First day at church

We went to church early today so we could greet the members.  There were 15 members, plus we four missionaries, which is good for here.  Liz and I introduced ourselves and bore our testimonies at the beginning of Sacrament meeting, and then the junior missionaries gave the main talks.  Of course, our Croatian language skills were woefully, and obviously inadequate, but the Branch President translated for us. 
  In priesthood meeting we were discussing missionary work and the leader asked what we could do to help build up the membership.  It's hard to jump in with things when the translation lags so far behind the conversation flow, so afterwards I suggested to the Branch President that the front of the building could present a better image with a little repairing.  So a few of us walked out to take a look.

Liz took this photo as we left to go home.  The church has a couple of plates on the wall to my right so people know we're there.   As we stood there looking at the building with a view to repairs, I noticed the wall is pockmarked with holes.  Bullet holes as it turns out.  If you look above the plate with the name of the church there are some big ones, and one is at my left shoulder right on the corner of the doorway.  If you zoom  in on the wall to my left you see lots of smaller holes, which I suspect are shrapnel holes from grenades.  This is just a small view of a very large building a block long.  The whole thing is pocked.  Doorways were clearly targeted.    These are remains of the war of 20+ years ago.  The whole Yugoslavian army was headquartered in Serbia, so Croatia was pretty helpless when Yugoslavia broke apart and Serbia decided to make everybody into Serbians.  Some of the members told us they were trying to stop the tanks with hunting rifles, and some of the current members were wounded.  So, even though it all ended a long time ago, feelings are very sensitive.

  But back to the repair of the building.  The Branch Pres. said he'd like to see it repaired, but there are some issues.  The church just owns the one apartment (the one with yellow flowers on the window sills) so any repair has to be coordinated with the building supervisor.  And then there is the government, which sometimes designates buildings like this one as "cultural sites".  That's bad/good.  Good in that the government will help with costs.  Bad in that the red tape becomes stupendous.  Step one is that most of the tenants in the building have to want it done and agree to pay half the cost.  Usually you can't find tenants who can afford any repairs at all.

  BTW, the state of our building is very typical here.  As we drive around town we see a lot of repairs going on, but much, much more that still needs to be done.  Croatia has been depopulating as people go to other countries to get better jobs, leaving an increasingly bad situation at home.

  The name of the street is Krešimira, which refers to Krešimir Cosic, who played basketball for BYU back when Liz and I were there.  He became a big hero in all of Yugoslavia, before the war.