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.
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