And back again in a new car

We had a wonderful time meeting with the young missionaries serving in Ljubljana, and then, yesterday we met with the Celje companionship.  We were already staying in Celje, and our appointment with them was for 4:30, so we had a nice lie-in and cleaned up the apartment where we'd stayed.  Of course that counts as an inspection, too.  We separated the useful stuff left in the apartment from the useless, and put the useless into bags to be dumped.  I had a nice shower using the repaired shower-head.  Liz re-arranged things and filled the trash bags.
    When it came time to go over to the apartment where the young missionaries are staying, we decided to walk.  It was a lovely afternoon, if a bit warm.  We walked through an interesting square along the way.  It has big round domes scattered around and a statue of a guy on a bicycle with an old-fashioned camera hanging around his neck.  I've seen pictures of this statue somewhere.

Just past the statue and the round domes there is an old palace that is now a museum and it has an ancient trebuche!

Now, there's something you don't see every day!  And, Yes, it's not all that ancient, but it is large enough to be impressive, and it is built the way the ancients really built them.  It is big enough to throw a fairly heavy stone through a wall, or a diseased body over a wall.
    The last apartment to inspect is the biggest apartment in the mission after the Mission Home.  Two young elders are staying in it.  It has 2 baths, two enormous living rooms, an office with three desks, an immense master bedroom, and a large kitchen with an attached eating room.  The entrance is via a porch that is enclosed and could count as another living room except that it is only wide enough for storage cabinets, but not for furniture.  The whole place is furnished with antiques, including lamps with old-fashioned, cloth-covered shades festooned with tassels and lace.  There is a coffee table with amazing burl-wood slices laid out so they look like a kaleidoscope.  Every room has chandeliers with crystals and/or fancy scroll work.  There is a key-wound clock with pendulum.  It was formerly inhabited by a senior couple, and he was the mission doctor.  They loved the place, but he wanted a recliner so they bought one.  I want one, too, so we took it back to Maribor with us (with the doctor's blessing.)  It also had one of several sewing machines the mission bought a few years ago for a special project.  The one there is rumored to need repair, but it is so much nicer than the one we have now that we will get it running and Liz will use it for her projects.
    The young elders who live in that apartment are neat-nicks, so the place was appropriately neat and tidy.  We took them to eat at a great burger place nearby.  We have ONLY eaten burgers here when we've gone out to eat with someone else who picked the place.  The local food is amazingly good, albeit meat-heavy, and we've enjoyed it whenever we decide to dine out.  In fact, I ordered lamb chops while the others had burgers, and the chops were fantastic.
  The "Centar", or main square,in Celje has several flower pillars that were awesome.

Sadly, the color in this photo is not sufficient to convey the dramatic effect of the real thing.

     The tower is made of circular pans like the ones used to display nails in hardware stores before the big-box stores drove most of them out of business.  The begonias are in pots that fit in the compartments in the pans.

A personal note.  I lost a fair amount of weight before we came and got my belly down to a better size.  While here, I haven't gained weight, but when I was down with my bad knee, I converted muscle to fat, and the big belly is back.
    Also, most men here carry a man-purse.  I find it a nice change to not have my pockets bulging with wallet, passport, change, face masks, junk, and keys, including the enormous automobile-key-fobs we are saddled with these days.

We picked up a new car while in Ljubljana.  It was amazingly simple.  We showed up, gave them the keys to the old car, signed a single sheet of paper, and drove the new car away.  Why is it easier to get a new car than to change the tires on the old one?  I didn't even have to show ID, other than the badge on my chest.  It is a mystery!
    The new car drives like a new car.   We had to hurry from Celje to Ljubljana for church Sunday morning and were nearly late.  So Liz drove at 150!  No worries, this is Europe and lots of people drive fast, although the default speed limit (which is rarely posted) is 130.  Of course, the speed is KPH instead of MPH, and we were only going 93 mph.  Liz says it was the fastest she has ever driven.  Not me.  130 kph is about 80 mph, so even the default speed limit is pretty fast.  Especially, it is fast for a little Hyundai I30.
    We had worried that the new car might not have a back-up camera.  For some reason, almost all the cars in the mission did not have that option.  And senior citizens were driving them around in very tight places!  Crazy.  The missionary rule is that when backing up, the driver's companion has to get out and direct the driver back.  I have never asked my companion to do that, and neither has she, but junior missionaries are required to.  Fortunately, we had one of the few cars with a backup camera before, so we were delighted that the new one does, too.  It also beeps if you get close to hitting something.  That is nice, but several places, including the Celje senior apartment, have parking places in old buildings with carriage houses converted to parking.  When I drove into the senior apartment parking I had the two young missionaries stand at the two front corners to guide me in, and the car beeped the whole time because the carriage door was only very slightly wider than the car.  I had less than a half inch to spare on each side.  I had to fold the side mirrors in to get through.  We were a bit jealous of that apartment until I had to drive into the parking area.  Now, I am glad to be here with a nice, wide parking spot, even if it is a half mile away from the apartment.

