May .29 - Part 2

Last thing that happened when Liz visited her father's birthplace was that she claimed a souvenir, with the current owner's permission.  While clambering around the terraces behind the house, she came across a pile of tiles that had fallen from the roof.  We are now the proud owners of one and a half of them.

These are old-fashioned roof tiles that are formed into shape over the maker's thigh.  The shape of the thigh is larger near the body and smaller near the knee.  This difference in size makes the tiles fit together on the roof.  The first tiles are laid small end at the bottom of the roof slope - facing up so they form channels from gable to peak.  Than another layer is placed over them (large end at the bottom) so water is directed into the channels.  They lock together and get tighter as the roof is covered.  Similar tiles have been used for many centuries and millennia, but not in the last hundred years or so.  Mass-produced, perfectly shaped tiles won out over individual craftsmanship.

When we left the house, Brother Lamb suggested we look for the local graveyard.  We had seen a sign for it while wandering around the village.  After a false start, we located this beautiful cemetery on wooded slopes at the southeast of the village.

The cemetery is full of Benacs, Blazinas, Polics and many other family names.  We spent a happy hour wandering around looking for familiar ones.  Liz located the grave of her great-grandmother, which brought forth tears.  We photographed many of them, but then Brother Lamb suggested we use an app called Billion Graves, to register them all.  With that app, someone goes to a cemetery and photographs each gravestone as the app records the GPS location of each photograph.  If there is internet service there, the photographs get uploaded as you go and then is available to genealogists the World over.  We didn't have time to do it that day, but we decided to request Mission approval to go back and photograph every one.

Liz's great-grandmother Katerina Blazina is in section B, near number 84, if I remember correctly.  We hoped there would be a list showing the names of people in each grave, but we didn't locate it.  It looks like there are approximately 700-800 graves, and there can be up to five people per grave crypt.  The oldest graves are in the sections shown at the bottom of the photo.  At the top is a new section with only a few graves marked.
   An interesting thing about this cemetery, is that it is clearly held in high esteem locally.  Many graves had fresh flowers adorning them.  Many more had long-lasting artificial flowers.  And the graves and crypts are obviously dusted and washed regularly.
 [Sunday, we received official approval to spend a day at the cemetery recording all the graves.  We can enlist the help of the senior couple, the Lambs, too.]

May 29, 2020

We had arranged to spend some time today with Brother and Sister Lamb, who are assigned to Rijeka.  We are going to Hrjelin, where Liz's father was born, and also visit some members who make stained glass art pieces.
  We met the Lambs at their apartment and were given a very nice, warm welcome.  We chatted for a while in their apartment, and then we got in our blue car and drove to Hrjelin.  The village is on a hillside, so we drove up the hill looking for the house, which Liz and I have seen in photos.  We thought perhaps we could locate the street and then just go to the house number.  However, it seems like the house numbers have no rhyme nor reason.  Perhaps the house number is in order of when they were built?  We drove around looking for awhile before Liz remembered that when Joe was here, he recorded the latitude and longitude of the house.  Once we located that, we put  it into Google maps and drove right to it.

The second doorway is the entrance to the house where Liz's father was born.  The building has not been occupied for many years, and now the roof is leaking and the ceiling is falling. 
  As we drove up, a man was trying to leave, but he stopped to find out what we were up to.  He lives in the single-story house with the grape arbor, next to his car.  He was not very friendly at first, but Brother Lamb, who speaks Croatian, gradually loosened him up and he let us peek into the house. 

Liz and Sister Lamb are in the entry-way, and you can see Liz is very happy.  She was indeed, communing with Angels at that moment.  The ceiling rubble on the stairs, and the musty smell, did not detract at all.

This is the garden area just before we reached the house, and to the left is the stone outhouse.  Liz is actually just behind the foliage and there is a hint of her pink blouse.  She climbed back through there to see the terraces and garden and vine areas.  The property goes back quite a long way, and her ancestors made their living growing things in narrow terraces.  The dry rock walls are ubiquitous in the village.  Building rock walls without mortar, and that last, is an art form, and clearly the residents of Hrjelin practiced it well.

