Missionary Transfers

The young missionaries receive transfer assignments about every 12 weeks, depending on new missionary arrivals and various needs.  That is a fact of life for them.  Senior missionaries typically stay in one place their entire mission.   We have been the exception, because we spent a month in Osijek before being pulled back to Zagreb where COVID-19 restrictions kept us at the mission home for 2 1/2 months, and then we were assigned to Maribor, because there were no seniors here, and in this area where there are few local leaders they count on seniors to fill the gap.  We expect to stay here, now.

  Transfers were announced this week, and we do get to stay.  However, Elder and Sister Goimarac are being re-assigned from Croatia to Bosnia, where he will be the ecclesiastical leader for  all the units there.  This impacts our auditing work because they are auditors.  Fortunately, they have completed the audits in Bosnia already, and we can do the two audits in Croatia they were assigned to do.  His calling as Branch president means he can't do any more auditing in Bosnia.

    Our two amazing elders in Maribor are also going away.  Elder Christiansen has completed his mission and will be going home and on to BYU.  Elder Kunzler is being assigned to Celje (45 minute drive away from Maribor), so we will still see him regularly, but not as often as we see him now.  Those two have been an inspiration for their focus on their work, and their positive attitudes.

    Two sisters will be assigned to work in Maribor.  One of them is a new missionary, one of the first to do their MTC training while under the restrictions of COVID-19.  They did much of their study remotely.  They have also been in regular touch with the elders and sisters already here, for language training via ZOOM.    In the end, they were allowed to come earlier than planned and will complete their language and other training while in the field.  Yeah!  We are delighted to get them early, because we are short-handed.

Photo of Piran we took just because the buildings were such pretty pastel colors.  They aren't painted.  The color is added to the stucco.

    The level of COVID-19 infection in the mission is very low, especially in Croatia and Slovenia.  The governments have been very proactive about imposing reasonable restrictions early.  People generally are quite good about complying with the rules, wearing face masks, keeping social distance, and so forth.  To quote the Slovenia website:   "Hand sanitation and face masks or scarves are still obligatory in indoor public spaces, as well as on public transport.   Despite the gradual relaxation of protective measures, all larger public gatherings are still prohibited in Slovenia."  

    They do NOT worry about face masks very much when outdoors, so we occasionally get in an uncomfortable situation where we don't have a face mask on and a large-ish group passes us on a walking trail.  I hold my breath and hope for the best.  Happily, these moments are infrequent.  The most worrisome of these events is when I can detect bad breath - that is TOO close!

   The saddest part of the ongoing restrictions is that we can't hold our regular church services.  That is especially sad, because the church next to us, "Emmanuel", continues to hold large meetings.  Our doors are in the same vestibule on the side of the building.  Their door is on the south side and ours is on the north, so our doors face each other, about 10 feet apart.  We see them in there without face masks, and making lovely music as they sing together.  Being rule followers, we wear masks in the church and only have an invitation-only, 10-minute meeting for people who otherwise can't get the sacrament.  After that, they can join the Zoom Slovenia church service conducted by the District President.

One reason people here are willing to wear masks and tolerate the other restrictions is that they still have disturbing historic memories of the Bubonic Plague.  Just up the hill from us is the "Plague Column", which is a monument commemorating the end of the 1184 AD plague event that killed a third of the population of Maribor.  Piran, the city we visited Monday, was an Italian town whose population was essentially wiped out by plague and the city was abandoned.  Slavic people re-populated it a few years later, and remain to this day.  COVID-19 isn't as bad as that, but it is in peoples' minds when they hear that masks are required.

  

Piran on a HOT day - July 27, 2020

Piran is one of the very few cities on the Slovenian coast.  The coast is only 28 kilometers long, so how many cities could they have?  Koper is a modern, new shipping port and is very  industrial.  Piran is an old Italian city.  It is famous for its salt.  There are miles of salt pans where seawater is let in to evaporate, and the resultant salt has been traded around the Mediterranean for millenia.  Nowadays, the salt pans are mostly neglected but a few still operate as a kind of living museum.  Tourists pay good money for souvenir Piran salt.