Apartment Inspections + Zone Conference

What a busy few days!
We had Zone Conference on Thursday, in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Since we are the only senior couple in Slovenia, now, we decided this was a great time to:  1. Meet all the missionaries in Celje and Ljubljana,  and,  2. Do apartment inspections, which are supposed to happen twice per year.  In addition, I've had trouble getting an international shipper to come pick up our fingerprint cards, which have to get to the FBI, then to the State Dept., and then back to the mission lawyer in Ljubljana so we can get a visa to stay here.  So I prepared everything and scheduled to drop it off at the Ljubljana airport (aerodrome according to the signs) UPS terminal.
    We started scheduling.  Zone Conference is almost all day on Thursday, so we scheduled apartment inspections and meet-n-greets with each companionship in Ljubjana for Friday, and the same for the companionship in Celje on Saturday.  We planned to go to the UPS center on Thursday afternoon (didn't work out) or Friday when we had a chance.  And then we decided to go ahead and stay long enough to go to church in Ljubljana on Sunday.
  That put a lot of stops on our trip.  The Zone Conference was Thursday, so we scheduled an inspection of the empty apartment in Maribor on Wednesday as a practice run.  Sisters have been staying there when they visited Maribor - appx. weekly.  We found that a busy schedule meant that the apartment was dusty, and unkempt.  The cupboards are full of crumbs, and nothing had been CLEANED.  But at least it is well-stocked, so if we get another companionship it will be ready for them.  We will have the junior missionaries in Maribor help with the cleaning, because the sisters have handed over all their Maribor contacts to the Elders and will no longer be coming.
    The vacant apartment in Maribor is right next to the police building where we got our fingerprints taken.  That is a good, long walk for two old codgers, but there were some absolutely stunning flowers along the way.

These hydrangeas are growing along the entire block.  Across the street is a large park that goes to the edge of town.  Very, very nice.
    The next question was where to stay.  When most of the senior missionaries went home to meet COVID-19 on their home turf, President M. had young missionaries move into the senior apartments because those apartments all have WIFI.  WIFI has enabled our missionaries to remain productive and do missionary work while confined in isolation.  All across the World, restrictions have been lifted because COVID appeared to be under control, and now new cases are spiking again.  Restrictions are coming back and we may very well end up in isolation once more.
  So, while a senior apartment would be our first choice, they are all occupied.  One of our tasks while in Ljubljana is to close down an apartment fondly referred to as "the dungeon."  So we thought of staying there during our stay, but then we learned that there are no mattresses left in that apartment.  They've been raided and carted away.  We've arranged to have the two oldest, rat-iest mattresses go back there.  So, the only vacant apartment left was in Celje, 45 minutes north of Ljubljana.
    Thursday, Zone Conference went long because it was the LAST zone conference for President and Sister Melonakos, who will go home next Monday (if travel-restrictions allow President and Sister Field to get here.)  Everyone was emotional, and lingered.
     We finally got ready to leave.  We took the Celje missionaries back with us so they could get the keys and show us how to get into the apartment.  The Assistants to the President were staying with them in Celje, so they drove the Celje car back to Celje.  It was nearly dark when we left.  A light rain was falling, but as we got on the freeway, it turned into heavy rain, and the drive was challenging.  We got to the apartment at about 8:30.  Every apartment is known for something, which might be good or bad.  Our Maribor apartment is known for being small, but having an outstanding location.  The Celje apartment is known for having a bad shower-head.  When I turned on the water, it came out in all the wrong places and went everywhere.  What a mess!  But, being the constant handy-man, I unscrewed the shower head and soaked it in vinegar for a couple of hours.  At the end of the soaking, all the hard-water deposits were gone and the shower head is nearly normal.  Now it only squirts water out the sides when it first gets turned on, then it settles down and is completely normal.
    Missionary apartments tend to accumulate junk.  Missionaries leave un-needed things behind when packing to move and the next missionaries don't throw anything away, because it didn't belong to them.  So, clothes, old books, grooming items, gadgets, knick-knacks, shopping bags, ancient feather pillows, and other things get tucked away to stay.  The Celje apartment was extra full of that kind of junk.  We are going to do some purging.
    Friday morning, we left the apartment and headed back to Ljubljana.  There was a little lingering rain, but it was lifting.  As we drove, we drove in and out of fog, and then had fog above us.  It made for some stunningly beautiful views, which the photo doesn't do justice.