Directly across from the house is this well, and below it is an overgrown orchard.  There are still some fruiting trees, including figs and cherries.  That is Brother Lamb in front of our blue car, and the man who lives there is next to him, but hidden by a branch of the tree.  Liz also walked down hill to get a feel for how far the property extended that direction.

I took this photo from the well, looking downhill.  Liz is looking at the trees and glorying in seeing her ancestral home.

Decisioms, decisioms, decisioms!

We've been fighting off boredom for the past couple of weeks.  We are assigned to serve in Maribor, but we can't cross the border, yet.  At one time, we were going to go and accept a two-week quarantine, just to get there, but President didn't feel we should go until church meetings start up again.  Then they shut the border tighter for non-citizens of Slovenia, while loosening it up for citizens.  That's when boredom set in.  We were just waiting to go.  Church meetings are scheduled to begin again on June 7.
  Meanwhile, one of our callings is to cook comfort-food meals for newly arriving, disoriented, jet-lagged, newbie missionaries when they arrive - usually three meals which are prepared at the Mission Home.  We have a group of 8 who have finished their virtual language training and are ready to come, then were temporarily released because flights weren't available, and now we can get flights, but they have to be re-assigned and flights scheduled.  We don't yet know exactly when they will arrive, but perhaps next Tuesday.
  So, that brings us back to the Mission Home where we would do the cooking.  I have been of the opinion that the house is unsafe for several weeks.  The walls were cracked but it wasn't clear how much structural damage had been done, so workers cleared a little patch of plaster off to see the bricks.  That revealed that the walls were not well built.  So workers cleared the main bearing wall and several other patches off, and that revealed bad wiring, missing mortar, mud instead of mortar, broken bricks, misaligned bricks, a concrete pillar that was half brick, and more.  The first, moderate earthquake (6.5 Richter scale) broke the walls.  Then a minor earthquake, (3.2 Richter)  opened the cracks wider and moved things around.  At that point I was convinced the whole house could collapse at any point.  I sent 180 photos to the Facilities department to show why I was concerned.  Weeks passed.  Yesterday evening, President got a call from the Facilities Department telling him that the house is unsafe and he should move out IMMEDIATELY, that same night, without delay.  They said the concern was that another earthquake could bring it down.  Especially since they've pealed off the inches of solid plaster that was reinforcing the lousily-placed bricks.
    Well, it was just unreasonable to think we could move out that fast, and we spent another night in it.  This morning, we decided to visit the Rijeka area, which we've wanted to do ever since we started thinking about a mission here.  We had already talked to the senior missionary couple who live in Rijeka to ask them to guide us over to Hreljin where Liz's father was born.  Their schedule only allowed that to work tomorrow.  We were going to come down, visit Hreljin and go back that same night.  But since we have to leave the Mission Home, we came today.  We thought we'd get a hotel in Opatija, which was the Mediterranean Riviera for the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  That empire dissolved during WWI, and then the French Riviera became the big thing.  Opatija has stayed the same since then.  It has wonderful, but old, hotels along a delightful coastline with beaches between rocky outcrops, and eye-entrancing vistas of coastline backed with mountains and vineyards.

This is the cover of a brochure for today's Opatija.  After we got here, we discovered the hotels are still closed due to COVID-19, but we managed to find a beautiful, modern, small apartment for an extremely reasonable price.  The circular garden in the center photo of the brochure is below us to our left.  The statue of the girl with a seagull landing on her outstretched hand is straight ahead at the water's edge.  This place is gorgeous!  The landlady almost cried when I told her we plan to stay four days, but we might be here for a week or more.  She was so happy because they depend on tourists and the country's border closure is killing them.  They are desperate to rent their places, and are willing to cut the rates to the bone.

This is the view from the balcony of our temporary apartment.  It has been sunny and nice all day, but a squall blew over this evening and you can see it passing over Rijeka in this photo.  Weird winds and rain with scattered, huge raindrops fell for about 25 minutes.  Then it was nice again.
  As I was writing this, the landlady came back and gave us a basket of fruit, lunchmeat, cheese, coffee, and wine.  The lunchmeat is PRSUT, which is this region's version of the prosciutto that originated in Spain.  It is very, very good, although salty.

