Little Elm 1st Ward
– January 30, 2022
In July 2019, we became fully retired, and decided to spend August in Utah, where we attended BYU Education Week. We had not firmly decided to go on a mission yet, but we attended the daily session presented by the missionary Department on serving as Senior Missionaries. We found lots of reassuring answers to our questions. We discovered that you can select your preferences on where and what duties from a list of hundreds of openings. If you want to make a selection, you have to list at least 4 and no more than 8.
Sister Ashurst’s father was born
in Croatia, and came to America with his mother as a baby. Ever since I met Liz, we have adopted
Croatian customs, such as roasting whole lambs at family reunions. That led us to desire to do some genealogy
work in Croatia. We also wanted to see
the countries that used to be Yugoslavia.
But if we were to go, there were
a lot of things to settle. What to do
with our car? What to do with our
house? How would our children feel about
it? Would we be safe, able to afford it,
etc. These questions were overwhelming
until we stopped to pray about whether we SHOULD go on a mission. We received confirmation that it was the
right thing for us to do, and after that everything seemed to simply fall into
place.
Our first choice for a mission
was an opening for an auditor and Member & Leader Support assignment in the
Adriatic North Mission, which includes most of the countries that were formerly
Yugoslavia. We called the church
auditing Department, who confirmed that we are qualified to be auditors. They suggested we call the seniors in Osijek,
Croatia currently holding that assignment.
They were helpful and encouraging.
They suggested we call the Mission President, President Melonakos. Before we had a chance to call him, I
mentioned to my sister-in-law we were looking at ANM. She immediately contacted the Mission
President’s wife, who had been her roommate at college, and told her we were
“Golden”. When we called the
Melonakos’s they were anxious to have us.
And when our call came, we were assigned to that mission as Member and
Leader Support missionaries, and as Assistant Area Auditors. The support role had us stay in one place and
get to know the people. The auditor role
let us travel and visit every branch in the mission. Or so we thought. COVID changed everything. Only in our final few months did we have a
chance to visit the 5 countries, and almost all the branches.
The Adriatic North Mission has 5
countries with 5 different banking systems. There are 4 currencies; 3 languages; and 2
alphabets. But it has some of the most
interesting people and places to be found anywhere. People from all over Europe, and many other
countries go there to vacation for the wonderful beaches, islands, caves,
waterfalls, castles, Alps and delicious Mediterranean food. They love all the visitors and welcomed us
freely.
We arrived in Zagreb, Croatia in mid-February, 2020, and
were assigned to Osijek, as expected. At
that time, all we knew about COVID was that a strange new virus was affecting
people in China. Then we heard that it
had exploded into Italy, which was scary because Italy is just across the water
from Croatia. In fact, I saw Venice
twice – while standing on a tall building in our mission’s boundaries.
One thing happened during this time that is very similar to
what recently happened here. Elder Gary
E. Stevenson was scheduled to visit the mission a month or so after our
arrival. All the members were very
excited to have an apostle come, and the branches were gathering contributions
for renting buses to get to Zagreb and meet him. But as the date neared, all apostolic travel
had to be curtailed due to COVID, and his visit was cancelled. Everybody was extremely disappointed, just as
we are that our recent scheduled apostolic visit was cancelled.
We had Sacrament Meeting only 3 times in Osijek, and then
all meetings were shut down in the first wave of quarantines. It was almost a year before we attended a
live Sacrament meeting again. All over
the World, missionaries were sent home due to the COVID expansion. The European AREA made a special request that
we be allowed to stay because missionaries held so many key leadership
positions there. So, the young missionaries stayed, and we senior
missionaries had the choice to go or stay.
We had just arrived, we knew health care is very good in Croatia and
Slovenia, and our family supported us staying, so we decided to stay.