Everything was clean and bright, and the mountains were beautiful, and the trees reminded us of Washington State.
    We did 4 apartment inspections, followed by buying a meal for the missionaries in 2 of them.  We had already bought a meal for the sisters who had been in Maribor, and one apartment (the dungeon) was vacant.  For the most part, the apartments were clean and neat, and for things we found wrong with the apartment, we encouraged the missionaries to notify their landlords.  It was a busy, and long day.  The dungeon was everything we had heard.  It is surprising only in that somebody actually approved it and signed a lease for it.  It is a horrible location in the basement of an old building.  We were surprised that the missionaries had organized and cleaned it.  They'd also hauled a lot of the extra stuff back to their apartments.  So we claimed a few little items, put the garbage into bags to be hauled off, and left the rest to go back to the landlord.
  Once again, it was getting late when we dropped off the final companionship at their apartment and headed home.  On the way back to the freeway we stopped at a stop sign across the street from this church.

What caught our eye was the bare stone on the square clock-tower.  It also has unusual clock hands.  The time was 7:12, as shown by two large, round pointers.
  Back at Celje, we dropped into bed, exhausted.

New Missionaries

We have our eight new missionaries in Croatia.   Croatia's border is still closed for non-essential, non-citizens coming into the country, but we were able to get special permission for them to come.

Here are all the Zagreb missionaries and the newbies in front of the Chapel of St. Mark in Zagreb, which has the roof with the Croatian and Zagreb flags.  We are so happy to have them, and they are already assigned to their locations to begin serving.

I am always on the lookout for new animals.  We saw a hedgehog the other day - the first one I've ever seen in the wild.  It was trundling along the road outside of town and by the time we stopped, it was gone.  Yesterday the elders were walking home and saw a woman in distress.  She had run over one and wanted help to know what to do with it.  They were in quandry about what to do with it.  She wanted it buried, but none of them had the means to do that.  I would have suggested a burial at sea (or the nearby River Drava), but I wasn't there.  In the end, they carefully gathered it into a handkerchief and put it under a bush where it would be hidden.  The woman was comforted by that, and the elders got to chalk up another incidence of providing service to people.

It turns out these little guys are very common around here, and although they are reclusive, they stumble about and get seen frequently.

We had a long visit with a potential member yesterday.  The sister missionaries brought her over for lunch and we had a long discussion afterwards.  She is very spiritual and friendly and we talked about a lot of things having to do with the church and living spiritually.  We are planning another lesson with her this week.

  Monday is P-Day for the missionaries and the young elders wanted to go tour an old monastery called the Žiče Charterhouse, about 30 minutes away.  Sadly, when we got there we found it closed.  It is only open Tuesday through Saturday.  One of the draws for this place is that it is in the bottom of a tiny little valley with steep sides.  There isn't anything else there, and it is so quiet and peaceful.  We found that to be true and we didn't want to leave even after we'd seen everything we could from the outside.

We only saw this end of the complex.  We walked to the two guard towers on the corners and a little way beyond on each side.  Through the gate we could see the ruins of a large cathedral.

The restored buildings are white with good roofs.  The ruins are bare stonework and no roof.  There are bushes growing along the tops of the ruined walls, and large bird nests are in several of the windows.  They might be stork nests, although they look to be a might small for them, and we didn't see any birds in them.  My guess is the nests are from large hawks.  The ruins go a long ways beyond this.
    This photo shows a shooting loophole in the corner of the wall, and beyond is a curious bent-cone roof over a tower.

The tiles on that roof are old, and obviously handmade - they are not uniform in size.  Some are considerably larger than the rest.  The reason for the bent shape is beyond me.
  Below is another photo of the outside (mostly-restored) wall.

The piles of rubble along this wall correspond with broken down flying buttresses.  In 1160, when this was built, buttresses were required to keep walls from bowing out and collapsing from the weight of the roof.  Later, walls were held in place by building in (or adding) iron rods spanning the rooms.

This angle shows a surviving buttress, but the stones were clearly on the brink of collapsing.  The photo also shows a sundial on the wall, similar to the one outside our apartment in Maribor.  This one is most curious in that there is another one just around the corner in the shade.  As far as I can tell, the sun doesn't ever shine on the one around the corner.  Maybe it's just for show, but not for telling the time.