So, our plan is to tour around the Istrian peninsula for several days.  We'll visit the little towns, and eat the wonderfully unique cuisine of this area.  We also plan to see an old Roman town, including the best-preserved Roman Amphitheater there is.
  And when Slovenia opens their border to us, we'll go to Maribor and go back to work.

Woe is me Mission Home

The Mission Home has been getting more attention lately.  It took a shaking during the earthquakes (which continue to recur), but the problems are escalating.  A week or so ago we found out that there was a water leak on the uphill side of the home, which is built on a very steep hill.  That spells TROUBLE.  About the same time we finally got workmen in here to strip the plaster off all the cracked walls, and that revealed more TROUBLE.
    Today, we got a plumber out to fix the water leak.  As he dug out, I was relieved to see that the ground is not as sandy as I thought, and when he got a little deeper he encountered thick clay.  Good for the house, because clay doesn't wash away as badly as sand, but bad for the plumber because it is so hard to dig.  He found the leak right where he'd thought it would be, and now we aren't leaking water.  Yeah!

This photo was taken from the 2nd floor balcony, so it's pretty far down to it.  The hole is wide enough for a big guy to stand or kneel.  It was a chore getting the fancy paving bricks out, and I shudder to think of trying to put them back.
    The fix is especially good because the building inspector who was here this week was close to declaring the house a total loss.  Water seepage was a big factor, and now that has been solved, he should back off a little.  On the other hand, they dug out a lot of rocks, and it seems that a rock pressing on the plastic pipe is what caused the leak.  So they will bring in some sand to cover the pipe tomorrow.
    In addition, the house continues to show us more problems.  I've posted photos of the bricks behind the inches-thick plaster in the living room.  This photo is the bearing wall just outside our bedroom on the 2nd floor.

First. there is a brick standing about an inch and a half proud of the rest of the wall.  No self-respecting mason would drop a brick that far off plumb - ever!  So if he's not self-respecting, what is he.  When the building inspector was here he took one look at it and started to tell about a video he'd seen recently on Croatian TV, of some Russian workers slapping bricks into a wall while drinking heavily.  They were just throwing the bricks into place, and occasionally also throwing some mortar at it.
    Just above the proud brick there is no brick at all!  There is some mortar in there, and lots of plaster was smeared over it, but no brick.  What!
    And then notice that the left side of the proud brick has no mortar in the joint.  We see this kind of sloppy, criminally casual workmanship every place we've removed plaster.  It's why the plaster is inches thick - to cover up the crappy brick-work.
   The result?  The building inspector still won't clear the house to be fixed.  Now he wants to have all the plaster removed before he will certify what needs to be done.  He said he isn't sure whether it will be a few wall re-builds, or a totally tear-down and start over rebuild.  He's already talking about up to a year before it will be ready.
    The new mission president and family will be here July 1 if travel is allowed by then.  But it is clear that they won't be moving in here.  We will all have to be gone before they can remove all the plaster.

Good News!  We are scheduling church meetings in our chapels in Croatia and Slovenia, tentatively, for June 7.  The other countries still won't allow it, yet.   And, the Area President has to approve the plan.  If it goes forward, the meetings will be less than an hour long, and there will be no further meetings that day.  Everybody will have to wear masks, and maintain social distancing.  Sacrament will be administered by brothers wearing masks and they will wash their hands immediately before administering it.  Also, the building will have to be sterilized every Sunday, with all high-contact surfaces disinfected.

Good knee news

Last night, Elder Freestone, the mission doctor, who is home in St. George, called to tell me he'd looked at my MRI images.  He said the ligaments appear to be intact (Yeah!!!), but the meniscus is torn.  He said sometimes the meniscus folds under itself when it tears and that is very painful.  Sounds about right.  He said if that is what is happening, it is a very easy fix.  He said it should feel a little better each day, but I should continue to use crutches, then a cane so it can heal.  He also said I should do the exercises they recommend to strengthen the knee.  Use ibuprofen and drink lots of pepsi - no that was water I was supposed to drink.  I'll do that.
    We also had a transfer meeting last night, where President Melonakos announced transfers within the mission countries, because those are the only ones we can actually make at this time.  The new missionaries scheduled to come here this month can't come, yet, because the Croatian government won't let them yet, but the gov. people said to check with them next week.
It is now official and public - we are moving to Maribor, Slovenia.

