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!