You know, The Lord is in charge! The standard “finding” technique for the missionaries
at that time was talking to everybody they met on the streets, and sometimes knocking
on doors. As COVID restrictions came
into being, the Europe Area Presidency held a Zoom meeting to tell all their missionaries
that Zoom and Facebook were going to be the new teaching and finding tools. Here is the kicker. Just the previous November a missionary rule
went into effect that all missionaries in Europe were required to have
an Android smart phone, some had them before then but at that point all had to
have them. Less than 4 months later, the
new pandemic forced us to use those phones for almost all missionary finding
and teaching. We got new phone rules,
but isolated, quarantined people all over Europe were also using their phones more
than before.
Over the next few weeks, the missionaries took the basic
direction they received from the Area, and found ways to contact people using
Facebook. They joined groups and tried
to be “Normal and Natural”. When they
had a request from a Facebook friend to explain why they were living in Europe,
the subject of the church naturally became part of the discussion. The number of productive new contacts
sky-rocketed, as did the number of lessons taught. They were much more effective as quarantined
missionaries than they had been before, and they remain so today.
Zoom became our
standard tool for more than missionary
meetings. We had Country-wide Sunday
services for about a year, with Sacrament only if there were priesthood holders
in individual homes. Sister Ashurst and
I reportedly conducted the very first church Audit via Zoom in Europe, with two
Area auditors listening in to monitor and to see if it was going to work. We couldn’t go out of our apartment, so we
video audited, which was revolutionary in the church. My understanding is that they have now
decided to continue video audits for remote locations, even after restrictions
are lifted.
After only a few weeks in Osijek, we volunteered for a 3-5
day special assignment in the mission office, in Zagreb. It stretched into about 3 months because the
government shut down even internal travel and we couldn’t go home (to Osijek). We lived in the Mission Home with President
and Sister Melonakos, who quickly became best friends. They are lovely people! We lived in a bedroom tucked between their
bedroom and the President’s office, so we heard almost everything that happened
in there. The rules imposed by the
governments of the mission were changing daily.
Total chaos! President Melonakos
made the inspired decision to bring all his missionaries into the 5 capital
cities. This helped them avoid the
stress of being isolated, but it also discouraged quite a few members in the
small branches. Sunday attendance
remains lower than before.
I want to tell you about three days in April 2020 to
illustrate what it was like. At that time Quarantines in Croatia included a ban on travel between
counties in Croatia, but they were to end that weekend and the government was scheduled to meet over the weekend to discuss renewing restrictions.
Day 1, Saturday, the county borders opened. I woke
with the feeling we should go back to Osijek to bring back our things. When I went downstairs for breakfast, Sister
Melonakos walked in and said she had a feeling we should make a mad dash that day and get all our things back to
Zagreb. When President Melonakos joined
us, first thing he said was that he wanted us to take the big van and go clean
out our apartment in Osijek, and bring back the elders serving there too. Clearly the spirit was speaking to us that
morning, and it was a good thing. We
went to Osijek and back, about 8 hours of driving, that very day. We had a delay as we entered the freeway, waiting while police escorted a monstrous caravan of semi trucks carrying goods across Croatia to other countries. We also noticed that particular rest areas had police who only let the semis in and held them until the next convoy.
Day 2, at 6:20 a.m. there
was a major earthquake in Zagreb, a 7.2.
We were still in bed, but we were both awake. We grabbed each other as it threw it us back
and forth. The Mission Home and the
Mission Office were both severely damaged.
The home is still unoccupied and possibly condemned, and the office is still under construction.
Day 3, the county borders
were closed again, except for those convoys, emergency vehicles, and relief.
Fortunately, the early time of the earthquake meant there
were few people out and about, so injuries were relatively low. Most of Zagreb has buildings right against
the sidewalks, and bricks and roof tiles rained directly onto the streets. The church helped with aid, cranes, and
volunteers, including as many elders as could be spared. Earthquake damage to the buildings was
extensive.