  The name, Piran, is derived for the Greek word, Pyr, which means fire.  Before the days of lighthouses, a large bonfire was maintained at the tip of the peninsula so that ships knew their limits.  Now there is a modern light and bell to alert shipping.

    Piran is the point where the Istrian peninsula begins, although Croatia claims Istria as their own, and Solvenia is happy to maintain that Piran has nothing to do with that.  But as we drove into the area by the coast, the landscape looked very, very much like Istria, with stunted wild trees, olive groves, and vineyards.

This is the hiway leading into the town of Piran, flanked by well-watered pines.  It was very similar to driving along along the coast near Opatija.  The city of Piran is at the bottom of a coastal range of cliffs, so the hiway abruptly drops down to the coast.  Parking is extremely rare in town, so the city has a large parking garage at the edge of the cliffs, and a free bus into the town Center.  We were happy to take advantage of that.The bus dropped us off at the Square:

We got there at about 11:30 after driving across Slovenia from East to West.  It was already baking hot.  Piran is a tourist city, but COVID is still restricting people, so it was not all that crowded.  Slovenians were there in force, though.  It is traditional that Ljubljana and other places empty out during August as the locals take vacation along the coast.

   The steeple sticking up into the air is a big Catholic church on the hill  It is one of the main attractions.

Looking up just to the right of the church is a restored section of the ancient city wall that kept the citizens safe from land attacks by the feared Turks.  It is quite spectacular.  The young missionaries went up there that afternoon, but my knee had already taken a beating going down the irregular stairs getting out of the parking garage, so I didn't attempt it.  I did go up to the church, though.   As we neared the top I noticed another section of the old city wall, so I guess I walked up there after all.

The parts where ancient soldiers manned their battle stations are long gone, but the classic crenelations are very cool.  Just a bit farther up the hill we came to the church bell tower, which is separate from the main church.  The young people all climbed the 200 steps to the observation deck, while the old people waited below.

There is no doubt their view was better than mine, but I did have a magnificent view across the bay to the north from behind the church.  This is a panoramic view with the church yard on the left, the old city wall on the horizon behind the other church steeple, the harbor below, and Croatia across the water.  The lighthouse is out of sight to the right.  Sorry.

The main door to the church was open, but an iron gate limited our entrance into more than the vestibule.  On the left is a gilded statue of St. George killing the dragon and saving the fair damsel.  The ceiling has a painting of the same fictional event and it is the most famous of all the medieval paintings of St. George.  I don't know if this is the original, or if it is a re-rendering of the original.  There are many great works of art in this church and I wish I could have gone inside to see them better.

   Having climbed up from the city square, there is another path that leads down to the lighthouse.

It looks like a castle keep, but it is the lighthouse.  I am not sure if it is old enough that it held the bonfire back in the day.  The openings in the tower reveal a fog bell, and at the far right, atop the lowest balcony is a modern light, which is, of course, not very impressive.  The 18th and 19th century lighthouses were much more imposing with their tall towers, kerosene lamps, rotational engines, and many-faceted lenses.  Now we have much brighter lights that don't need to rotate or have huge, focusing devices to signal ships out at sea.

This is our crew - all the missionaries in Slovenia.  I'm in it because I was taking the photo.  We have two awesome elders with us in Maribor, two more in the little town of Celje, and two in Ljubljana.  And we have four amazing sisters in Ljubljana, as well.

  As an aside, we had lunch at the best restaurant in Piran (per Rick Steves) with mouthwateringly fresh seafood.  We had the Maribor elders with us and we were joined by the four sisters.  It is a little place, so we had one of the four tables inside the restaurant.  Next to us was a large family group who spoke Italian the whole time.  After several glasses of wine, one of them got up and ogled our sisters.  He was trying to tell us that we had some beautiful daughters, as he leered at them.  It was a little bit offensive, but his wife was next to him so it didn't get out of hand.  He couldn't understand our English nor Slovenian, and finally the multi-lingual waiter stepped in and explained who we were in Italian.  His embarassment was a good end to it.

    By this time, the afternoon had slipped away  and we had to head for home.  As we walked back through town, we passed this Hotel.