Should I kneel to pray?

When I had my arthroscopic knee surgery in 2018, the surgeon told me to never kneel or squat again, unless I wanted an emergency knee replacement.  So, I stopped kneeling to prey.  This was a personal decision that was constantly assailed, unconsciously for the most part, by those around me.  I was in the high council, for example, and the tradition in that group was to kneel on the floor in prayer to begin each meeting.  It wasn't a big deal to anybody there, but I was odd man out, which is always uncomfortable.  The temple is another place where my resolve was tested.  Kneeling at the alter is part of the ceremony.  True, if I asked, they would pull the kneeling pad away and put a chair up to the altar.  They were fine with doing that.  But doing that, disrupts the flow of what we were doing.  I don't like doing that, so I didn't like not kneeling.  Gradually I stopped asking for special consideration and just knelt, in spite of the fact that it is very hard on the knee, especially on an injured knee like mine.  The result is that my knee got more fragile.

   When we moved into the Mission home, I was fascinated by the orchard.  It is on a very, very steep hill, but I grew up around steep hills and spent many happy days scrambling up, down, and sideways on them.  I didn't think much about doing it here.  But a couple weeks ago, I put some jugs on the apple trees on the hill.  The jugs had a hole cut in the side and held apple cider vinegar to attract moths, which are the biggest pest of apples in the U.S.  They drown in the jugs before they can lay their eggs on the apples.  I didn't know if coddling moths are common here, but it is a simple, inexpensive trick and I decided to try it.  Unfortunately, going up and down that hill to hang the jugs, I encountered a particularly steep section of the hill where I couldn't keep my feet under me until I braced a foot against a tree trunk.  I had no pain, but later that day my knee was sore.  It was sore for the next couple of days.  I talked to the mission doctor about it and he had me do some simple tests to ensure that the knee was still stable.  It was.  He told me to be extra careful, and among other things, I swore off going into the orchard.  Now, the cherries are ripe and I am not even going to go get a bowlful.

  Wednesday, I had started carrying a pair of walking sticks with me to take some pressure off my sore knee.  I figured it would get better sooner if I put less pressure on it.  The mission home is four stories, and we live in all four.  Our clothes are in the top floor, and the laundry room and the fridge with my pepsi is in the basement, so going up and down stairs is part of everything.  My surgeon also told me to avoid stairs after my surgery.  He recommended we move into a single story house.  He also said going up stairs is good for your knees, but going down puts tremendous strain on them.  Well, I was going up the stairs, with both walking sticks in my right hand, and the stair railing in my left.  I was trying to put no pressure on my very sore knee.  Then I remembered him saying that going up is good, and I consciously took less of my weight on stick and rail as I stepped up.  Suddenly I heard a loud POP!  MY knee bent sideways, and the pain was huge.  I instantly took all pressure off that leg and just stood there in a red cloud of pain.  It was several minutes before I could continue, and I couldn't stand to put any pressure on my right leg at all.  I put all my weight on the walking sticks as I hopped the few steps to our bedroom and flopped on the bed.

    Liz and all the Croatian missionaries except me were down in Plitvitza to tour the waterfalls that day, so I laid on the bed waiting all day.  I hadn't gone because my knee was so sore.  In fact, last weekend, we visited the grave of Kresimir Cosic, the former BYU basketball player from Croatia, who is very famous in the former Yugoslavia countries because of his leading the Yugoslav team to an Olympic gold medal, among other things.  We were strolling along and when we came to a downhill section my knee immediately told me no more downhill.  It almost gave out on me.  So I walked back to the entrance and waited for everybody else.  And that is why I didn't go to Plitvitza.

  As I lay on the bed in pain, I thought about the possible outcomes.  Major surgery means going home for senior missionaries.  If the pop had signaled a break of one of the ligaments of the knee, it would mean the end of our Grand Adventure.  I remembered seeing crutches in the mission office, so I texted Liz to ask her to stop by and get those crutches for me.