There came a time when we could travel within Croatia
again and we were anxious to visit the village of Hreljin where Sister
Ashurst’s father was born. We made the trip after three months in the mission home. We found the
house where he was born and visited some relatives. We also found the village graveyard and
photographed every headstone in it, using the BillionGraves app.
Shortly after that, President
Melonakos assigned us go to Maribor, Slovenia to support the branch there. And he wanted us to look out for the
missionaries, because they had been without any senior support since the senior
missionaries went home, 3 months before.
We had been in quarantine so long
we weren’t quite sure we could get into Slovenia, but when we got to the border
crossing, the guard looked at our passports, stamped them and waved us through
without ever saying a single word. Two days later, that border was closed again.
We were in a new country, but restrictions remained for a long time
after.
The sheer beauty of Slovenia is breathtaking. We drove back and forth across Slovenia for
the next year and a half, and we still marvel at it. We’d cross the mountain ranges and each time
we went over a pass, we’d look down at a little village nestled in the valley
bottom, with a church spire rising above the roofs. Beyond are fields on the slopes of the hills
with cattle grazing, or vineyards, and almost every valley has either a castle
or a monastery on top of one of the peaks.
It takes your breath away!
We mostly had sisters assigned to
work in Maribor, elders in the town of Celje, and 4 companionships of Slovene
missionaries were in Ljubljana. We
visited them regularly and became very close to all of them. They are wonderful!
Shortly after we settled into
Maribor, the sisters called and asked if they could teach a lesson to a young
man, in our apartment. The church building was
still closed due to COVID rules, and gender rules required them to have
somebody with them, but at that time they could teach face-to-face. That was the day we met David.
David loved to read, instead of playing soccer or things like that. When he was 12, he started reading the Bible every day. When he was 20 he started actively searching for a church that taught what the Savior taught. When he was 23, he found the Church of Jesus Christ website. By the time he called Salt Lake to arrange to be taught, he had already read the Book of Mormon, knew the baptism worthiness questions, as well as the temple recommend questions. And he was busy reading the Doctrine and Covenants.
We didn’t have to lead David into
the church. He pulled and tugged us
along with him. He was ready and anxious to be
baptized, and politely let us teach him first.
He was in our home almost every week. He didn’t know any of the elders, so he asked
me to perform his baptism. That
surprised me, because the young elders normally do baptisms and I didn’t expect to
baptize anybody - but I was thrilled to do it.
After that he wanted to go to the temple. Sister Ashurst and I taught him the temple
preparation classes, and counted the days with him until he could go. Sadly the COVIDS kept us away from the temple
and his temple recommend has not yet been used.
He is still waiting, and anxious to go.
Shortly before we came back, he was
called as a counselor in the Branch Presidency.
He was also hired by the church as a translator – the only member who
reads and speaks both English and Macedonian fluently, as well as Slovene. We look at him and his dedication and
spirituality and can’t help thinking he will soon be the Branch President, and
an important leader. We are still in
contact with him and will continue to be.
Every missionary returns with tales of someone “special” they found and
taught. David is certainly ours.
Well, I am nearly out of time. On our mission we learned some important
things. That Croatia and Slovenia are
safe places to live, with great health care, and awesome food. They are also beautiful places to visit. We are planning to go back as tourists next
summer, if the COVIDS don’t get us.
Sunday, December 12, 2021
DK hits a home run!
You would think the end of a mission would be a time when you could back off and slow down a tiny bit. I think most missionaries don't actually do that, but for us, it has been a tremendously busy time. We are closing down the apartment where we have been for the last year and more. The church won't need it, because they are putting our replacement couple in Celje. Closing it down included showing it to new prospective renters. We also had quite a few things that were passed to us from prior senior missionaries. We try not to accumulate things we don't need, but it is overwhelming how much stuff we are moving to Celje and how much more is going into our suitcases, of which there are more than we brought with.
We also were busy arranging for the new apartment in Celje. It was used by the last mission doctor we had, about 2 years ago, and has been vacant since then. The family who own it, have had it going back into the late 1800s. They love renting it to the church, because we pay on time, and take care of everything.