The shadow cast by the rod shows the time as about 2:45 pm.  When I looked at my phone, it was 3:42, because sundials don't play silly games like daylight savings time.

This part of the wood-burned sign is in English and gives a concise history of the place.  They translate it as a Charterhouse, but we would call it a monastery.
  The sign also has a map of the entire ruin.

We only saw the walls at the bottom-right of this drawing.

Cultural entrance

I got my first mosquito bite of the season.  These early mosquitos are tiny, so I can't say with certainty how many there are, but I only have one, so far.
   Yesterday we walked across the River Drava bridge near our apartment.  First time we've done it.

The swans were swimming, the sun was shining, and rain broke out just after we got back.  Perfect!
We were going to a sewing store because the one on our side of the river had a poor selection of cotton thread, and none in red.  The one across the way is a sewing machine repair shop with a selection of the most useful sewing accessories including full shelves of thread.  We are going to Ljubljana next week, and among other things we will pick up a mission-owned sewing machine that is rumored to need repair.  It is a better, more featured machine than the one we were given by a kindly old lady in Zagreb.  That one, too, needed repair, but I managed to take care of it myself.  We'll get this new one repaired and then Liz can become a more effective version of the sewing lady of the mission.  She has already been commissioned to make a case for a ukulele one of the missionaries bought.
   Last night we attended a social distanced performance of a little ballet starring our land-lady, Tijuana.  Her parents were there, as well.   At the end, her father, with a big smile, said to me, "That's my little girl."  I knew exactly how he felt.

This is in front of the Slovenian National Theater in Maribor.

Meeting Mosquitos

The big news of today, June 18, 2020, is that we, at last, have actual, certifiable, hot water coming out of our taps!  Today, we get to take a shower, instead of washing up in a pan of water heated on the stove.  Today, a serviceman came with a new computer board for the water heater, and now it all works.  Oh, blessed day!
Not that we're complaining.
   We have heard horror stories about the mosquitos here.  Last Sunday evening I looked out the windows and saw people swatting at the bugs as they walked along the river.  Next day it rained and cooled off.  We haven't seen any of the little bloodsuckers, yet.  Fingers crossed.  Knock on wood.  The locals say to eat a garlic clove every morning to discourage the vampiric bugs.  Heavy price, I say.
     I still enjoy seeing the swans.  In this photo, a mother and five "chicks" are preening their feathers to make them waterproof.

This set of chicks is well along towards being adults.  The swan on her nest is still waiting for her little fluff balls.
    While walking back from the church last Tuesday, I noticed these flowers growing in a vacant lot.

The plant is unremarkable, but the flowers are stunning.  I saw them glaring in the light half a block away.
   Wednesday, we finally met up with our country's official representative to get fingerprinted at the police station.  It was what you'd expect from a government agency.  Slow, wait a bit more, hurry in to the room to wait while it warms up.  Then the official took our fingerprints and printed them out for us.
  Now the fun starts.  We have to mail them to our daughter in the US.  She will send them to the FBI, who know they are coming because I already registered them (and paid a fee) and told them what to do.  The FBI will read our fingerprints and provide a certificate saying we aren't hardened criminals, and send it back to our daughter.  BUT, that is not an official international document, so she will then send the certificate to the State Department, who I already notified to expect the certificate.  For a fee, they will certify that the certificate is an official international document (Apostille), and send that back to our daughter, who will then send it all to our country representative here in Slovenia.  With that in hand, we will be issued a visa to live here for a year.  At the end of that time, we'll have to request an extension, which won't be so complicated.
   It is amazing how much the former socialist governments here love their red tape.  I got my tires rotated on Wednesday.  When they were done, the clerk pulled out five forms for me to sign.  Two of them he stamped with his official stamp (looks like a notary stamp).  Then I paid my 22 Euros and left.
  On the way back from the church Wednesday, I also stopped at a little open-air market and bought some veges, including this amazing tomato.

I suppose some tomatoes look like this, but he had a bin full of tomatoes that were all like this.  It was a fleshy tomato with great flavor and very little juice.  Delicious.
  He also had some nice, tree ripe apricots which were worth the trip all by themselves.  We like these markets.  People here are still living in the mode where they do a little shopping every day.  There are bakeries everywhere, fruit stands, handicraft markets, etc.  It is a different pace, but we are enjoying it on occasion.  We mostly still shop like Americans; buying mass quantities at a supermarket once in a while, and making do with not quite as fresh in between.
    Today, we walked up into town and Liz stopped to buy a pair of shoes.  While I was waiting I noticed this across the street.

