Earthquakes, again?

 A couple of days ago I was awake a little before 6:30 am and the house started to vibrate.  It gradually built up until it was bouncing a mirror that leans against the wall behind Liz's desk.  Liz woke up and wondered why the mirror was bouncing against the wall, but never thought of earthquake.  It turned out to have been a 5.2 earthquake centered about a hundred miles south of Zagreb, so roughly 250 miles away from us.  That level of earthquake is fun and entertaining, but having been through a major earthquake less than a year ago, we are quite sensitive to them and have little sense of humor about it.  But life goes on.

Today, I got up early and went back to sleep during the morning.  After my nap I got in the shower and while I was washing my feet the house started to vibrate again.  It was stronger than the earlier one, and it built up to a much higher level.  Enough that I had the dizzy feeling you get when the ground moves under your feet.  I was waiting for it to get to where the shower would fall apart and the building fall down around me.  It occurred to me that it would be quite embarrassing to be found in the rubble with nothing on.  Very un-missionary like!  Luckily, it didn't do that.  It gave us a good shake, though.  This one was centered in the same area of  Croatia as the first one, but it was a 6.3 earthquake (110 times as strong as a 5.2 earthquake).

My first thought was that this was too much!  We should just go back to Texas where the ground doesn't roar at us and knock us down with buildings on our heads.  My second thought was that we are missionaries.  Our job is to help the people of this area, giving aid and comfort.  It is no time to throw in the towel and skulk away.  So we'll stay.

We normally go shopping for groceries on Mondays, but we were busy yesterday and went shopping after the earthquake.  To celebrate our good fortune in not being killed by earthquakes, I bought a special treat.  Milka is a brand of swiss candy:  their chocolate bars are even more popular here than Hershey is in the USA.  They have a regular-size chocolate bar with bits of Oreo cookies in them, but they are not my favorite because the bits of cookie are hard and make letting the chocolate melt in your mouth not so enjoyable.  But they have large, 300 g. bars that has a single layer of solid Oreo cookie and layers of filling on both sides, all covered by that luscious swiss chocolate.  Those are fantastic!  So I bought one.  I already ate half of it, which is quite outrageous.  Liz declined to celebrate with me, so I'll save the rest of it for tomorrow and (hopefully) the day after.

Christmas

 

I don't get to claim this photo.  Liz took it in The Maribor Park while visiting her friend, Petra, and her family.  I think it is an amazing photo.  I was home being sick at the time.

This extraordinarily-large tree is also in the park.

We have been on lockdown for so long we are beginning to get a little antsy.  However, we got fairly good news this week.  The government has decided to ease restrictions from noon on Christmas Eve until curfew begins (9:00 pm) on Christmas Day.  People can travel about the country, and we are allowed to have up to 6 people gathered together from up to one other household in our homes.   And most stores are also allowed to be open during those times.

    Who would have thought such a little easing would have us so excited?!?  The reason we are so excited is that it is enough that we can have each group of young missionaries over to our home (one at a time) so we can feed them Christmas dinner and spend some time with them.  This means we will eat Christmas dinner 4 times - 5:00 and 8:00 Christmas Eve with the two groups of sisters, and then noon and 6:00 Christmas day with the two groups.  Yeah!  Turkey with all the fixins over and over.  Yum!

I have had bronchitis for several weeks now, but it is finally beginning to clear up.  I take expectorants, antibiotics, and an asthma inhaler, as well as OTC Zinc and Vitamin D3.  It really sucks, especially the inhaler - it has little tablets in it.  You press a plunger to crush the tablet, give it a second, then suck it in and hold it for several seconds.  It is so caustic, you have to rinse out your mouth after inhaling, and it hurts all the way down into the lungs.  But it does help and I am getting over the bronchitis.

    Something in all those medications makes me sleepy.  About every 3rd or 4th day I sleep for about 18 hours.  Weird.

A few weeks ago we were in Ljubljana for a doctor appointment.  While I was waiting, I noticed this clock on the wall.  It is simply a mounted photo with a clock movement in it, and numbers stuck on.  Simple!  Pure genius!  I like it.  I think I'll make some when we return.

While I was sick, I was sitting around a lot because I'd get out of breath every time I got up and moved around in the least amount.  I watched some movies, but then I started reading The Lord of The Rings again.  I've read it many times before, but I find great delight in reading it over.  In fact, I have read it so many times I've literally worn out two copies.  They were only paperback copies, but still, they were dog-eared and shredded.  I've also given away several copies of it.

Golden Anniversary

 Fifty years ago, I woke early and prepared to drive to Manti.  I had spent the night at my parent's home, but it was the last night I would ever spend there as resident instead of guest.  Once again, Liz and I rode in her parent's car for the long drive to Manti.  The previous day, when we were there to be endowed, was exhausting.  This day's temple work promised to be less so, but it would be followed by a reception with dinner and dancing.