   When they got back, Liz had the crutches, bless her heart.  President Melonakos gave me a blessing and we went to the emergency room at the nearest hospital.  Croatia has excellent medical care, but emergency rooms are the worst part of any medical system.  We started at the triage desk first, of course.  The very thought of triage give me the willies!  It was invented for medical treatment in battle.  Its basic tenant is to focus care on the ones who need it most, so battle wounded are separated into three groups:  those who are going to die anyway and only need someone to hold their hand - they go to the chaplain;  those who will survive with simple, or no treatment are put in a safe place to wait;  and the third group gets the doctor's attention.  It's the thought of the first group that scares me.  When the doctors are overworked, more people get shunted into the first two groups so the doctors can keep up with the third group.

  The emergency room was packed with people waiting their turn.  Some things are very different here.  First thing I noticed was that fairly often medical people wheeled a bed with a patient on it, through the waiting room.  They do wheel patients around in the U.S. too, but never through the waiting room.  Second, the place was not inspiring for cleanliness.  We are in the middle of a pandemic (admittedly it has largely spared Croatia) but the screening seemed kind of half-hearted.  They had a window we had to go to, first.  A lady inside stuck her hand through the window to take my temperature with an IR thermometer.  Fine, so far.  But then we entered the waiting room and there was a bottle of hand sanitizer there, but nobody to make sure we used it, nor even a sign saying to do so.  The place was fairly full, and we waited there for a couple of hours without seeing anybody sanitize chair arms, countertops, hand rails, or any other high-use surfaces.  We were called in to talk to an overworked doctor who did the standard knee assessment, and ordered an X-ray to make sure no bones were broken.  The X-ray people were very efficient and fast.  Back to the doctor who told me he didn't see anything too serious, but we needed an MRI to make sure and then we'd know what to do.  The good news was the cost.  254 kuna, which is $36.35 American.  Amazing!  The other good news:  I got codeine, which let me sleep most of the night.

    Next day Sister Melonakos and Liz enlisted the help of some of the missionaries and they brought a recliner up to our room for me.  YES!  They also put some outdoor furniture on our little balcony, which is nice, because I had nothing to do but wait on Thursday.

  Friday, we went to a Catholic hospital for my MRI.  It was SO much better than the ER!  They had a nurse dedicated to checking people to prevent COVID-19 victims from entering the general hospital area.  She was thorough, efficient, and fast.  That was nice.  After a short wait, we got in and got my MRI in a modern Siemens machine.  That cost over 2,000 kuna, which is still very inexpensive by U.S. standards.
    I am the mission nurse's technical assistant responsible for uploading medical imaging into the church's medical system.  It was my first upload and it worked flawlessly.  Now  everybody's going to want me to do it.

    Today, I continue to wait.  Liz was going to go to a baptism down in Rijeka today, but it was postponed at the last minute.  So she is going shopping with a single senior sister.