There are  four paintings in all.  All of them depict two angels.  All of them are obvious harvest scenes.  They are faded, and life has left them behind, but they are very nicely done.  Perhaps not Michaelangelo, but very well done, indeed.
  Tijuana and her husband got tickets for us for tomorrow's ballet:  Radio and Juliet.  It is a small production with five dancers.  It is a modern interpretation of Romeo and Juliet.  Tijuana is the only female dancer and we are looking forward to seeing her perform.

Meeting Maribor

We are getting settled into our new apartment and city.  We have located grocery stores, bakeries, the Slovene State Theater, hardware store, etc.   The Slovene State Theater is on the list because our landlord's wife is THE Prima Ballerina in Slovenia.  She has danced Giselle, which in case you don't follow opera is one the most (if not THE most) difficult roles in ballet, because, in one of the scenes, the ballerina has to go on point (on one toe) and hop across the stage, approximately 30 hops without putting her other foot down.  The whole time she has to either gracefully kick on each hop, or she can kick a few times, then hold her leg at waist height for the same number of hops, and repeat.  It is ridiculously difficult to do, which is why an otherwise plain little ballet is still performed worldwide whenever an opera company has a ballerina talented enough to do it.  I can't even stand on one foot that long, much less hop and kick while doing it.  If you care to see some grace and beauty, here is a Youtube video of various ballerinas doing the scene.  The hops come near the end of the scene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyQBVR-ALQM
  WE have tickets to see our landlord's wife dance next Friday night in Radio and Juliet.

  We went shopping the other day and among other things bought a little table for the kitchen.  We felt we should do it so that we'd have room to feed hordes of hungry young missionaries, which we hope to do each Sunday.

For style points, a round table in front of the window where we can look out at the round fountain is a treat.

And here is the fountain, looking back at our second floor window by the sun dial on the wall.
    A couple days ago we had the young missionaries all together, but our kitchen wasn't ready to serve them all, so we had to go out to a famous hamburger place.  These young people are a lot of fun to work with.  They work hard and do great things.

The two young elders ordered huge hamburgers with five, half-pound patties, and impressed the young sisters by eating every bite, or maybe only one of them ordered that one and the other ordered an ordinarily huge one.  Then we walked up the hill to an ice cream vendor for dessert.  Sometimes being a missionary can be hard.
    One of the special treats of this place continues to be the swans.  Dozens of them live along this stretch of the river and they are eye candy, to be sure.

They are especially graceful-looking when they hold their wings out of the water.  Only one of the swans in this photo is doing it.
    The pigeons here look to me like they are bigger than the USA pigeons,  Maybe not, but it looks like it.  Anyway, this photo gives you an idea of how big the swans are.

These are both hens.  The males are even bigger.  In a few days we expect to see three little, grey fuzzballs with the one on the nest.
    This swan is holding its leg out of the water and resting it on its back.  Pretty impressive!

    Today we decided to walk up into town.  The road up the hill from our building used to be two-way traffic, but they have closed it and are putting in wall-to-wall sidewalk to make it a pedestrian/market lane.  I think it's going to be great.  There is a little cobble-stone alley that goes from our front door to that street.

This is the wide part of the street where the road used to go around a tall statue that is now fenced in.  It is the Plague Column, which is seven meters tall and crowned with a gold-plated statue of the Virgin Mary.  On the ground, surrounding the tower are statues of Six Catholic Saints to whom the people prayed for deliverance.  And the obvious question:  Why have a monument to the plague?!?  It actually commemorates the END of the  1680 plague that killed one third of the people in Maribor.   Makes COVID-19 seem tame and pleasant, doesn't it? The current monument replaced an older one, and the current one was done in 1743.
    The other monumental thing in the above photo is the building with the clock tower and fancy spire.  This is the Maribor Town Hall.  Adolph Hitler stood on the little balcony of that building in 1941 and addressed the cowed residents to tell them how happy they were to be conquered by a nice guy like him.  The allies largely destroyed the city while rooting his army out of it in 1944, but then they pitched in and help rebuild it afterwards.  Americans didn't actually bomb nor help rebuild it, but they are very well thought of here.
  Lunch time passed as we were window shopping and buying a few little things, so we stopped in a pizza place.

I ordered the meaty half of the pizza.  Notice that we are both eating that half.  In truth, it was all mighty tasty.  Pizzas here are Italian pizzas, not American, but they are outstanding!  And huge.