We arrived an hour and a half before the ceremony was scheduled - I didn't know why.  It seemed to me like there were hordes of people around me that day, all of them wanting to give me comfort, direction, or advice.  Liz and I met together with the temple president and matron, and then we separated so she could go to the bride's room.  I was interviewed by other brothers who told me how it would go, how married life would go, and how the eternities would treat us.  Finally Liz and I were reunited and after a brief, confusing, visit at the veil we entered a sealing room.  I was surprised to see family (from my mother's side) sitting in the room waiting for us.  They had driven at a more reasonable hour to be there.  They knew the sealer, too, although I was sure I'd never laid eyes on him before that day.  I was told he was a great uncle of mine.  He sat us down and talked to us, too.  I remember he told us never to go to bed angry, but to talk until we had worked out any differences we had.  I don't remember anything else he said, until he began the formal ceremony.  I remember that, because it was the important part of it all.  I also remember looking into the mirrors, one behind each of us as we knelt, facing each other over the alter.  The mirrors reflected each other so that we saw repeating images of ourselves going into the distance, each image smaller than the previous one.  The ceremony was short, and we were married.

A side door to the Cathedral in Maribor.

We then went to an office where we signed our marriage license and received a copy - the other copy to go to the county office to be registered and recorded.  Liz signed an official change of name form as she took my last name for her own.  And then we left the temple, posed for photographs at the temple doors, and drove back home.

We must have eaten somewhere along the way, but I don't remember that at all.  I remember being enthralled with the beautiful girl beside me who was now my wife.  I didn't know what we had ahead of us, but I knew this was what I wanted.  I thought everything would be good.

And I have to say that being married to her for these last fifty years HAS been good!  I still love her, and now that love is based on experience and shared wonders.  We were a good, if perhaps an unlikely, match.  We have raised our six children and watched them become adults who are better than we were.  Grandchildren came into our lives and have been our joy.  And now we even have a great-granddaughter who gives us another level of joy.

Oh, what a wonderful World.   Oh, yeah!

Winter is here, even if the date doesn't say so. Dec. 11, 2020

 Winter officially starts on the winter solstice, which is always around December 21.  However, we have had ice and snow for the past couple of weeks.  The first couple of storms were only little snow events where the snow didn't last.  Then, on Wednesday, Dec. 2, we had a larger storm where it snowed all day and the forecast was for one or two more days just like it.  That was disturbing because I had to go to Ljubljana the next day, less than a 2-hour drive but over numerous small-mountain passes and bridges.  The next morning, I nearly bailed on the trip when I looked at the forecast and Google maps showed numerous stoppages along the tollway between Maribor and Ljubljana.  But, by the time we headed out most of the stoppages had been cleared.  It was a little dicey getting out of the parking garage and up the hill to the main road but the road was merely wet, as you can see below.

It seems like the snow plows must be very localized, because there were places like in the photo above where the road had been plowed, and then places like in the photo below, where the cars were pushing slushy snow aside or packing it down into ice.  

We had about five miles of that.  However, once we got onto the tollway, it was nicely cleared and the roads were wet, but easy enough to drive on.  We took it nice and easy and had no troubles whatsoever.

The drive to Ljubljana is always stunningly beautiful, but the snow on the trees made it a different kind of beautiful than we've seen before this trip.  Last winter we didn't see any snow at all, but of course we didn't get here until February.  So, while it snowed in the morning, and again that night, we had a lovely day.  I saw my doctor and got pre-cancers frozen off my face.  We met all the missionaries and delivered little packs of cookies to them, and got home again before the afternoon snow got really going.

On the way down, we saw a very-long backup of trucks and cars on the other side of the tollway, and I told Liz that I certainly hoped that was cleared before we came back.   Vain hope!  It appears that the problem was inside one of the tunnels through the taller mountains.  Most are not very long, but one is about 2 miles inside the mountain, and it looked like that was the one with the problem.

The tollway is mostly just two lanes in each direction, but there are a few spots where a truck lane opens up on the right side.  We were passing one of those on the way home, when we came to the back of the line of trucks.  Of course, they were off to the side in the truck lane, so we pressed on, albeit slower than we had been going.  When the road came back down to two lanes, I was surprised to see that the trucks were politely staying in the right lane while most of the cars continued in the left lane unchecked.  But it couldn't last.  Eventually we came to a halt, too.  We estimate we passed five miles of trucks inching along in the right lane before we had to stop.

We inched along in our left lane for about a half hour and came to this reader-board.  You can see that by this point there were a few trucks in the left lane, but it continued to move faster than the right lane.  There were three pressurized-gas trucks in front of us, and we conjectured they are allowed leeway in this kind of situation to get gas to people who need it for heat.  Who knows?  Anyway, it wasn't long after this that we were forced to exit and follow a windy 2-lane road along the valley floor to the far end of the three tunnels in this stretch.   Total distance of backed-up traffic was close to 10 miles. Then, the traffic moved smoothly along the 2-lane road and we were soon back on the tollway.  The backup was simply from forcing traffic off a 4-lane divided highway with a speed limit of 130 kph onto a 2-lane back road with a 70 kph speed limit.

I have had a winter bronchitis infection in 4 of the last 5 years, and I have another one this year.  It became noticeable about a month ago, but it always starts small.  The mission doctor said to take expectorants and call him again if it got to where I could hear noises in my lungs.  A few days ago it got to where I could hear it gurgling in my lungs when I laid down to sleep, so I called the mission doctor again.  I explained the treatment I had used before and he prescribed an inhaler with powdered steroids to help the lungs heal.  He also wanted to prescribe an antibiotic, but I asked him to hold off on that.  Too many antibiotics have already disturbed my intestinal flora and fauna, and they always give me a month or more of disturbance.  Who needs that?  Yesterday it had me pretty low and I hardly moved out of my recliner, but today I am feeling much better.  I expect to have a couple of weeks of that kind of back and forth before it gets better - and maybe longer.

