Conference weekend April 2020

This has been a fairly normal week, and when things are normal, it's harder to find things to post about.  But a few things have happened.

We were at the Mission Home with President and Sister M. when they got a phone call from a local member, asking if the young elders could contribute time in service, working with the cleanup people to clear bricks and rubble from the earthquake.  Yes, we normally do that kind of thing, so President gave them the go-ahead.  We discussed whether they'd be working with the crane the church is paying for, but the two things are not related.  So Monday morning, most of the elders started working on it.   They worked with a crew of chimney repair guys who, instead of tossing broken bricks into the streets, tossed them through holes in the roof into the attics.  The elders then gathered them into sacks and carried them down to the trucks to be hauled away or salvaged.
  The sister missionaries asked, begged, and pleaded for permission to help, but the mission rules prohibit using sisters from doing that kind of thing.
  Normally, when members of the church give aid, we wear yellow T-shirts or yellow vests with the church's "Helping Hands" logo on them.  After a couple of days, I was cleaning out some of the cabinets in the mission office and found two sacks of yellow Helping Hands vests.  Yeah!   They have been distributed, and the elders will wear them when they return to work on Monday.
  The old victorian buildings of downtown Zagreb were heavily damaged by the earthquake, and the work of restoring damaged roofs, chimneys, and collapsed walls will be continuing for a very long time.

The Mission Home has a nice kitchen, not quite industrial, but with a capacity for feeding large groups of people.  In today's World, a microwave oven is essential in any kitchen larger than a log cabin.  Friday evening we put something in the microwave but when we pressed the GO button, nothing happened.  We tried different settings.  We tried unplugging it and plugging it back in.  The control panel lights up, but it won't GO.
  The problem with this is that by government order, all non-essential businesses are closed until COVID-19 goes away.  Saturday morning President M. greeted me when I came downstairs by saying, "Well, we know what you are going to be doing today."  I said, "What."   He said, "Get us a microwave.  Do whatever you can, but get us one."
  Businesses that sell consumer products like microwaves are closed by government order.  So, my first thought is the Metro store.  Metro is a restaurant supply store in Europe, and while they mainly sell food, they also sell all the chef equipment.  When I mentioned that, Sister M. said to get enough mission food that if the stores close, we'd have enough when all the missionaries end up at the Mission Home.
  So, Liz and I emptied out our car and put the seats down, and headed to the Metro store.  When we got there a line had formed across the parking lot, but it wasn't really all that long because everybody was standing six feet or more from the next person.  We had a shopping list, but number 1 was the microwave.  We found them inside.  Most things are smaller in Europe than in the US, but we really, truly wanted a big one.  They had tons of small ones, and they had one big one on display, but none in a box, and they wouldn't sell us the display.  Drat it!
  We pushed a huge flat cart around the store and got ten cases of sealed milk (no refrigeration required), three cases of OJ, a case of beans, six boxes of spaghetti, a case of tomato sauce, a bunch of tuna, etc.  The cart was so heavy I could barely move it and I was starting to get dirty looks from the other people there.  I also scored three boxes of plastic glove in S, M and L.  And biggest find of all - for the first time since I've been in Croatia I found alcohol-based hand cleaner in a store.  I put two bottles in our cart, but when I checked out the lady took one of them out and said we can only get one.  Then she put the M gloves out and said we could only get two boxes of gloves.  So some things are still in short supply. 
  The whole process was exhausting, especially pushing that heavy cart up and down isles.  Fortunately, when we got back, some of the young elders were there, so we had them haul the stuff inside and stack it near the unused indoor swimming pool.

Conference was great this time!  We watched the Saturday morning session live at 6:00 pm.   Sunday, Liz prepared a beef roast with onions, and mashed tators and gravy.  Then, we watched the other two Saturday sessions and the Sunday morning session at 6:00 pm.
  We watched the Sunday afternoon session this morning before heading in to the office.  BTW, while at Metro, we bought several big bags of candy to resupply a bowl on the desk in the office.  It is there for the young missionaries, but we all dip into it.

We are still here in Croatia, which makes us happy.  Over the weekend, we heard of several people our people in the US know who have died from COVID-19.  We don't know anybody who has it here, so we are still feeling really good about staying put when we had the option to go home.  On the other hand, it seems clear that unless they invent a vaccine pretty soon, everybody will eventually get exposed to it.  I am OK with whatever happens, because I feel good about my role in life, including passing on when it comes to that.