Return to Osijek

Mother's Day was a very nice day.  I helped Liz make clam chowder from frozen clams we found at the grocery store.  We first made clam chowder back when we lived in Washington, where the kids had a ball digging up the clams that are easiest to find - cockles and horse clams.  Those are also the least desirable variety of clam, but the chowder is mostly the creamy soup and the vegetables, with the clams adding a bit of flavor and the excuse to eat the rest.  But the frozen clams were very good, including the bonus that they were not at all rubbery like the clams we've used in the past.  I chopped them finely, like always, but they were so tender it wouldn't have made any difference if I'd left them whole, which is what we might do next time.
    The best part of it, though was that we got to see and virtually be with our family.  Liz and the girls had a girl's Zoom "brunch" and chat fest.  Later, we had our Sunday service together, as usual.  We have songs, prayers, and two or three short talks.  Then we all just visit with one another.  It is such a treat.
   We have been here in Zagreb, under quarantine, for 8 weeks now.  That is almost twice as long as we were in Osijek.  We have felt  very much at home in the Mission Home, but it is not OURS, and that is beginning to feel not so good.  We'd like to get settled in somewhere. 
    Then, yesterday we got news that Croatia has lifted all restrictions on travel within the country.  Liz and I debated most of the day, and decided to go to Osijek to retrieve the rest of our belongings.  We took the Mission Van, which is a Ford Transporter, 8  passenger van with a large luggage area.  It has a diesel engine, and adaptive cruise control, lane assist, collision avoidance, etc.  We both like driving it a lot.  It isn't very comfortable to sit in for a long time, though.  Only the driver's seat moves forward and back, none of them are adjustable for the angle of repose, and there isn't much room to put your feet.  Still, we made the trip in good spirits, arriving just before 9:00 pm.  We squeezed the van as far into our parking spot as possible so it only stuck out into the passageway a foot or so, and then we went up to OUR apartment.   We had a bite to eat.  Liz asked me if I wanted to start loading our stuff into our suitcases, and I said, no I wanted to watch a movie.  Surprise!  Actually, we had watched half of Spanglish the night before, so we brought it up on the big TV there and watched the rest of it.
  This morning, we loaded up Liz's desk (actually a table with three drawers across the front), a little matching cabinet, and all the other little odds and ends we'd left behind.  It wasn't really all that much.  We also met with the landlord and told him we won't be staying there anymore, but that somebody else will come, eventually.  I paid him 400 kuna for internet service.  It is 100 kuna per month, and we actually only lived there for one month, but it was being held for us.  We told him we didn't know when someone would move in, but that we definitely wanted to continue to have access to it and that the church would continue to pay him for rent and utilities.  He was happy with that.
  As we drove home, we talked about how the countryside has changed.  It is so green and verdant, and productive!  The fields are worked in small strips, I assume to control soil erosion, or perhaps to control pests.  I love seeing the deer and pheasants and hawks here, things I've loved watching all my life.  But here, there are also storks and big grey crows (see below) and swans, and many others.

Most of the crops I recognize, but not all, and some things are different here.  For example, we passed a big orchard where all the trees were pruned so they are only 2 or 3 feet wide, and the rows are only about 6 feet apart.  We couldn't tell what kind of fruit tree they were, while driving past - they looked like stone fruit, though.
  We got back to the Mission Home by early afternoon.  It seems that most people haven't gotten the news that they can travel again, because we mostly had the highways to ourselves until we got back to Zagreb.
    When we arrived, there was a big van parked in front of the home that we didn't recognize.  It turns out that this morning a meter reader came by and he came to the front door, quite alarmed.  They showed me the water meter, and the needle was spinning quite rapidly.  It should never spin like that!  So the big van belongs to a guy who specializes in finding water leaks.    He had all kinds of amazing equipment for looking inside pipes, sonar scanning for pipes, injecting detectable gas into pipes, etc.  By this evening, he had the leak spotted and marked with spray paint.
  Tomorrow, all the missionaries in Croatia are taking a recreational day to go hike around Plitvitsa, a series of about a dozen lakes with hundreds of waterfalls going from each lake to the next one down the mountain.  It is an amazing place and it's on my bucket list, but I won't be going.  My knee is giving me trouble and I am not up for hiking up and down a mountain.  I am very disappointed, but I will get there another time.