It is too bad that the gold highlights don't show up very well in the photo.  Up near the roof, under the eaves, there is gold filigree and gilded jewels around the little round windows.  It makes the building quite visually stunning.

     We were all very hot and thirsty by then, but the young people decided to take off for the city wall with its view that is reputed to be even more stunning than the one from the church.  Not us, though.

We found a sidewalk cafe with good shade and a breeze.  We had some cool drinks and tested their cheesecake.  By the time the elders returned we had cooled off a bit and were able to get back to the car.

    One final note.  We know very few people in Slovenia.  So, what are the odds we would recognize someone at a rest stop along the freeway as we drove back across Slovenia?  As we pulled into a parking spot, I noticed a baby in a woman's arms.  The woman had her back to me, but I recognized the baby!  It was the Branch President's daughter, and their family was returning from a week-long vacation on the coast.  We had a nice chat, and parted company.

7-26-2020 Auditing blues

The increased COVID  restrictions have settled in to make our lives less interesting.  We are seriously trying to avoid contact with people outside our safety circle.  We are not making trips to stores except when really necessary.  Regular church meetings are impossible again, because the government rule is no more than 10 people in any public meeting, and face masks are required then.

   The one place I have visited a bit more regularly is the little bakery just up the alley from our apartment on the main square.  Bakeries have a special place in Slovene culture, because only poor people eat bread and they traditionally go every day to get their daily bread.  We think it is subsidized by the government, because it is dirt cheap.  I like a seed bread they make at that bakery.  It is not too heavy and features sunflower seeds.  Cost for a nice, big loaf:  0.72 Euro.

    To get to the bakery I walk uphill in a narrow alley.  The last 20 or 30 feet before the main square, it goes under a building whose second floor was built right over it.  It is currently closed to vehicle traffic because they have been remodeling the main square to be a pedestrian-only place.  I rather enjoy these pedestrian-only streets.  There is still the odd vehicle passing through, but it is a very relaxed feeling walking through them - especially when trying to maintain social distancing.

  I have walked past a particular doorway many, many times, but I stopped to photograph it because it is kind of striking.

This is the entrance to an abandoned room.  There are panes for glass above the door, but the glass has been broken out, as has the missing door panel.  It is a shame, because the carved and painted flowers in the door panels are quite artistic and attractive.  This structure is unstable and can't be inhabited without major repairs.   One interesting detail is that the threshold stone on the right side - the side where the door opens for ordinary entrance - has been worn down by centuries of usage as people's feet passed in and out.  I don't think the door is as old as that stone.

Audits are continuing.  All over the World, bishops and clerks are being subjected to a series of questions about the financial operations of their part of the church.  It is a bit stressful as they dig out documents supporting the entries made on the computers.  We are examining the records for January through June of this year, and would very rarely look at anything prior to that, but the European Union currently demands that all records are maintained for 10 years prior to the current year.

  In ordinary times, a ward or branch audit would take less than an hour.  In my case, we are responsible for five countries and there are ever-shifting travel restrictions in them.  A month ago, Croatia wouldn't let Slovenes enter.  Now they will, but Slovenia won't let anyone back in from Croatia.  Either way, we can't travel around the mission like we had hoped to do.

    One iron-clad principle of auditing for longer than I have any knowledge, is that an audit is ALWAYS done face-to-face.  With all the travel restrictions, that is not possible, so we have been using video conferencing to complete them.  We are part of the pilot for online auditing, so we have people watching us as we complete the audits.  I don't think that will continue much longer, but it's not up to me.  We have been able to complete the audits with good assurance of their accuracy, but it hasn't been easy.  We had one unit where the internet signal was very marginal.  It dropped out frequently.  The video images were grainy and hard to see clearly enough for documents to show.  Conversation was difficult, both from the low clarity of sound, and because the branch president didn't speak English.  That audit was finally completed, but it didn't happen within an hour's time.  It took about 4.5 hours!  By the end, everybody was bone tired.  We had identified quite a few "exceptions" where they hadn't followed church policy and procedures, which is always stressful.  It isn't our job as auditors to call them to task - only to note that there were exceptions, but it is still difficult to hear for the local leaders.  Following that one, we had to monitor another audit being done by a new auditor.  It was 9:30 pm when Liz and I finished that one up and we decided to sit down and watch an episode of "Sherlock" while stress-eating chips and sodas before falling into bed.