With COVID all around us, exploding through the previously nearly unscathed country of Slovenia, I need to stay isolated.  COVID on top of a stubborn Bronchitis is a serious combination with a poor prognosis.  We have no clue when the new vaccine for COVID will become available here, even though they are already administering it in England and Wales, with several other countries close behind them.  So, I can't afford exposure.

We are still in full lockdown in Slovenia.  We think the government is keeping it locked down in hopes that the infection rate will decline in time to open stores for Christmas.  We still hope so.  Stores have Christmas wares on display, and in the Center (the Slovene word for the town square) they have set up lines of little booths in preparation for a Christmas Market Festival.

One interesting aspect of the Maribor winter is that the temperature seems to stay fairly stable night and day.  Today has a hi of 39 degrees Fahrenheit and a low of 32 with humidity at 100%.  Looking at the long range forecast, most days have a range of 10 degrees or less, but there is one day where it will be 45 and 28 because the sun will peek out for a while.  It's been like this for several weeks.

Tomorrow is the big day for us, although we celebrated it with our children and grands before we left on our mission.  It will be our fiftieth anniversary.  Fifty years ago today, Liz and I got in her parents car along with Grandpa Stevens, to go to Manti where we took out our endowments.  Then the next morning we drove back again and were married and sealed for time and eternity.  It was a happy time for us, and I have never regretted it.  Liz and I have had ups and downs like anybody, but our love for each other remains firm and strong.  I am a very lucky man to have found her and won her hand.

Thanksgiving

 

This photo was taken just outside our apartment about two weeks ago.

Today Liz and I went for a nice, long walk (6,300 steps) after Zoom church.  The fall leaves are still hanging on, but won't be here much longer.

We had been hoping to give the young missionaries in Slovenia a nice Thanksgiving meal and gathering.  The Mission President authorized 7.5 hours for the celebration (including travel time) and we had a plan to get us all together.  However, with increased COVID isolation that was impossible.  We used Zoom to contact them all, but no face-to-face contact at all.  I set up my computer with Zoom tuned in and sent a message to the missionaries that we were very happy to share part of the day with them up until 6:30 pm.  We visited with several of them, and had two companionships online with us as we all ate our separate meals.  That was nice.

That evening we had our kids call in and we actually had all 6 of them online for quite a long time.  Pure heaven!  We were on Zoom from 12:30 until past 10:00 pm, and loved it.

President Russell M. Nelson gave a Thanksgiving fireside chat where he invited everybody to post something every day for a week on social networks telling things for which we are thankful, and use the hashtag #givethanks.   It was fun posting every day, and easy to find good things for which I am thankful.  The Worldwide response has been terrific, and I got lots of likes and responses to my posts.

=======================

One of our duties as Assistant Area Auditors is to train all the leaders in the mission.  I have prepared a training course over the past couple months.   As I completed it, it occurred to me that we have not done anything for the local leadership - only the young missionaries who serve in leadership roles.  (We are down to one young elder who serves as a branch president, but we continue to have quite a few who are branch clerks or assistant clerks.)  I did a quick review and my training course is appropriate for all of them, so I sent invitations to District Presidents and clerks, as well as all the branch ones.  I also included the Mission President and the Area Auditors to whom we report.

  I have set 7 times when anyone who wants training can tune into my Zoom account and get the one-hour presentation.  Included are how to find further resources they can use for self-training.  I addressed things that frequently come out during audits, and how to fix them.  And I explained how to use each screen in the finance systems of the church.

  Yesterday, I had one district clerk who tuned in, and 3 young elders.  Other sessions will be at varying times over the next five days.  It will be interesting to see if any of the District leaders join us.

I am also going to put the presentation on a shared drive where missionaries can reference it at any time.  In preparation for that, I am going to modify it again, and convert it into a PDF format.

The next round of audits starts next month, so here we go again.

Facebook

 I haven't talked about this while posting on this BLOG, but missionary work has changed because we are not allowed to talk to people on the streets like missionaries used to do.  It is against COVID-19 restrictions.  So, we have switched to using Facebook as our missionary contacting tool.  As senior missionaries, it is not our job to find people to teach any more than any other member of the church, but the young missionaries ARE tasked with finding people.  In our new, isolated World, they spend their days posting on Facebook about things that they enjoy.  When people respond to their posts, they make friends, and when their new friends ask about why they are here in a foreign land, they explain about their calling as missionaries and this leads to gospel discussions.  It is less intrusive than stopping people on the streets, and we have found it to be much, much more effective.  In this time of massive unemployment and forced isolation, people are online more and are open to exploring things.  Elder Uchtdorf instructed us to be "normal and natural" in this work, and as we make friends.  He feels that we will never go back to the kind of tracting and street-contacting we used to do.  

