Transfer Day!

One of the young elders is involved in transfers this go-round.  Plus the mission president asked that we come over with them - to tell me my assignments here, and so we can get a feel for the kitchen so we can do the cooking for next transfer.  In addition the sister in the couple doing the cooking this time around is the Mission Medical Advisor who is turning things over to Liz.  So we needed to go, too.

This is the other side of the building where our church is located.  It is magnificent, but deteriorating.

   So we all piled into our little car, with the elder's luggage, and headed for Zagreb.  First stop, the MUP (combo gov. and police station) so the elder can let them know he is leaving, which is a visa requirement.  Then we stopped at the church to finish the financial work started Sunday afternoon.  Then we had to stop at the toll booth to get the tolltag updated into my name.  Whew!  Finally we could get on the road.  We've only been here a week, but the countryside is noticeably greener than it was when we came.  And the farmers were out plowing and cutting and getting the farm year started.
  There are aspects of the drive that remind me of Fillmore.  I saw a couple of herds of deer.  Without their antlers, they look remarkably like whitetails, but of course they are European deer.  There are small hunting stands in the fields, just like you see in Texas when you drive around.  The other thing I enjoyed was seeing ringneck pheasants out in the fields.  When we came I saw them, but never close enough to confirm they were ringnecks.  But this time they were closer to the highway and it was obvious what they were.
   On the road to Zagreb we follow along a valley with farms and livestock.  There are villages at the bottom of the hills bordering the valley.

This is pretty typical of them.  The main road in town runs along the base of the hill, and people have built out from there.  Farms extend into the valley, which looks like it is approximately 10 miles wide.  Some of the houses are painted in bright colors, and some look as innocent of paint as a newborn babe.

This road is a tollway with restricted access.  There are rest stops at frequent intervals where you can get gas, food, and sometimes lodging, but those services are fenced inside the tollway.
   The rest stops are clean and very nice.  The actual restrooms are in a separate door from the food area (great idea!) and one we stopped at had a woman sitting there collecting a small coin for cleaning it.  At that same place a trucker walked over to a tree right in front of where we parked, unzipped, and watered a tree.  He didn't even turn his back.  I guess he couldn't afford 2 kuna.  (about 30 cents)

.

This is a hotel at one of the rest stops.

We stopped at a member's house for a visit and lunch, and on the way into town we passed this brick yard:

They seem to use these standard bricks for construction everywhere.  They are finer than American bricks, not as porous, and with lots of air gaps for insulation and for running wires.  I'll try to find one where I can take a closer pic.  Someday.
 

I took this photo as we drove through the village.  The houses are better maintained here than in the city where we live, but even so, if you look closely at the taller building down the street a bit, you might notice that the end of the building has no facade and no glass in the attic window.  This too reminds me of Fillmore.

This is an abandoned building in a row of nice homes on the main road through this village.  I would guess maybe 500 people live here.

   So we drove to Zagreb and the Mission Home.  We let the elders take the car from there to the apartment of the elders with whom they are swapping, while we stayed on at the luxurious mission home.  We've now met several of the senior missionary couples and they are delightful - after all we've all made the choice to come here and serve.  All are missing chocolate chips, but I am thinking I will be happy with chopping up chocolate bars and using the chunks.
   At the mission home, we met three sisters who are going home.  We helped the other senior couple prepare their dinner so they could have a relaxing meal and chat with the mission president and his wife.  When they were done we cleared everything up and loaded the dishwasher.  Then the mission president invited us to join them and the sisters who are leaving us for a "what do we do NOW?" chat.  They asked the sisters what was their best experience, and would they bear their testimonies, and so forth.  The mission president gave them some good advice on how to go back to ordinary life and make the adjustment.
  Then one of them asked how they are supposed to find Mr. Right.  Well, that opened the floodgates.  The other senior couple had definite opinions, the mission President and his wife had definite opinions, and we had some, too.  We were all telling them how we made the grade with our marvelous insight and so forth, when it occurred to me that we were getting entirely outside left field.  So I asked if I could throw a monkey in the wrench.  I said that we'd all given good advice, but marriage is all about making a commitment.  So once you find someone you are willing to commit to for the rest of your life and beyond into eternity, and he is also willing to make that commitment, all the other things just kind of go away.  Nobody argued, and we moved on.  I was pleased with that.
   Next day, Liz got training on how be the medical person for the mission (gulp!).  I got training on how to be the techie guru for her.  And president Melonakos finally gave me my assignment in our branch.  I am in the branch and elders quorum presidencies.  Oh, and by the way, would we be in charge of planning the next all-mission senior missionary get-together - preferably to be held in Serbia (where we've never been), and of course we will make the announcement with ALL the details at a meeting in April.  We told him we are delighted to serve, which we really are.
   After that we packed up and drove back to our home city with a new (to us) elder.

   Today we bought a new mattress for our bed (neither of us have been sleeping on the old, lumpy one), and a new sofa.  The current sofa is nice leather so old that all the stitching gives way if you touch it.  It's hard to sit on it without touching stitching, so the stuffing is on the move.
  This evening we had the delightful experience of attending the English class the junior elders are teaching.  Starting next week we will be leading the advance class in conversation.  We'll have some talking points, but mostly we will just talk with them.  There were seven people there who are studying English.  They know the elders are going to lead a religious discussion after the class, and all but one stayed for it, but they have no obligation to do so.  The church provides the study manuals and the students seemed very motivated to progress.