So, I guess I might sum it up by saying that we are very happy to be here.  We are actually serving as missionaries again, and doing good things.  We are also having a ball exploring and learning about the country.  I have been called as the Branch Clerk and we expect to receive more callings shortly, but having no clerk is an emergency.  I will be busy with it.  And the next audit is approaching, so we are busy with that, too.

Meeting the members

The church is a half mile from our apartment, and the only place we have to park our car is in the same building as the church.  The lack of parking is the down-side of having such a marvelous location for our apartment.  The up-side is that the walk to the church is mostly along the river where the flock of swans hangs out.

This swan is laying on three huge eggs.   Swans are several times as large as geese, which we also see from time to time.  They dwarf the ducks which are also common here.  The swans are protected, especially along the river bank.  There is a fence around this nesting site, even though it is on the very edge of the sidewalk.  People have to walk out into the street to get around it, but there are no complaints.  People bring the swan corn, bread, lettuce and so forth and the hamburger container on the ground was full of whole  corn an hour before I took this photo.  The fence isn't there to protect the swan, though.  It is there to protect people from approaching too closely and provoking a defensive attack, which can be a very painful thing to experience.  The swans are quite accustomed to people here and attacks are not common, except for nesting.
   The branch in Maribor is quite small.  Our first Sunday, we met the branch President and his wife and three small children.  In addition there was a single sister and two single brothers.  That makes eight total members.  With Elders Christiansen and Kunzler and us, that made a total of twelve.  It was fast Sunday, so Liz and I took the opportunity to bear our testimonies, along with everybody else.
    The sad thing is that it is very painful for people to join the church here.  The Catholic religion isn't just their religion, it is part of their national identity.  When somebody joins the church, they often loose their families, and their jobs.  In Texas, the Southern Baptists don't like Mormons, but we work and live side-by-side.  It isn't an active dislike - usually.  But here the people tolerate us and even admire the church.  They are always pleasant and happy to meet us, but they don't want to be associated with us.
    When Kresimir Cosic, the famous BYU Croatian basketball player was still alive, people joined the church because his fame took a lot of the sting out of it.  But now that he has passed away, we mostly have old, single people in the church.
    The COVID-19 pandemic has helped a lot.  While we were quarantined, the missionaries used social media to find people to teach and had very good success.  The people were at home, in isolation, and spending a lot of time on social media.  They were more receptive, because they weren't so worried about the opinions of others.  We had many commitments to baptism during that time.  Those people are required to attend church with us for at least a couple of times before their baptism so we will see how it works out, but it was a very hopeful sign.
  As we walked back from church to our apartment, a man on a bicycle stopped and began to excitedly talk to us.  He is a member of the church, though not attending at this time.  His name is Ifar and he is from Kosovo, originally.  He was very happy to see us and learn our names.  He already knew where we live and that the earlier senior couple had returned to the USA,  He declined our invitation to join us at church on Sundays, but it was a great contact.
    Yesterday, the elders called us and asked if they could bring a member to our apartment to give a lesson to him.  Of course we agreed.  His name is Jean and he is physically challenged by a crooked spine.  He lives quite a way north of Maribor, along the Austrian border, and was in town for an evaluation to see if he could get a job.  He was very depressed that he was not able to do what they needed, because of his physical limitations.  He is also not getting the support from his family that he wants.  Sister Ashurst and I talked to him about finding something he likes to do and focusing on that.  The elders gave him their lesson, which they later told us was something they hadn't been able to do before.  We ended by telling him that the Savior loves him and is concerned for him.  That he needs to keep praying and his prayers WILL bear fruit.
    We also accepted an invitation from Branch President Fidler to go to his farm for dinner.  They live almost 30 minutes our of town in a very remote area with many beautiful farms in hilly country.  They have 1.5 hectares - almost 3 acres.  We had a delightful evening and a delicious roast chicken with them.  Their younger son was upset when President gave me a leg and thigh, so I cut the leg off and gave it to him.  He didn't say a word, but he tucked right in and made it disappear.  He ate quite a bit of other meat from the chicken, too, so it turned out fine.  We had a nice visit the Brother and Sister Fidler after the kids went to bed.  He is interested in getting some honey bees for his farm, so I agreed to advise him on setting them up.