   At the start of it, one companionship of young missionaries were tasked with creating a Facebook page for the Adriatic North Mission, with content about the gospel and the church.  Then, there was a page for each of the five countries in the mission, and finally a page for each major city in each country.  While we've been narrowing our focus to the cities, we have also found quite a few people who are outside our boundaries, because Facebook doesn't recognize or work with boundaries.  Our missionaries are teaching people all over the World, even while trying to find people here.  Today, the Mission President announced that we are going to be spreading out our view into the rural areas, so that we are not just focusing on the cities.

   We are using Zoom and WhatsApp video for teaching in a lot of cases, although face-to-face teaching is still best and we do it when we can.  In the beginning of using Facebook, it was assumed that the young missionaries would be technologically savvy and able to do the work in novel ways.  That was mostly correct, but some of them were like me - techie, but not a fan of Facebook.  They worked at it and have gotten better and better.  More recently, the Area has assigned a Facebook expert and a marketing expert to give us weekly lessons on how to be effective missionaries and use Facebook even better.  Their presentations have been fascinating.  This doesn't affect what we are teaching or how we make connections with people, but it seriously affects how good we are at making our initial contacts with them.  More people are being taught than we even dreamed of before we turned to Facebook.

    There are other social networking tools that we could be using, but we have focused on Facebook  so that we can all learn together and can help each other.  In the future, we may use the other programs, but meanwhile the missionaries have become so good with it they are teaching about as many people as they possibly can.  One of our current worries is that we are making so many new contacts that we might loose track of some of them that are already interested in learning more about the gospel.

   We love the missionaries assigned to work with us here.  They are wonderful, and inventive, and interesting, and enthusiastic.  What a marvelous thing we have been allowed to do by coming here to SLOVENIA.

Out walking

 Well, we are restricted, but not imprisoned, so we try to get out and take a nice walk around town every day or so.   Yesterday there was a high wind alert, so we stayed inside like good little doo-bees.  The wind didn't blow, though.  Today it is a bit windy, but we were bundled up.  Tonight will be the first freeze of the year - low of 28 predicted.  Tomorrow night is supposed to be 21, but I suspect this is kind of what winters will be here.  Highs chilly, lows hovering around freezing.  It snows, but I haven't seen any photos of significant amounts.  Mostly, it rains.

    So, I took some cellphone photos.  First, a door.  There are tons of interesting doors around here.  

This an ordinary building, but it dates back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire days.  Very interesting.

This four-pool fountain is in a popular square just outside the palace.  Behind it you can see windows through the city wall.  There is a closer view below.

This dates back even farther than the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  The Turks tried to invade Europe starting in about the 1100's or so.  The Yugoslavian countries mostly stopped them.  Maribor was a major crossing point of the Drava River, and so the City of Maribor was built as a fortress.  This is a part of the Palace.  It was built as part of the Old City Wall, and is just about the only piece of it left.  There are some older walls along the riverbank that might also be parts of it..  From the different-colored stone, I expect this was the back gate at one time.  But the window is clearly defensive and gives a hint of the 4-5 feet thick walls.

These are old windows from the courtyard into the cellar of the palace, and even they are defensive, because the palace doubled as the reboubt, or last place of defense.  But these windows were inside the walls.  The low, grey wall bottom-left in this photo is the where the main wall continued across town.

This is the well in the same courtyard.  It's hard to see, but the pulley for lifting buckets out of the well is still there.

I took this photo just to show how the outside walls of the fortress sloped.  Difficult for troops to climb.  It was never conquered while the big artillery was trebuches and fighting was almost all done with bows and swords.  Of course, once big cannons were built, this kind of fortress became obsolete.

Here is a Christmas display in the window of a shop in the Center of Maribor.  Pretty up-scale stuff, but the shop is closed by COVID restrictions.  We still think (and the shop owner clearly agrees) that the intent of government is to clamp down hard now so they can loosen it as Christmas approaches.

This is an Advent tree, for counting down the days until Christmas.  Advent calendars in various forms are very popular here.  In this one, each day you open a drawer and take out a little ornament to hang on the hooks on the ceramic tree.  Very clever.

Fabulous images

 Sometimes you see an image that just makes you smile.  Case in Point:

It is one of a series of posters on a shop in downtown Maribor.  The heading translates (more or less) to "Sunshine World".  I have no clue why they are so prominently displayed.  They are about 5 feet square, thus hard to miss.

  Here are the rest of them:

     And if you are not happy by now, then there is something terribly wrong.  Go see a doctor straight away!   My very favorite is the Pepper Girl who looks like she is about to start giggling, and my least favorite is Coffee Girl who looks a little nervous.

     We need this comic relief.  Slovenia is shutting down for at least two weeks.  We've had a lot of restrictions for a while, but now they are getting very serious about it.  COVID cases are climbing rapidly and they want to put a damper on it so they can relax it a little in time for Christmas (or so we think).

    So, now the restrictions are NO groups of any size, except for those who live in the same household.  No visitors in your house.  No being outside your house without a mask - which is even required while in your car.  No travel outside your home city.  If you have more than one house you can be in whichever one you want, but you can't move between them.  Strict curfew starting at 9:00 each evening and continuing until 6:00 in the morning, with significant fines for violations.

    Some businesses are allowed to remain open.  Grocery stores, bakeries, pharmacies, hospitals and doctor offices, bicycle and car repair places, etc.  Churches are not on that list.