Yesterday we had our regular mission-wide zoom conference with the mission president.  And then we had other meetings for another couple of hours.  As I participated, I had a view of the River Drava.  It rained the night before.  First thing in the morning, the water was rushing down the river at high speed, and I could see the water level was near the high water mark where grass grows along the river bank.  But after an hour or so the river slowed, while the water level fluctuated the rest of the day.  Some of the fluctuations were as much as a foot of depth (it's hard to judge the level when looking across a wide river, it could have been more than that.)  The Drava is the most fully utilized hydroelectric stream in Europe - very nearly 100% utilized, with dams and generating house every few miles from start to finish.   My supposition is that the fluctuating water level is the result of the water masters adjusting to keep the power going steadily, while also balancing water flow to the Mediterranean.

Tomorrow, we plan to break out for a day.  It is our P-Day (Personal Day), and we are going to go with the young elders to the city of  Piran on the short Slovene Coast.  It will probably be packed with tourists, but it has a very high city wall that is largely intact and quite photogenic.  It is a small city that is said to be more Italian than Slovene.  Photo Ops galore!  We will take several face masks.  More to come.

Juvenile Swans - Trip to Ljubljana July 21, 2020

Sometimes we are driving some place and I see something where I think, "That is interesting!  I should take a photo.  Here is one:

The clouds are streaking in all directions above the mountains of Austria, 18 km away.  This was taken in Maribor, across the River Drava from where we live.  Maribor is built up the bank and onto the flanks of the hills visible in the photo.

     We love watching the swans (you may have noticed).  A hen had three eggs in a nest along the sidewalk at the edge of the River.  The eggs were gone one day and I thought she had successfully hatched her chicks.  However, there has been no sign of a swan female with 3 cygnets in the weeks since then.  Of course, she could have taken them off somewhere less bothersome than a busy sidewalk. 
    Meanwhile, there is a female who had five cygnets when we arrived and we have watched them grow.  They are beginning to get feathers now, and are almost as big as she is.

The poor things get fed by helpful people along the river bank very regularly.  We were reading that high calory, and especially high protein foods like we crave will cause deformation of the wings of swans.   Is it true, or merely a story to make people stop being so unhelpfully helpful?  I don't know.  In any case, the cygnets look as long as their mother, but gangly.  They need feathers to look filled in.

We have a sister missionary who is on her way home today so she can start her law degree at BYU School of Law.  Yesterday, we drove down to Ljubljana where she has been working, and took her and her companions to lunch so we could wish her fair well.  We wanted to let her know we are proud of her and that she can go home proud.
   While we were there, we decided to do a little sightseeing and touristing.  We parked in a parking building near the center of town and walked out of it to this view.

Liz is standing in a public square, in front of the Ljubljana Festival sign, and the Ljubljana Castle is above us all, with its flags waving in the wind.  We wanted to go up there, but it didn't work out.  I can't climb hills with my current knee, but there is a funicular that goes up to it.  Some day we will do it.
     We visited the outdoor market near the tri-bridge (three bridges so close together you can have a quiet chat with people on another bridge, but they fan out to three separate streets) and did some souvenir shopping.  As time approached to meet our dear sisters at the restaurant, we saw them across the street and joined them for the walk to a restaurant with very good food.  And it was reasonable, too.
     Afterwards, we decided to visit the home of the most famous architect in Slovenia.  His name was Joze Plecnik (1872 - 1957), and there are statues of him littered all over the city.  He also did a lot of work in Vienna and Prague, but he is famous as the architect who had the biggest impact on the design and building of a single city anywhere in Europe.  His home is now a museum.  He lived like a monk, so the house itself was mostly interesting only in how he didn't cave in to creature comforts.  But behind his house he had a garden, and in the garden is a bee house.