To Slovenia

We have a member of the church in Slovenia who guides all the missionaries through the process of getting visas and resident status.  He said we have to have a letter from our landlord saying that we can stay in the apartment if we are quarantined, and that there are people who can bring us food and supplies if needed while there.  He was working on getting the letter and it would be ready in the morning.  As a result, we spent one last night in the condemned mission home.
    On Wednesday, the young missionaries were quite excited to help us load up our car for the trip to Maribor.  One of them, Elder Chistiansen was also going to Maribor.  He was going to go with the Assistants to the President in their largeer-than-usual car, so we could meet the Brother and Sister Melonakos in Ljubljiana for a conference.  They also took some of our junk with them.
  Thursday, as we made one last stop at the mission office to pick up mail and miscellaneous to take with us, including new mission phones for Liz and I.  She got the "1 Maribor Seniors" phone, while I got a SIM card that used to be in the "1 Celje Seniors" phone, but is now in my personal phone.
    As we were about to leave, we got a message from Sister Melonakos.  It said, "The eagle has landed!  Elder Christiansen is in Slovenia."  This was very good news, because it meant that Slovenia had, indeed, loosened their travel restrictions on non-citizens.  We had high hopes as we drove towards Slovenia.  We came to the border check-point and the inspector scanned our passport and stamped it.  Yeah!
    But, wait.  We are so illiterate and out of place, it took us a couple of moments before we remembered that was the Croatia exit border check.  We still had to pass the Slovenia entry point.  So with our hearts in our throats we waited in the short line to get to the Slovenian border check.  When we got there, the officer was a very grim-looking man with a scowl on his face.  Liz handed over our passports.  He looked at each of us, then scanned the passports, then stamped them and handed them back.  He didn't say a single word.  We held back our shouts of triumph until we were out of his sight.  Elation!  We are in Slovenia!
    The  border between Croatia and Slovenia is not far outside Zagreb, but it was rather amazing that once across everything looked different.  We entered a woods area, with little towns scattered here and there, and fields on steep slopes.

The rain came in little patches, and most of the way it was good driving.

The other distinctive thing is the church steeples.  The Croatian churches had fancy steeples, too, but in Slovenia they are all on top of tall, square towers.

We saw lots of similar steeples, but off in the distance.  This one is behind the hill a bit, but at least it was close to the road.
  We drove to Ljubljiana where we were scheduled to meet President and Sister Melonakos, and all the young missionaries in Slovenia.  As we drove past the church to turn into the parking lot, they all came streaming out of the church building into the light rain.  Our first thought was that we had missed the meeting, but actually they had been watching for the famous blue car and had come running to greet us.  It was difficult to not shake hands and hug them.  Instead we waved at each other while packed close together on the sidewalk.  There were 5 sisters and 6 brothers, including Elders Christiansen and Elder Kunzler, who will be serving with us in Maribor, as well as President and Sister Melonakos.  What a nice thing for them to come out to greet us!
    We went inside the church building (one of two church-owned churches in the entire mission) where President Melonakos was interviewing the missionaries one-by-one.  Meanwhile the rest of us played games - foosball, table tennis, and round-robin table tennis where everybody lines up around the table and each player hits the ball and immediately drops the paddle so the next person in line can pick it up in time to return the ball.
   Pretty soon food was ready and we all sat down to eat hamburgers.  After we were all fed, we cleared the table and Brother and Sister Melonakos shared photos of a hike they took with some members to the highest mountain in the ANM.  They made it to the top of the mountain, but were caught in fog and rain and very nearly didn't make it back.  They used the adventure to give some advice on how to approach life.
   Then, finally, we drove on to Maribor.  I've been Google Earth lurking Maribor for a while and the actual street and our building looked familiar when we got there.  However, I had no idea where the front door could be found.  Turns out, it is around the corner on the side of the building in the alley.

This is the front of our apartment building.  There are six apartments in it.  Our kitchen window is the one just to the left of the vertical sun dial.  You can't tell what time it is in this photo because it is a cloudy day.  To the left of the kitchen window are two more windows to our living room, and our bedroom is around the back of the building.  Today, a class of school kids came walking in the rain.  They stopped briefly at the fountain and then stood gazing in amazement at the sun dial.  I was looking out the window eating my lunch.  It can be a bit disconcerting to look out the window and see herds of people watching.  OTOH, we have the lovliest view of the square and the river.
    And here is another church steeple, this one with a clock.

We are so happy to be here.

Rovinj

After a day of resting, we drove across Istria again, this time to visit the famous Italian-esque town of Rovinj.  It is the ferry port for people in Istria to go to Venice, and many people say it is very much like Venice.  We hoped to spend a relaxing day there, and perhaps take a harbor tour.