Our Grand Adventure

Many times as Liz and I have driven places, and along the way we've gotten lost.  This was mainly before the days of GPS, when we had to depend on printed maps.  We didn't like getting lost, so I often told her not to worry, we were going to have an adventure. 
    Sometimes, adventures are unpleasant, that's in the nature of them.  But sometimes they let you go places and see things that you hadn't planned, but that are wonderful.  Example: one time Liz and I were wandering off the main road in a remote little town in Texas.  As we drove along the narrow road, we passed a house with a sign in front that said FABRIC.  Liz was getting into quilting at that time, so we stopped and went inside, where we found a very good selection of fabrics that were perfect for quilting, including a couple of  cotton prints with Beatrix Potter's paintings of Peter Rabbit and friends.  Those fabrics eventually went into several blankets that she gave away.  THAT was a good adventure.
    As we prepared for our mission, I felt a lot of uncertainty.  We wanted to go someplace outside of the U.S. or Canada, but not quite so uncertain as deepest, darkest Africa.  The application to go on a senior mission has an interesting rule.  You don't have to request a destination, but if you do, you MUST make at least 4, and no more than 8, selections.  Why?  I don't have a clue.  Once you select them, though, you can rank them, from most desirable to least.  We wanted to go to Croatia, so that was our number 1.  Our other selections were wide ranging:  The Phillipines, England, New Zealand, Australia.   Notice that three are English-speaking, while the Phillipines is Spanish-speaking, and I have a smattering of Spanish.  Only Croatia had a totally foreign language.  That gave me some stomach acid to contemplate.  I don't like being where I don't understand what is going on.
   Well, with that heartache, I told Liz that our mission was going to be our GRAND Adventure!  I meant to convey that it was one of those uncertain times where we didn't know precisely where we were going, but we had an excellent chance of having something good happen to us.  More than on any adventure we've ever been on before.  I also told her I very much wanted to go with her to Croatia.  I was all-in, 100%, no matter what happens it is what I want most.  I just knew it was going to be the biggest adventure of them all.
  And it has thoroughly lived up to my declaration.  It has, indeed, been a Grand adventure, and it just keeps on getting grander all the time.  We were told we would spend our 23 months living in the same apartment in Osijek, but we've already lived in another city, and are about to move on to our third.  We weren't required to learn Croatia, but we wanted to, and now we are going where they speak Slovenian. 
    But that is being delayed. 
    Before we go to Slovenia, I get to be the "general contractor" as the mission home is re-built.  Wednesday, we had the building inspector out, again.  When he came the first time, it was the day after the 7.2 earthquake that sent cracks zig-zagging across the walls on the main floor of the house.  The house is built of bricks, with a plaster veneer.  His assessment was that they were just cracks in the plaster and not structural.  But then, 3 weeks later we had a second, smaller 3.5 earthquake that opened the cracks up.  Some of the cracks turned into gaping holes.  On the surface, it looks like the 3.5 quake did more damage than the 7.2 quake, even though it was a fraction as strong.  It seems that the big one broke things, but the smaller one moved them.  We have to remove all the plaster from the walls with cracks, before the inspector will certify what has to be done, but it looks like the main bearing wall that holds up the roof, will have to be rebuilt with solid concrete pillars to support the upper floors.   Two or three more walls may need the same treatment, or maybe not.  That is a huge job, because you have to hold the upper floors up while you remove the broken one and re-build it.
    The mission president and his wife expect to soon resume their normal schedule of traveling all around the five countries in the mission to oversee and interview all the missionaries, so they need somebody to be here to oversee the work while they are gone.   I've told him several times that I am in, 100%, whatever he needs.  This time he needs me to be here in the dust.  Isn't this GRAND?
======================================
    Oh, and the cherries are getting ripe!  I picked a few of the pie cherries from the orchard this morning.  They are not quite ready, but they are turning red, so we'll need to start picking them soon if we expect to beat the birds to them.

Mission home vs the earthquake

I have become the unofficial facilities guy for the mission home.  I've been submitting work orders to get things cleaned up and repaired in anticipation of the new mission president who is scheduled to arrive July 1.  Getting the earthquake damage fixed has been part of that.
  Today we had a work crew come out to clear the plaster off the main bearing wall at the center of the house.  A bearing wall means it bears the weight of the walls above and ultimately the roof of the house.
  This a photo of the bearing wall at the side of  one of the doors.  I've been very worried about this from the day of the earthquake.

The door won't close since the earthquake, because the bricks in a big wedge moved and forced the door frame to bow.  Now that the plaster has been cleared away, the movement is obvious.
  It is a little harder to see this, but there is a heavy slab of concrete above the door - the lintel of the door.  Its job is to hold up the wall above the door opening.  Often in today's brick homes the lintel is poured over a much larger width than this one is.  Anyway, the broken wedge of bricks extends about the same distance to the right as the lintel, which means that if they pull out the broken bricks to repair the wall, there won't be anything holding the lintel up.
  The workmen stopped at this point, because they have to have an official inspector come in, assess it, and tell them what to do next.

Somewhat related to this; we anticipate being reassigned to another location, but we won't go until the church authorizes church meetings again, AND the construction on the Mission Home is complete.  The mission president wants me to be here to oversee the work.  And we aren't really needed anywhere else until the members meet together again.
   It is interesting that the country of Croatia has officially authorized church meetings to resume, as part of their phased relaxing of COVID-19 restrictions.  The official announcement of it was phrased in terms of Catholic church meetings, which applies to most people here.  But the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has not yet announced that we should resume church meetings.  We won't be holding any meetings until the leadership in Salt Lake give us the OK.