This is Slovene beekeeping.  They make hives that are in separate cabinets (5 in this little bee house).  These are all unoccupied and bee doors are closed.  The house is built onto the top of a concrete pipe as wide as the bee house.  The traditional bee house is a building where the beekeeper can go in a full-size door into a work space at the back of the hives, where he can work in peace and comfort.  This one only provides shade and shelter from the rain.

    This is the back of the bee house.  A door opens to reveal the back of the individual hive cabinets.  If you open the cabinet door, you expose the back of hive, and you can work in relative peace because the bees are not alarmed like they are when you are at the entrance, or when you rip the top off.  Slovenes never pick up more than one frame of honeycomb at a time, which also makes less of a disturbance than the ones we use in the US.  I think I might take up beekeeping again when I get home.
     The big difference between these hives and the ones we traditionally use in the US is that the hives never change size, and frames are removed as they are filled with ripened honey, rather than waiting to the end of the season.  I had to give up beekeeping because it was getting too hard for me to work the bees and harvest 100# supers of honey in the Texas heat.  With these that would not be a problem. 
     The other Slovenian tradition is to paint colorful scenes on the wooden boards at the front of the hives.  The ones in this bee house are either yellow or blue.  But the tradition is for nothing so mundane as that.

Two men holding a cow while the milkmaid milks her.

Dancing and playing music around the bee house to keep the bees happy.  It appears the bees are dancing the Virginia Reel.

Notice the colorful scenes painted on the bee boards in the picture on this bee board.

And always a favorite: St. George slaying the dragon with a spear.  The tradition is that he performed this heroic act in Croatia.  Or maybe Serbia.

Bee boards are a coveted antique around Slovenia, and originals as old as the dates on these reproductions go for big money - albeit mostly to tourists.  Locals just paint new ones.  Slovenes have long held that the bees can identify their own hive better with splashes of color to guide them.  Modern research has confirmed this tradition, and bees are demonstrably less likely to stray to adjoining hives if they can orient on color.

The other interesting thing about the architect's house is that he collected bits and pieces and used them in any way he could.  Thus the beehive on a culvert, and smaller pipes being used to line sidewalks.  But he also used them to demonstrate ideas he had.  The hedges of his garden have all kinds of pillars, vases and other items he used for inspiration.

He built several building with unique roof tiles of his own design, using the then-new material: reinforced concrete.

Liz is examining a stunning tile laid out in display, of which we saw examples around town on several magnificent large buildings and on garden sheds.
  We had a great day in Ljubljana, but it was HOT!!  We had to stop at an outdoor cafe and have ice cream and sodas before we could walk the rest of the way back to the car.  We were happy to get back home and fall into bed.

Some days we are lucky

We try to stay in our apartment as much as we can, because of the growing threat of COVID-19 infection.  By staying in our apartment, our need is greater for groceries when we finally decide to go to the store.  We usually shop at a large SPAR store in the big mall nearby.  It has most of the things we need, although it still takes us a lot of time to find what we need because we can't read the labels very well.  We are getting better at it, though.  After an hour or so we have a shopping cart full of items.
    Of course, we have to take the car with us on our shopping trips, but when we get back to our apartment, we face two hurdles:  we have to haul the heavy bags up a flight of stairs, and the three 20-minute parking spaces in front of our building are usually full.  We nearly always have to park illegally for 5-15 minutes to get our things inside.  Then we can remove our car and take it to its parking place a half mile away.  But carrying heavy bags up the stairs is the biggest hardship.  I have a gimpy knee and use a cane to help me up the stairs.  Liz also has difficulty on them and has always relied on me to carry the heavy bags.
  If we are lucky, we can arrange to have the young missionaries meet us at the house and they act like it is the greatest privilege in the World to carry our things up the stairs.  But some days we are not so lucky and we have to do it ourselves.  There is always a heavy bag with milk, canned goods, sodas, butter, etc.  Those things seem to bunch up into one bag and it can be a very heavy load.  We are not speaking of the flimsy plastic auto-destruction bags found for free in the U.S.  Here, if you didn't bring your own bags, you have to buy them.  They are several times as big as the flimsies from back home, and they are sturdy, woven plastic, handled bags that last a considerable time.  I can manage one of them while using my cane to climb the stairs.  But, if there are two, my knee will complain for days after.  As my pappy used to say, "getting old isn't for sissies."