This photo is a sign at the waterfront, advertising all the kinds of tours you can normally take.  But COVID-19 strikes again - they were all closed.  Just above the sign you can see all the boats tied up to the docks.  The aerial photo in the center of the sign shows the peninsula that makes Ravinj famous.  That's the part of town that is like Venice.
    A few feet away from this sign there were several open-air restaurants and we chose one for lunch.  I was intrigued by a menu item called scampi.  I am used to menus listing "shrimp scampi", which is shrimp cooked scampi style, and I always wondered what that actually meant.  I have noticed here that menus list both shrimp and scampi.  Being curious about such things, I ordered scampi just to find out what it is.

These are scampi.  They are a largish variety of shrimp with long, pointed claws.  You break off the tail and eat the meat inside.  It was served on a bed of spinach and zuchini.  Delicious.

This was the view from the table as we ate.  The wooded area beyond the boats is an island.

You can see the Italian influence.  Italy had control of the Istrian Peninsula after WWI, but Yugoslavia got it back after WWII .
Istria is famous for its truffles, a curious mushroom that grows underground.  The English use pigs to find and root them up.  Here in Istria, they use dogs.  They are very expensive and increasingly expensive.  We stopped at a little roadside stand and bought some local olive oil (another thing Istria is famous for: designer olive oils.  We got a bottle with garlic extract in it, and another bottle with truffle oil.
    We had one more stop to make.  Motovun is a little town that is still clustered around their old, medieval castle.  It is said to be worth the time to see it.

I took this photo as we approached it. 
    When we got to the base of the hill, we had to pay 20 kuna to park.  As we drove up the steep road, we got to the bottom of the town we noticed that lots of cars were parked along the road.  Then we got to a gate and found that only residents were allowed beyond that point.  Sadly, my knee is still healing and is not up to that kind of climb.  And Liz did not relish it either, so we turned around and went back down the hill and on to Opatija.

While driving, we got a phone call from Sister Melonakos.  It seems that Slovenia may loosen up their travel restrictions and allow us to go to Maribor.   We decided to pack up and go back to Zagreb to get our stuff.

Driving through Istria

For the first three months of our mission we lived in the flatlands of Croatia.  But Istria is mountainous.  The Croatian road department has been quite practical about how to handle it.  They simply level everything out.  They've built some big bridges, and for the rest they just go through.

Clearly, they were all bored by very large, identical machines.  There is one of these tunnels that is over 5,000 meters long, which is somewhat more than 3 miles.  The tunnels I've pictured here (except for the curved bridge) are all the same size.  Big enough for two lanes, with a nearby tunnel for the two lanes going the other direction.  But the 5,000 m. tunnel has four lanes in a huge tunnel.  There are fans mounted at the top of the tunnels, but that long one was not up to the task.  It stunk of diesel exhaust and other incidental hydrocarbons.  By the time we got to the end, we were SO happy to get out of the inside of that mountain.
    They have escape exits in even the shorter ones, and in at least one I noticed a little shrine built into the concrete abutment by one the emergency telephone.

Monday, June 1, 2020

Today, we put Hreljin Cemetery on the genealogy map.  We had hoped to have help for this, but Liz and I went to Hreljin and accomplished our task single-handed.  Or maybe with two of us, it was double-handed.  In any case, we photographed every gravestone in the cemetery.  We figure there were 800-900 of them.  They are crypts, so each one can hold up to seven coffins. 

This is one of the fanciest of the headstones.  There are four people in this crypt, all of them with the last name of Benac.
  There were also some very old crypts.  The oldest person I saw on them was someone born in 1824, died in 1919.  That was on a stone embedded into the back wall of the graveyard, on the opposite side from where Liz is standing in the photo below.  I think it must have been moved here from another location.  And did the body accompany the stone?  Was there a body left?  I don't know, but I photographed it anyway.

The oldest graves are at the far end of this photo, with modern ones at this end.
  We did our work using an App called "BillionGraves".  I had to add the cemetery before we started.  Then we took a photo, decided if it was keep-able, if not take a replacement, then marked "USE".  The photo is then saved, along with GPS coordinates, in a database that can be accessed by people all over the World.
  This next photo takes some explaining.  It is a memorial to WWII veterans.  I've never seen a sunken memorial like this before.

The grass on top of the memorial is at g round level, so you don't see anything at all from a few yards away.  There are three stairways down into the lower level, where the pedestal goes into a globe.  On the three sides between the staircases are three plaques.  This one has some peoples' names, including some Benacs who might be relatives.  There are some other familiar-to-family names, too.