     We had been having the young sister missionaries over to our apartment for Sunday Dinner, and a few weeks ago, we also had a select few members who live nearby join us, too.  First the members had to stay away, and now we can't even have other missionaries.  Of course, we could probably get away with it, but we are trying to set a good example and be supportive of the government.  Today, we arranged to quickly meet the sisters outside and exchange some dinner dishes, so that we all have a nice meal, for half the work of it.  I made my World-famous chocolate chip cookies.  The sisters made lasagna.

     Liz is working on a newsletter for members of the church in our branch area.   We can't meet, and haven't been able to for many weeks.  This is kind of devastating for a small, weak branch like ours.  We need the social interaction and mutual support, but we can't get it.  The hope is that the newsletter will be a small ray of sunshine (like the poster girl above).  It has a short message from the branch President.  It has links to Zoom church meetings, including Sunday meeting, Sunday School lessons, Young Single Adult group, Primary Zoom call, etc.  And much more.

    We have an able young man who is doing the translation of it into Slovene, and I am maintaining the mailing list.  We have high hopes.

Yes.  Faith, hope, and charity.  That is the ticket.

Amazing gadget

 We made an appointment at a medical clinic a few days ago to get blood work done in lieu of an annual physical.   When we walked in the door, the attendants motioned for us to disinfect our hands at a stand by the wall with an alcohol-based cleanser, as is very common here.  As I used it, I was surprised to hear a voice say, "Temperature Normal." in English.  The voice was coming from a non-descript box mounted on the wall right by where your head is when you use the disinfectant.  I might have mentioned this before, but I keep thinking about that gadget on the wall.

   What an amazing gadget it is!!!  Unobtrusive, non-invasive, automatic, pleasant, and terribly effective.   I love that.

I just heard the Secretary of State in the U.S. say that there will be a smooth transition to a 2nd Trump administration, even though the result of the election is clearly a defeat for him.  It has been clear for a couple of days, but Trump is incapable of admitting defeat.  I have to admit that he makes me ashamed to be an American.  This isn't why I served in the USMC.  Coverage of gangs of Trump supporters carrying rifles makes me even more ashamed.  People here tend to like Trump because he married a local woman, but they talk about him like a crazy uncle.  Nobody around here thinks he should be President anymore.  I agree.

This is another photo of the lights put out at the cemetery on the Day of the Dead.  

Visiting Ljubljana and the Maribor Cemetery

 Yesterday, we had an appointment with the national police in Ljubljana to get fingerprinted - the last step in getting our official visa to be here in Slovenia.  The wheels of government have been turning especially slowly during the pandemic shut down.  Along with the appointment, we got official permission to travel for one day, which would ordinarily ("ordinary" during the shutdown) be prohibited.

  We have young missionaries in Ljubljana and Celje, and it is one of our duties to inspect their apartments regularly.  So we took advantage of our travel permission to do that, and while we were with the sisters in Ljubljana we had a birthday party for one of them.  Liz had prepared a wonderful cake, streamers, candles, presents, balloons, etc. so it was fun.  The apartments were in good shape and quite clean, but we are learning, too, and we discovered how to solve the ubiquitous problem of the refrigerators accumulating condensation water.  The drain tubes get stopped up with gunk of various sorts, and then the water flows down to the bottom drawer.  We simply poked the top of the tube and freed it up.

   We also pulled out the grease filters from stove hoods and encouraged all of them to put those in the dishwasher to get them renewed.

    It was a fairly long day for two old people, but we had promised to take the Maribor Sisters to the cemetery to see the lights, so we did that after we got back.

It was dark, but the moon was full, and there were lights everywhere.  Perfect Halloween weather, even if it was a day or two late.  We were absolutely stunned at how many graves had fresh flowers.  Mounds of them!  And so many lights.

This is the view down one of the rows.  This cemetery is huge, probably 300 acres or so, and there were lights on the graves all over it.  Photography doesn't catch the vista of  the small lights stretching off into the distance.  We walked along looking at them and just didn't want to leave.

The history of this cemetery is interesting.  Maribor is a medieval city and over the years it had several cemeteries.  By the 1800's, the many had been combined into a Catholic cemetery, a protestant cemetery and a non-affiliated with an attached section for suicides and criminals.  Around the turn of the twentieth century, the property was full, so they moved all the graves to the current location, and built a soccer field on the property (now the home of the National Team of Maribor) where the old one was.  It is still divided, but only into two: Catholic and non-Catholic.  They are about the same size: huge.  And they are about full, so there is another section just being completed.  I don't know if it will be sectioned off - people here aren't as divided over religion as they used to be.

  We came to one that was very interesting.  Sadly, I didn't get a photograph of it, but it is for Catholic nuns.  It took up the space of three normal graves and an immense headstone had three sections.  In the middle were the names of about a dozen M.M. nuns (Mothers Superior?).  Then, on each side was a sign with a single line for each of the S.M. nuns (I assume ordinary nuns).  The most interesting thing was the dates.  They only had the death year, but at the top there were a couple of names per year, varying of course.  As it went down to later years there were fewer and fewer, until now they are 5-10 years apart.  This, of course, reflects declining interest and power of the Catholic Church with declining numbers of nuns.  In Slovenia today, there just isn't much interest in religion.  We are trying to change that.