Yesterday we visited a store we hadn't realized was here until I was surfing google maps a few days ago.  It is by TUS, a grocery store chain that is common around here.  But the one we visited is TUS Cash and Carry.  When we were in Zagreb, we often shopped for the mission home at Metro Cash and Carry, which is a membership store like Sam's or Costco.  TUS doesn't have a membership, and isn't quite as well supplied as Metro, but it was great.  We bought quantities of things we find hard to find. like ground walnuts, juice, and our favorite cookies and candies.  The prices are noticeably lower than the small stores, so it's more like we are used back home.

I also had a very interesting experience lately.  A few days after we got back with our new car, we parked just outside the three occupied 20-minute parking spaces outside the apartment so we could unload our luggage and stuff we brought back from us, including a recliner chair.  As we finished unloading it started to pour down rain, so we decided to take the car home later.  An hour later, we came down to move and it had a ticket in a red plastic bag on it.  Grrr!  We put the ticket on the window ledge next to the kitchen table so we wouldn't forget it.  Then we had visitors and I didn't want to advertise our ticket, so I picked it up and put it in my shirt pocket.  I didn't give it a thought until last week on laundry day.  I was reminded of it when I tried to iron a shirt with the pocket full of paper shreds.  It was packed in there hard and was hard to get out.  It came out in tiny chunks and there was no hint of what had been written on it.  With a little thought I connected it with the ticket.  The only thing we'd looked at on it was the amount - 20 Euros.
  So I walked up the hill to the police station and found someone who spoke English and explained that I wanted to pay my ticket.  After some confusion they said they don't issue tickets, and advised me to try another agency back down the hill a block.  I went there, found someone who could translate and was told it was probably an agency who has their office in the bus station at the edge of down-town.  I gave up for that day because it was a long way from where I was.
   Next morning I walked the half mile to the bus station and found the office of the agency just as they'd described at the second agency I'd visited the day before.  The lady at the desk spoke excellent English and tried to look up my ticket using my license plate number.  It wasn't in her system, so she asked me if the ticket was for 16 Euros.  I told her it was for 20 Euros and she said then it was from a different agency and their office is across the river in a remote part of town.  I walked back home.
    Next day, we drove out to the remote agency.  The man at the counter didn't speak English and didn't seem to think he should help me find someone who did.  But a man walked by and I asked him to help.  He was able to explain what I needed.  After showing the official the car's license number and explaining, he got out a red plastic envelope and asked if the ticket was in one like it.  I said yes.  Then he said it is a different agency and their office was directly behind me on the other side of the entryway, but it was closed for the day.  He said I could come back next day between 9:00 am and noon.
   So, another day dawned and we made the trip again.  The man at this counter didn't speak English either, but the first guy I'd talked to came over and they talked.   They looked up my license plate, but it seemed like he didn't find it in his records.  We spoke different languages to each other, nobody came by, and finally he waved me away.  I walked out the door not knowing if he waived the fine, couldn't find it, or if the police will come get me.  I went to five (5) agencies trying to give someone 20 Euros, and nobody wants it.
    We are living in a country where we are illiterate.  If we didn't love being here so much, it would be depressing.

Back to isolation - in audit season

We got the word that church is cancelled in Slovenia, for the foreseeable future - again.  Croatia and Slovenia led the World in reacting to the pandemic quickly and effectively and reaped the benefit of very low infection rate and few actual cases.  People generally obeyed isolation requests, wore masks faithfully, and did what needed to be done.  BUT, that means it is still virgin territory for an aggressive virus.  When they relaxed the restrictions a little bit, people immediately relaxed a lot, stopped wearing masks, gathered in crowds, etc.  They said to themselves, "Slovenia doesn't have the virus, and now it is all over."  Now cases are growing quickly in Slovenia and the government is imposing restrictions again.  We went to a big grocery store in a mall last Monday and people were maskless in the mall, but mostly donned masks when they entered the stores.  It was relaxed.  Yesterday we returned to the same store.  Nearly every person in the mall was wearing their mask.  Some were wearing them below their nose, it is true, but they hitched them up when they entered stores.  Distancing was no longer automatic and there was some crowding.  But they are getting back on the bandwagon.
  People here walk - a LOT!  It makes sense, because they don't have spaces to park cars.  We park a half mile away, so we find ourselves choosing to walk to stores when we won't have a heavy load to carry home.  We go to the smaller, local stores rather than out to the edge of town where the big box stores are located.
    I've noticed an interesting phenomenon.  When people are out walking, they seldom have a face mask.  It seems that if you are out walking, it means you are healthy and not infected.  Of course, that isn't necessarily true and they can be infecting other walkers, but that will come out if it becomes worse here.  There are still comparatively low numbers of infected people in Slovenia, even though the infection rate is going up.