Saturday, December 11, 2021
White Christmas
Thursday, Liz had an appointment to see the orthopedic surgeon in Zagreb to get her stitches removed, etc. Fortunately, it was for 4:00 pm, because we woke up to about 4" of snow on the ground and more falling. At about 10:30, the sisters called to ask me if I could help them get to the train station with their luggage - one is going to Zagreb in preparation for her return home, and the other is going to Ljubljana to form a trio with a companionship of sisters there. When I got back, I noticed that a significant part of the snow had already melted on the roads, while at the same time the snow level had increased to more like 6". Not true on the sidewalks - they are a mass of slush and ice. However, we decided to make the trip to Zagreb. I was nervous about it, especially when it started to snow again.
The snow on the trees is very heavy.As we climbed onto the small range of mountains betwwen Slovenia and Croatia, the snow increased, but the roads were little more than wet. At the very peak, there was a short stretch where I felt the tires slip a couple of times, but we had no trouble with it, to speak of. After clearing customs and heading back downhill, the roads got better and there was a lot less snow. By the time we got to Zagreb, it was just a powdering.
We stopped at the church and dropped off some Christmas things for various missionaries and to watch some of the lip synching performances - we had missed it during our conference the week before.
The surgeon took out the stitches and told us everything was fine, except that he wanted Liz to keep the brace on for 6 weeks, but after 3 we could increase the range of motion to 60 degrees, instead of the current 30 degrees of motion.
We went prepared to stay the night in Zagreb, if we needed to. But everything looked OK outside, so we took off for home. I have admit that I was very stressed about the slush on the roads, and the worry about the temperature dropping below freezing - but it never did. We drove home without incident.
Friday, I had to run some errands, and we had to get serious about packing up all our junk.
This is the bridge next to our apartment. I was trying to get a photo through the windshield to show the snow after 24 hours. This one also shows how much Slovenes love to walk. The packed snow was slippery and the air was frigid - near zero, but look how many people are out there. The bridge leaves one exposed to the full force of any winds and the chill factor is large.This is the City building with the infamous balcony where Hitler spoke.
And this is looking West, towards the Maribor Hotel with stripes where their huge skylights let out the heat.
This is the bedroom. It has an oversized King bed in the middle of a room that is about 40' long, by 15 feet wide.
Thursday, December 9, 2021
More adventures as our departure nears
The castle in Varazdin.
Before we came, I surfed the internet to try to figure out what life on our mission would be like. One of the people I talked to mentioned the white castle in Varazdin. I found a photo of it looking up the main road in town with this white castle at the end. Seeing that castle was high on my to-do list. But, COVID changed everything and we never got a chance to go there until just the past few months. We went there in August because the main border crossings into Croatia had big delays, up to several hours, while the small crossing near Varazdin had wait times counted in minutes, although slightly out of our way. When we drove through the flatlands into Varazdin, I finally got to see the castle, and found it to be unremarkable. To begin with, we have seen hundreds of castles while here. This one is attractive in itself, but the setting is not particularly enticing. So, my reaction was, "Ngha."
Contrast that with the cathedral in Celje. It is across the street from the LDS church, right next to the police headquarters. It is part of a continuous row of large buildings, which makes it extremely inconspicous. We enjoy seeing these old churches, partly because we both read a book centered around building cathedrals while we've been here - "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follet. So, we were waiting for the young missionaries one day and decided to go inside the Celje Cathedral.
It is closed off, so you can't go all the way inside except when they are conducting services. The remarkable chandeliers, and use of extensive, but focused, gold leaf are remarkable. More subtle is the extensive carvings on the ends of the pews. It was very difficult to see the art work, but I did not see anything about St. George, which is unusual.
