Missionaries during a Pandemic

I think this BLOG has drifted towards being a travel log.  I don't really want it to be that, so I am going to tell you about how the mission works during the Novel COVID-19 pandemic.
   When we arrived, we were posted immediately to Osijek, the city where we were going to spend our 23 months of service.   We got a three-month tourist Visa from the officials in Osijek (after 3 months we are allowed to apply for a one-year visa,) and settled into our apartment, a nice two-bedroom flat on the top floor of a six-story building near the downtown area.  In a previous post, I explained how we went to Zagreb, and ended up moving into the Mission Home just before the city of Zagreb was sealed off.
   The same kinds of moves were taking place all over the mission.  The senior missionaries had the option to return home honorably, if they desired to.  Some were nearly done with their missions anyway, some feared to be away when the pandemic got worse, some received pressure from their families to return.  Over a period of less than three weeks, ten senior couples and two senior single sisters returned home.  We managed to get one new senior couple and one new senior single sister into Zagreb during this time, so the net loss was nine couples and one sister.  We also sent fifteen young missionaries home early, again with honorable releases whether it was for health reasons, family desires, or because they were nearly done with their mission anyway.
  President and Sister Melonakos were tremendously busy coping with all the change these early releases put upon them.  Living in the same house, in spite of our efforts not to eaves-drop, we heard them up early, working non-stop all day with only a few short breaks for meals or to say hello to us.  In the evenings they would say good night, but we could hear them on their phones talking to missionaries, government officials, church headquarters in Salt Lake City, our Area Authorities in Frankfurt, parents of missionaries, and who knows who else.

  And, of course, we had a significant earthquake right in the middle of it all.  That was fun!

   Each time a missionary leaves, though, it forces the Mission President to move other missionaries around.  No missionary, except senior single sisters are allowed to be alone in an apartment.  So as missionaries leave, their companion has to be reassigned.  So, now we have several companionships with three missionaries.  As senior missionary couples left, their apartment became vacant.  At the same time, we were getting more restricted with how much travel we could do, and even times of the day when we could be outside.
    The Mission President made changes that resulted in all the missionaries being near each other in the larger cities.  He moved companionships of 3 or 4 missionaries into the larger, vacated senior apartments in the cities so that while they were in quarantine they would have better internet service.  We now have 20 vacant apartments in the mission, so he could pick and choose.  One of the benefits of moving the missionaries into the larger cities is that they have had better social groups, which is a mental health benefit during confinement.
  As the quarantine restrictions became tighter and tighter, the airports started shutting down, countries closed their borders, and it became difficult to get missionaries out of the mission to go home.  Finally, the only airport in the five countries of the Adriatic North Mission was the one in Zagreb.  We had a car for each senior couple, so cars were assigned to young missionaries, but the cars sometimes can't cross the border.
    We had at least one instance where a young sister missionary had to get home and there was no car that could cross the border.  It took several hours to work out a solution.  President actually enlisted the help of a member of the church who works for the U. S. Embassy.  One of the companionships who were staying in the country drove the departing sister to the border of Croatia.  She got out of the car there, unloaded her luggage, and tugged it across the border, going through two customs stations along the way, where she met the member in the embassy car to get her ride to the Zagreb airport.  This was necessary because the Croatian border is closed to ordinary traffic, and the city of Zagreb is also closed.  So, for her to cross she had to have her airline tickets with her as the reason to cross the Croatian border, and she had to have a ride in a car that had permission to enter Zagreb.
    We were fortunate that in the country of Montenegro, the U. S. State Department brought in a special plane to evacuate embassy personnel and empty seats were available to US citizens trying to get home.  We were able to get three missionaries onto that plane.  If they had not been able to get on that flight, they would not have been able to get home.  It was the last flight out of Montenegro until the pandemic calms down, and the neighboring countries already had no operating airport.

As for me, I've been the odd man out.  Liz has been an essential part of keeping the Mission Office running because so much of it is exactly what she was doing before she retired.  So, she has to be there nearly every day.  To me, fell the numerous, little errands that needed to be done.  I took things to the Posta.  I took cars to be serviced.  I went to the grocery stores.  I fixed the filing cabinets broken by the earthquake, and put the files back in them in some kind of order.  I took photos of earthquake damage so the insurance people can assess the damage without being able to actually come see it.
   Croatia has a law that requires every car to have winter tires during the winter season.  That officially ended April 15.  So now I can put highway tires on instead.  The complication is that the cars moved around with the missionaries, and the seniors who used to be assigned to them  are the only ones who know where the highway tires are located.  And we can't move the cars back where they were because intercity travel is shut down within Croatia.  For example, our car has highway tires in a storage place at the Hyundai dealership in Osijek.  Good, at least I know where they are.  But I can't get there.  Once the quarantine is lifted, I'll be able to go get them changed.  I think I know where the Mission President's car's tires are, but today's task is to make sure the ones I saw in the garage are the correct ones.  And then I'll call to get an appointment to get them changed.  Many of the other car tires are stored in senior missionary apartments, and nobody knows where the rest of them are located.
    We've got two more cars here at the Mission Home, one from Slovenia, and one from Bosnia.  They came here with missionaries going home, so we know where they came from, but we don't have a clue where their tires are located.  And it's not technically legal for them to have been here as long as they've already been here.
    The good news is that the law enforcement people are quarantined like everybody else, so they are not paying attention to minor things like parking tickets, foreign cars parked in out of the way places, and things like that.  They are the ones monitoring the city borders, controlling traffic around the huge cranes at work in downtown Zagreb after the earthquake, and major crime.  Not that we've seen any of that.

   So, it's been an exciting time to be on a mission in Croatia.  It's not ANYTHING like we expected, but it has been delightful.  We are loving being here and can't imagine going home early.  Our loving children are supporting us fully and nobody has even hinted that we should leave.  Thank you all for that!