The television is on

 Here is an oddity.   This is a patch of European thistles.  The bees love them.  But the bees do not love them equally.  Notice that one thistle has several bees on it, while the others are untouched.  Why would that be?  There are few things so un-picky as a bee.  If it has pollen, they will come.

We have been in the Adriatic North Mission since February.  That entire time we have lived in apartments that have television service and internet service bundled together by a single provider.  In that entire time we have not watched television.  We haven't felt any need for it, and we haven't missed it.  We usually pull the HDMI cable out of the TV port on the router and plug into a laptop so we can use Zoom, or whatever else is on there that we need.   Tonight, I hooked the TV up and got it tuned to CNN.  

    Tomorrow, we are going to Ljubljana to the police station for the final task of getting a one year visa.  We have a full day of apartment inspections and birthday celebrations to do, as well.  When we get back, the voting stations in the states will be in full swing, but we won't have any good idea of what happens on election day until at least Wednesday.  If nothing else, this election has been exciting.

Yesterday was Halloween.  In Slovenia, it is a Day of the Dead (like Dia de La Muerte), where families get together at gravesites and decorate the stones.  Keep in mind that the typical family here has a gravesite with a crypt that may hold a dozen or more caskets.  They honor their dead, and the stones are regularly washed, swept, fresh flowers left, and luminaria (a Luna in Slovene) lit.  On this day, there is also a tradition of leaving a Luna in front of the statue of Jesus in the cemetery.  Today there is a small field holding thousands of lunas in the big Maribor cemetery.  Some hold candles, and some are battery
powered, but they will be left undisturbed until the last one has flickered its last.  Sadly, COVID has the numbers of celebrants down, but some traditions cannot be repressed.

This is Sister Johansen last night, standing by a grave with the crypt stone covered by fresh flowers and lunas.

And this is the statue of Jesus with lunas honoring him.  This was at a cemetery in Zagreb and the two photos above were taken by Elder Johansen.

Yesterday was also an official holiday - Reformation Day.   It is in honor of the Protestant Reformation of the Catholic Church.

  The stores are prepared for the celebration, and here is a photo of the lunas.

The permanent shelf, and pallets of extras in front.  They look a bit like canning jars, but these are luna, intended for graveside honoraria.  They all have handles so they can be hung or tied down.  The grocery stores always have these available, but this week they had lots, and lots, and lots of them, and quite a few left over.  They cost about 5-6 Euros apiece for the battery powered ones - less for the candles which are subject to being distinguished by a gust of wind.

A walk in THE Park

 

There is a park in Maribor that is referred to as THE Park.  When people want to meet up, they just say, "Meet you at the Pavilion,"  which is a gazebo near the entrance to The Park.  Everybody knows where it is, and there is a non-stop flow of people meandering over to it, meeting, and meandering off.

Yesterday was a warm, partly cloudy day, so we joined many others in enjoying THE Park.  The leaves were beautiful.

This is my attempt at art.

This is another.  This tree was leaning, so the maintenance people put up wooden braces to hold it up.  I thought the trunk was worthy of a photo.  What do you think?

Here she is waiting for her friend, and taking one of the many phone calls she gets (mostly due to her position as mission nurse).

We were meeting a nice lady who has been discussing the church with the missionaries for years.  Liz has become good friends with her, so she met up with her friend while I went on a photographic journey.  I met them all on my way back.

This is the entrance to the park.  This part is a gentle slope up the hill.  At the end of this path there are steps, then steeper inclines leading to a series of four lakes.

This is the first lake.  There are benches all along the banks of the lakes.  This paved trail is the one used most often, but there is a simple, gravel trail on the other side, running beyond the trees.  I like that idea.  It makes it so you can walk along this side and enjoy the lake and trees, or you can skulk along the other side while under cover.

This is a photo of the paved path, taken from the other side of the lake.  There were very few places where there was a clear view of the far side of the lake from this path.  It is more of a nature trail.

This is the upper lake.  I love this scene.  It is the reason I took this walk.

The paved path ends here.  Going around this lake, you have to walk on gravel on either side. 

This is the same location, but I used my newly-functioning large lens to zero in on the willow tree and the castle on the hill beyond (outside the park).   This place simply makes my heart sing.

This is from the far side of the same lake, looking back toward where I took the previous photos.  From here, you can see that the pine tree is on a little island - a fact not noticeable at first view.  

This was taken from under the willow tree.   "There is beauty all around."

Evening was approaching, so the light was constantly changing as the sun got lower and the clouds moved by.

As I walked around the lake, pausing to change lenses, sitting on the benches to just enjoy the cool breeze and the smell of the falling leaves, I felt the love of my God in my life.  We are so very blessed to be able to spend two years in this wonderful part of the World.  We are privileged to assist the people here.  I think of that wonderful song by Louis Armstrong:  "And what a wonderful life!  Oh, Yeah."

COVID-19 Grrrr

 Slovenia is now experiencing an explosion of COVID cases.  Every day this week has seen hugely higher numbers of new cases.  As a result, the government has mandated that non-essential businesses shut down for at least a week.  Today, we went and got groceries.  Good thing, groceries are an essential business.