A beautiful day

Yesterday was Fast Sunday.  From the start of social isolation, the District President in Croatia has held a Sunday service - like a Sacrament meeting, but not including the sacrament service, of course.  The first week, there was lots of confusion among the populace on how to connect to a Zoom meeting, but we had almost twenty connections, most of which had more than one person watching. 
We have announcements, a prayer, a hymn, two talks, another hymn, and closing prayer.  The president always ends by encouraged authorized priesthood holders to have the sacrament service at their home.
Each week, more people connect to the Sunday service.  Yesterday we had 63 connections, plus the missionaries have begun a campaign to call people without the technology in their home to connect to Zoom.  They can call up to five people on their smart phones, and set it so the people can listen in on the Zoom service as well.  People have been very, very positive about being able to join the service.
Yesterday's service was a Testimony meeting and many members gave short testimonies over the Zoom call.  It was fantastic.  I don't know about other areas, but it certainly appears here that the members have come together more than ever with this crisis.  Our missionaries are busier than ever with their teaching via social media such as Facebook, and they have baptism dates stacked up so that when we can get together again, they will have a list of people ready to go.

After the meetings, Liz whipped up another impressive meal of roast pork shoulder, mashed potatoes and gravy, and biscuits, which we shared with the Johansens, the senior office couple, who originally thought they were going to go to Maribor.  Then we had our Sunday evening Zoom meeting with our family.  It is so very precious for us to see our children each week with their families.  They have such a good time connecting and interacting.  We have a sacrament meeting sans sacrament, and when it ends, everybody hangs on and we just talk to each other and catch up on another week.

Today was P-day for most of the missionaries, and we had all the missionaries currently in Zagreb here at the mission home at one time or another today.  They come here to play tennis on the clay court out back.  They meet together and coordinate their activities, and they cook.  We have an impressive cook from Germany, and we have a hobbyist ice cream maker from Montana.
Today, we had a treat for them.  We are preparing to have a construction crew come tear down the most damaged wall's veneer so they can assess how much brick work they'll need to do.  I got to organize them to move furniture back and cover it with sheets.  Then each elder got to tear off a piece or two of plaster and drop it on the floor.  Sister M. took a movie of each removal, and a photo of them posing with their foot on the piece they'd removed.  Very symbolic.
We love these young elders and sisters!  They are truly, awesome young people.

Canary Hound

I was in the Hyundai/Ford dealer here in Zagreb the other day. waiting while they serviced one of the mission cars.  A lady came in with the most unusual dog I've ever seen.  She said it is a Canary Hound, from the Canary Islands in the Atlantic.  It reminds me a lot of the Harry Potter movie where Lupin turns into a werewolf.  Slender head; long, curved, pointed ears; long, skinny legs; long toenails  The lady said they are famous diggers.  I guess they dig up rabbits, gophers, mice, and voles if left to their own devices.

It seemed to be intimidated in the dealership, because it kept its tail between its legs the whole time.  It was very well trained and seemed like a wonderful dog.
  I looked up Canary Hound in Google and it seems like this one is exceptionally slender.

Ssssshhh

A week or two ago, Liz and I were in the mission office and participated in a tradition of calling birthday missionaries and singing Happy Birthday to them.  It is a small group, so we sang with gusto, especially me.  Ever since then, I have been having troubles with my vocal chord disorder, with my throat getting tighter and tighter.  Yesterday evening it was uncomfortable enough to keep me awake for quite a while.
Solution - vocal rest.  I am trying to make no noise whatsoever with my throat.  For a full day!  Liz went off to the office with President and Sister M. and I am all alone at home.  Not that I mind that so much, but I'm not used to it anymore.  I could have gone, but every time you encounter someone, they expect a response, and the normal thing to do would be to explain, "Hi.  I have a vocal chord disorder, so I am not speaking today to give it some rest and let it heal.  Bye."  But that would defeat the purpose of vocal rest, so its either act like an idiot trying to pantomime that sentence, or avoid everybody.  Personally, I enjoy avoiding everybody, so here I go.

At least I have some pretty things to look at.

Life is so very good.