MAJOR MEDICAL
Last week we were in our preparation for departure, which is making us frantic to get everything done. We had a packed schedule, including giving our farewell reports to the missionaries on a mission-wide zoom call, and had a Christmas Conference in Zagreb on Thursday and Friday, which only made it more intense.
Wednesday evening, Liz bent over to clean something off the floor and felt a pain in her knee - the one that hasn't been giving her trouble. When she stood up, it hurt quite a lot, and as the evening passed the pain got worse. She took both Tylenol and Advil and went to bed hoping it would feel better in the morning.
It was not better in the morning, and she needed both my cane and my supporting arm to get down to the car for the trip to Zagreb. That didn't do my bad knee any favors, but we managed it. When we joined the conference in Zagreb, it was obvious Liz needed professional help. She and Sister Field conferred and selected a private clininc, and we immediately drove there, after having the sisters unload the food we'd brought.
The clinic was awesome and we met an orthopedic specialist who examined Liz and had X-rays and MRIs taken. He diagnosed it as a burst meniscus. He said it will not get better, and if left untreated it would get much worse. He recommended immediate arthroscopic surgery. We agreed and he decided to stay a little longer at the hospital the next day so he could schedule her. They gave her a pair of crutches, and we returned to the party to find most of the food already gone. We got some ham and some salad, and the senior sisters had saved us the last pieces of Liz's carrot cake. Nice sisters.
We were going to stay in the Mission Home (the "palace"), but it has stairs of uneven height. We made a reservation at a hotel after Sister Field told us to submit the receipt for reimbursement by the mission. It was a nice hotel with elevators and we got a reasonably good night's sleep.
The next morning, we drove to the surgical hospital owned by the same private clinic where we had seen the doctor. Strangely, that surgery is located in Krapinske Toplice, which is almost half way back to Maribor. It is a tiny little town in an out-of-the-way corner of Croatia.
First thing, they gave me a phone number on a slip of paper. Then they told me was to go away and call back after 2:00 to see if she was ready.
The yellow building across the car park is the Surgical hospital.I got some breakfast and drove over to Krapina (pronounced CRAP-eena) to check out the Neanderthal museum there, only to find it closed for the season. I was looking forward to seeing a cave where cave-men lived, but no luck.
By 2:00, I was sitting in the foyer of the surgery, and when I called the number on the slip of paper, the nurse told me to call Liz directly and she'd tell me all I needed to know. That was rude, I thought. Liz was getting physical therapy and had an hour to go. It turned out to be more like 2 hours. I saw the surgeon as he was leaving, and he told me the meniscus was oversize, so he cut off some before he sewed it back together. Also there was a lot of damage to ligaments, which he repaird while he was in there. Also, she had a stray tendon stretched across the knee cap, so he cut it out. Wonderful. In the US they probably would have scheduled another surgery for those other things.
Finally she came out with her leg bandaged and fitted to a brace whose purpose is to prevent her bending her leg too much. She will have to wear it for at least 2 weeks, which puts her wearing it on the plane home.
We had to drive back to the Zagreb church to pick up the Maribor sisters, and load up dishes, gifts etc. By the time we left it was dark. After we left town I noticed the lights were pointed way too low. I had noticed this before, but now with a full load, it was bad. I could get by when there were other cars around, but once out in the country it was not enough light to go highway speed. I slowed down a lot and still felt uncomfortable with how little I could see.
SO, here we are, closing the apartment (the next senior couple will be quartered in Celje) and finishing our packing, with Liz hobbling around.
Last Monday was P-Day, and the missionaries had permission to go to a movie, Sing 2. The talking was all in Croatian, which the young missionaries thought was a great immersive language school. Fortunately for me, I've seen Sing and the plot is similar. And most of the movie is music, which was in English.
In the theater lobby they had this photo Op wall set up. Sisters King and Chandler, and Elders Pollock and Kjeldsen were still excited from the movie.=================================
Too Old to learn new tricks?