New regulations for Slovenia:

• Curfew from 9:00 pm to 6:00 am
• Must wear facemasks at all times when outside your own home
• Travel between counties is restricted to essentials
• No meetings of more than 6 people are allowed

Entrance to the Catholic cathedral in Maribor.  Beautiful doorway!

    One of the non-essential businesses is the hotel next door.  We pay a monthly rent to be able to park our car in their underground parking garage.  Yesterday, we and the young sister missionaries went to the branch president's house out on the farm to help his wife with some chores and to conduct some church business with him.  When we got back, the door into the parking garage had the big storm door down.  Fortunately, our card opened the little gate AND the big door.  At that time, the exit door was still open, and only the little gate down.   I talked to the guy at the desk in the hotel and he told me that the big doors would be open from 7:00 am to 5:00 pm, but that our gate card would work any time.  Trouble is, we have to get inside the garage to get our car and its card.  When I pointed that out, he showed me the secret, guests-only, always-open fire door that goes down a flight of stairs into the garage.

    Today when we went to get groceries, the hotel was locked up tight, the elevators were not working. and both the big doors were shut.   So much for being open from 7 to 5.  We had to walk most of the way around the hotel to the driveway entrance to the garage and the secret,  guests-only, always-open fire door.  We went down the stairs and found ourselves at the fire door, which was being held open by a pipe laying in the doorway.  If anybody moves that pipe, we will be locked out.  I wasn't too impressed by that version of "always-open", you may be sure!  Beyond that, we went down more steps to the -2 level of the garage and finally got to our car.

    We got our groceries just fine.  Last week, we stumbled across a place that was selling little carts for carrying groceries.  They are like a moving dolly, but with a big cloth bag to hold your stuff.  I bought the heaviest one they had, which might hold up to a small amount of abuse.  I bought some 6 x 2-litre bottles of my favorite refreshing beverage, and the 6-pack fit inside the bag perfectly.  Now, even gimpy as I am, I can get the goods home.

    So, even though it is now officially a pain in the knee to walk around the hotel, down the stairs, and across uneven ground to get to our car, it is still a better arrangement than it was in the other place.  As long as the pipe lays there peacefully, that is.

Voting. And, COVID-19 raises its ugly head.

 When we came here, we signed up for updates from the U. S. Embassy in Croatia.  This is a normal thing where they notify citizens of changes in danger-levels, terrorist threats etc.  One of the things they've been very good about lately is sending updates on how to vote while living here.  With their help, we got an emailed ballot and envelope print-image, which we printed and filled out.  The back of the envelope had to have a large box with text stating that it is a crime to mess with ballots, and there is a place to sign that you are entitled to vote on the ballot inside.

  The front of the envelop has the verification that it is my ballot, in the return address field.  And, of course, the ballot went inside.  A lot of states that send out ballots via email, also receive them via email.  Texas, however, does not.  You can mail them back, or FAX them (the FAX has to be followed by the physical form within a very few days, so what's the point?) but you can't send a valid ballot via email.  We pondered that for a while and I even prepared an envelop to send our ballots to our daughter to mail in.  Express shipping was going to be an expensive way to vote.  Then I re-read the Ljubljana Embassy bulletin and noticed that it said you could hand your absentee ballot to the guards at the Embassy gate and it would go by diplomatic pouch to the US and be guaranteed to arrive in time.  

   And then we spent Saturday driving down to Ljubljana and back.  The hardest thing was finding the Embassy gate.  The Embassy is surrounded by tall wrought-iron fences, just like you see on TV.  There are places where cars can go in, and there are places where the fence is hardened (more protected, bulkier), but I didn't find a guard.  In fact, while searching I got almost to the end and called to a man who was entering the building.  He didn't respond, which was good because then I noticed it was the Russian Embassy.  The U.S. and Russian Embassies are right next door and the two fences looks like a single fence.  As I returned, I noticed that a guard hut a couple yards back from the fence had a guard inside and I was able to get his attention.  I expected a U. S. Marine, with whom I could bond, but it was a Slovene civilian employee who spoke good, though heavily-accented English.  I explained what I wanted and he motioned me to another part of the fence, where the bars are not so close together, and multiple cameras watch.

  He came back out of his booth with a little piece of paper.  He had me hold out the ballots and rubbed both sides of them with the little paper, then he returned to his booth.  A short time later, he returned with a grey, plastic basket, which he had me drop the ballots into.  He took that inside for a moment, then he returned with the grey basket and a wooden box with a locked lid and a slot on top.  I wasn't actually very happy that he'd taken my ballots out of sight, but when he came back I checked and I don't believe it would be possible to duplicate my illegible scrawl of a signature, nor Liz's, in that amount of time.  So, I got my ballots back out of the grey basket, and put them into the slot on top of the locked box, and we wished each other well.  My ballots are probably already back in the USofA in the care of the US Mail.  Just another day in the life of an expat.

    Meanwhile, COVID-19 has exploded in Slovenia.  It's a small country, so it's a small explosion, but disturbing because Slovenia went relatively unscathed last spring.  Each day, there are more positive tests, more confirmed cases, and more hospitalized than ever before.  Deaths haven't caught up, yet.  