The Audit season is upon us and I have been very busy with planning it.  I have some help; two district auditors in Slovenia and Croatia, and a senior missionary couple who live in Croatia.  The missionary couple will do the audits in Bosnia to which we cannot travel.  Liz and I will do the audits for Serbia where we also can't travel.  It officially begins next Monday.  We have one branch in the mission (in Bosnia) that is small and the branch president and branch clerk are both junior missionaries who are assigned to a bigger city an hour's drive away.  So they drive to the town only every other week - or so.  That is a big concern for the audit, because the clerk may not be very familiar with the records, and it will be complicated to do the audit.  The young elders will have to be at the church in that town for the audit, which is in one of the countries where we auditors can't travel.  So the senior couple under my direction will do the audit via Zoom conferencing.  The two young elders will be on-site with the records.  The Area Auditors (who supervise me) want ME to be on the Zoom call, too, because I am in charge of auditing for the mission.  They also said they will monitor the call, because the church has never had to do remote audits before.  We are one of the test locations for the process and they want to make sure it works before allowing other auditors to do it.  No pressure or anything, but that will be a lot of auditors watching every move they make.

Our mission continues to be a GRAND ADVENTURE!

Looming Audits

We continue to enjoy working with the young missionaries here.  We meet several times per week at our home with them, to plan and when they bring friends of the church for religious discussion.  Last Friday we went with them to a restaurant in Maribor for dinner.

I think I might have mentioned this before, but they serve gigantic meals here.  I look around at the locals and see them fully engulfing their huge meals.  I actually finished my lasagna, but that is unusual.  The young missionaries finish them, but they work harder (physically) than we do, and they are still growing boys.
  The next day we went down to Ljubljana for Zone Conference.  Normally, that would be a face-to-facew meeting with the new president, but President and Sister Field can't travel for a couple of weeks until their visas are all set.  So we met them via Zoom and spent the day getting to know one another.

    This is where we were lining up next to a monitor to take a photo of everyone who participated.  The guy closest to my camera is balancing his phone on a pile of books to get a photo of the group.  President and Sister Field are with their assistants on the monitor.

    It has turned hot here, and we are trying to get out earlier in the day to do things.  It hasn't quite hit 90 yet, but it has been close.  The good news is when it starts to get hot, it rains.  It is forecast to rain this evening and tomorrow's high will be back in the 70's.  Nice!

I am still limping along with a cane.  Actually, I try hard not to limp.  In fact, I try to walk normally when ever we walk on level surfaces, but when I walk on rough, uneven, unpredictable surfaces, I keep the cane on the ground while my right foot is on the ground so that it won't twist unexpectedly.  In spite of that, my knee often aches a bit at the end of the day, because most of the streets here are somewhat uneven.  I try to walk at least a mile each day, and it's not too hard to meet that goal.  It helps that our car is parked a half mile away.  At home I don't carry the cane at all, except that I like to have it at the bedside when I wake up and stagger to the bathroom.
   
    Audit season is upon us.  It actually starts next Monday.  I have helpers lined up and the load is not unbearable, but it will be complicated.  I need to compile a list of the units and who is in charge of the records there.  We have units where no missionaries have been present since March, and those will present some serious problems.  Of course, with no church meetings from mid-March to a couple of weeks ago, there wasn't much to be done in them, either.  It will be a challenge.