Saturday (P-day)

Today is P-day for the junior missionaries.  Technically us too, but it's meaningless for us because we get to schedule all our days as needed.
  1.  We called our landlord and asked him to come over.  We had a list of items, some of which he gave us what we want and others that he basically told us to suck it up.  He is a young guy and he owns ten apartments in this building or nearby.   He was very nice and obliging in general.  No wonder we've heard such good things about him.  The big surprise is that he's a young guy.
  2.  The landlord meeting went longer than we'd hoped, so we were late for our 11:00 appointment to meet the elders for cleaning the church.  It is an apartment in an old building.   They build to last here, so most places we've seen have solid wood floors, tile window ledges, carvings, etc.  The walls are made of an interlocking brick with air spaces built in - sort of like concrete block, but solid so no air moves through like it does with concrete block.  It is sad that a lot of these beautiful old buildings are falling into serious disrepair.  Lots of concrete castings and fascia is falling off, and lots of buildings are abandoned or unused.
   So, back to cleaning the building.  We had some decoration arranging to do from a past list, so Liz tackled that.  I asked the elders what was left to do and they said to sweep the stairs coming into the apartment.  It is at the bottom of a stairway so I asked if the church owns the building or just the apartment.  The rumor is that we own it all ( the street is named after our most famous Croatian member) so I walked up the stairs to see if they needed sweeping.  Boy Howdy!  Do they ever!?  As I went up they got dirtier and dirtier, with increasingly large piles of junk on the landings and even pots of dead flowers on the stairs.  So I opted to sweep them all, but not haul out the junk.  I made clouds of dust and by the time I reached the bottom I had a big pile of sand and grit I was sweeping along with me.  Liz came out to tell me they were waiting for me, but she fetched a dust pan so we could throw it all into the garbage can.
  3.  We didn't have time for lunch so we all piled into our car and drove to our apartment.  We had an appointment to meet a member family with the junior missionaries and the family lives in easy walking distance of our apartment.  The first impression as we entered the house was the heat and the smell of wood smoke.  It's been cool each day and gets below freezing at night.  Wood fires are hard to control and I think it was hotter than they wanted.  They are an older couple, and another member who lives nearby joined us.  Very nice, but very little English, although more than we have Croatian.  After introductions (they thought we must be cowboys like John Wayne because we lived in Texas) the junior elders taught them the Sunday School lesson.  She offered us a soft drink which tasted a bit like Dr. Pepper, and as we rose to go she insisted we each take a bag of potato chips.  These came from a food donation they get, but they don't eat them.  This is a bit tricky:  they are getting financial and food help and are dirt poor, but they wanted to give us something to show hospitality.  We didn't really want the food, but you can't offend them, so in the end we each took one bag.
   The home where they live is a study in contrast.  They have nearly nothing.  But they have some cabinets in their home that would make any woodworker drool over the the fancy grain and french polish and carved accents.  They only own four glasses, so Liz and I had to share one.  The kitchen was so small they had the fridge in the living room and stored the dishes on top of it.  But they are nice old people.