Over the last week, I've been thinking about those low headlights. It occurred to me that we had the whole front panel of the car replaced not too long ago. So, yesterday I drove back to the service center to demand they adjust the lights. When the service manager heard what I wanted he gave a big smile and said he could help me. He took me out to the car, turned on the lights and showed me a little wheel-control in the dash above my left knee. It is for adjusting the headlights when the car is loaded. Who knew? So, today we are returning to Zagreb for Liz's follow-up exam, and we will have fully functional headlights. Hurray!
Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?
And, finally, I took a photo of another Sloveneian bee house along the way to the service center.
This bee house is on stilts, but the legs are not built into the beehouse. The house is sitting on a frame.I assume the whole house can be loaded onto a truck and moved.
Sunday, November 28, 2021
Getting trunkie
We are definitely getting trunkie - definition: overwhelming desire to pack up my trunk and go home. At this time, we have just over 2 weeks to go.
November 1 - The day after Halloween is Day of the Dead, in this part of the World. It is much like our Memorial Day in the USA. People visit the graveyards where their ancestors are buried. The main difference is that people here are very serious about maintaining the gravesites. And of course, they go overboard on putting candles on them.
These photos are of the big cemetery in Maribor. It is a huge cemetery
In addition to putting out candles (some electric, some oil burning, some actual candles) families spend an hour or two maintaining the graves. They bring soap, water, and rags or brushes to wash down the stones and make them sparkly clean. They clean up the site. They bring fresh flowers. It is amazing how much time and effort they put into it. Of course, people are buried in crypts, so each headstone may have 5-10 names listed on it.
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Besides this, we have been hearing more and more about the Pacific Islanders who are stranded in Croatia, because the Islands are closed to travel, even by its own citizens. If you are planning a trip to Tahiti, that's bad news. So our islanders have completed their initial missions, but can't go home.
This group is from Tonga, but the biggest group is from the Republic of Kiribati, whose biggest island is Tarawa. They are singing songs from their home. The Sisters are wearing T-shirts from Barbados, because that was where they served their mission. The islands won't let them return while COVID is raging. They went from there to The Dominican Republic in hopes they could get home from there. Finally, they came to Zagreb because we have been the most successful at getting people in and out of Europe during the pandemic.We took the sisters out towards Murska Sobota last Tuesday (Nov. 23) to visit a beekeeping museum. Of course I was interested in that.
This is the start of the museum. It is run by a youngish couple. The husband saw this octagon bee house abandoned on a property on his way to work. He asked if they would give it to him, and after some persistence they did. He moved it here and stabilized it. The actual bee homes are the smaller German style instead of the Slovene style, so it is just for show.The grounds have several buildings set in a garden with trees and flowers. Very nice.
One of several bee sheds on stilts, just outside the grounds. I like this one because they painted the hives to look like honeycomb with bees on it. There is another one built on a small trailer, b ut it is pretty run down, so I didn't bother to photograph it.This is inside the octagonal building, showing the old-fashioned hives. These are smaller than the is now standard, and the frames of honeycomb fit in it so they are across the entrance - making it so to get the one farthest in, you have to remove all the rest of them. Slovenes now put them in front to back, so each one can be removed. They also have some even older straw bee "keps". They weave the straw to make a shell, then cover it with cow manure. The bees happily move in and make honey. To remove the honey, you have to destroy the kep and hope the bees will move into the new kep nearby.
Some traditional bee boards. The one of a town along the river is particularly impressive.
There were a lot of old extractors, as well as other tools and machines.
This is inside the main museum building where the lady is showing the sister missionaries and Liz a set of frames with photos of the frames of a hive. These are common in the US, too, and are used for teaching people about hives without exposing them to wild bees. It's hard to see, but just beyond Liz is a glass wall enclosing an are where live bees are kept. You can just see the tops of a couple of hives built into the wall. On the right are books for sale as well as tools and other touristy stuff.
This wooden portrayal of a bee was hanging on the wall of the gift shop. It is nicely done, although not quite anatomically correct.