  There was talk last Friday that Slovenia might close travel between counties over the weekend, and I was a little worried whether we could make our dash to vote in Ljubljana.  We had no troubles with that.  But when we left, the central part of Slovenia was officially red, while the coastal area and the area around Maribor were orange.  However, the numbers on Saturday turned the entire country red.  The county-to-county travel ban only counts if traveling from orange to red areas, and since everybody is now red, there is no travel restriction within the country.  Yeah!

    BUT, we now have to wear masks at all times when outside our homes, even when out in the open air.  There is also a curfew from 9:00 pm to 6:00 am for all non-emergency purposes, with serious fines for violation.  This was a very pointed measure because the current outbreak has been determined to have occurred due to people gathering in bars and restaurants and even homes, for drinking bouts with friends.  This will continue for at least 30 days.  Oh, and businesses, including bars and restaurants, can only have one customer in each room at a time, which essentially closed all of them.  Businesses like hair salons can be open, but again, with only one customer inside at a time.  Fortunately, I got my hair cut last Friday.

     I bought a nice Nikon camera a month or so ago.  The big lens has never worked, but I've been holding off on taking it back, thinking that maybe I don't know what I need to know.  I've gotten better and more confident with the camera and the small lense.  Example:

 

This African Violet is awesome, but it was taken with the smaller of the two lenses, and it works perfectly.  The larger lens will not focus.  It won't focus automatically, and it won't focus manually.  The violet has aphid-like creatures that are much smaller than I'm used to, and I'd like to get a nice closeup of them.

This was taken at maximum magnification with the smaller lens.  You can see the little, white spots that concern me.  I can sometimes see legs on them, and their spacing is a clear sign that they are living organisms, but I can't make a positive ID on them without more help.  So I need to get the larger lens replaced, repaired, or refunded.  Of the three, I'd prefer refunded, because I could get a higher quality macro lens, but I think that is least likely.  Slovenes hate giving refunds, for any reason.

Oct. 13, 2020 the Mission President comes to Slovenia (at last)! PHOTOS!!!

 Here is where we went:

Lake Bled - at the edge of the Julian Alps - is in a lovely little valley with an alpine village.  As you can see, there was some serious snow last weekend.  I've seen such sights many, many times, but it is the first time I've seen it here.  We came here as a P-Day and welcome to President and Sister Field.  They have been in the mission since July, but it was the first day they were able to get into Slovenia.

    Sister Ashurst and I both were impressed by this building, which is the Municipal Building of Bled.

I am impressed with the artwork around the top floor.  It depicts scenes of historic battles, Saints, and mythology.

    We came farthest of all the Slovenia missionaries, so naturally we were the first ones there.  Here is Sister Ashurst with Sisters Perry and King.

Slovenia often posts signs that has the country name as sLOVEnia, so that's why the heart.  It's an obvious place for photos.  And this one (below) is also typical.  There are probably thousands - millions - maybe billions of photos like these laying about..

   I have a new camera, a Nikon D3500, and I was playing with it, practicing the new skills I'm working on developing.  

I was trying very hard to be artistic with this one, and have a soft background for the beautiful flowers.  Trouble is, I was so focused on the focus that I didn't realize the photo is focused on a dead flower.

    This one is better:

I also got shots of a couple of birds.  Sadly, I don't know what they are, yet.

This one was all black, with a subtle bit of a top-knot.  It acted just like an American robin.  It's call was like that of a robin.  It was eating little worms and bugs from the grass - just like a robin.

    

This guy was eating the red berries in a yew tree.  I have been amazed at red berries on an evergreen tree, to begin with, but these are very interesting.  The European yew is very different than the yews in America.  It is deadly poison in every part, except for the fleshy part of the red berries.  The berries look a bit like pine cones, but they are very, very sweet.  They have a large-ish seed inside that is poisonous, and they are coated with sticky sap which is not.

This is the Slovenia Zone, plus President and Sister Field, plus the Assistants to the President.  I am not in the photo because I couldn't remember how to set an auto timer, and forgot that I can use my cell phone to take remote photos while the camera is on the tripod.  Just above Elder Port's shoulder is the church on the little island in the middle of the lake.

    From there, the herd decided to walk around the lake.  My knee was aching just then, so I declined to go.  I took this one as they left:

As it turns out, they didn't circumnavigate either, so I could have gone, but I wouldn't have been able to keep up with them.  I practiced with the camera instead.

    The trees are in their fall colors; not as flamboyant as we remember from Utah, but nice anyway.

I took several photos like this one:

The point is to learn how to set the focus on a macro (closeup) photo so the background blurs out, thus emphasizing the thing you want emphasized.

    On my way to meet everybody for lunch on the hill, I found a hotel that keeps honeybees.  Slovenian beehives are kept in little buildings or sheds or shelters of various sizes.  This one is a common size.  It has fourteen beehives in it and the bees were flying in and out.  The hives can be opened from inside the building.  This one has a window for selling honey.  The main door to enter the building is on the opposite side.

Two rows of seven hives, and you can see the famous bee boards with colorful folk art.

    The restaurant where we had lunch was near the cathedral on the hill.  It is impressive from down by the lake.  Here is a closer view.

And here is the impressive door:

And for the grand finale, I present another macro shot, this time of a stunning moldy leaf:

I could have chosen an intact leaf, but that would just be boring.