The Baptism

 Saturday was the big day - My good friend became a member of the church.  It was a delightful experience to baptize him in Ljubljana, where there is a nice font.

Mission rules made it a little complicated, but we worked through it.  Liz and I drove down with just the two of us in the car, while the sisters accompanied D. on the train to Ljubljana.  Nobody can be in the mission cars except missionaries.  We met all the other missionaries at the Ljubljana church, one of only two real church-owned churches in the mission.  Several members came as well.

The water in the font wasn't as warm as we'd like, and, when we arrived, the elders were busy heating pans of water in the kitchen to try to heat it up a little bit.

  D.  was nervous as we changed into white clothing.  He had questions, and asked me to show him, again, how to hold our hands during the baptism.  I was nervous that I'd be able to support him properly, especially with my gimpy knee.  But it all went very smoothly.

  During the program, President Fidler presided, the sisters played a hymn on guitar and viola, Sister Ashurst gave a nice talk.  D. bore his testimony, but of course, I didn't understand it because he was speaking Slovene.

  We brought a carrot cake and several others brought desserts to go with it.  Everybody had a good time.

    I was talking to one of the members who lives in Ljubljana, and he mentioned that there is snow on the peaks.  We hadn't noticed on the way down, but on the way back it was very clear that the highest peaks had a layer of snow - the first snow of the season.  I tried to take a photo, but the bumpy car and the distance to the peaks combined to thwart me.

We are about to move away from our apartment, so we have been taking a few last-look photos.  This one is the sun dial with our kitchen window to the left and the neighbor's kitchen window to the right, and the topiary tree in the middle.

It was a cloudy day, so you can't tell what time it is.

Our next few days will be taken with packing, moving, and unpacking.  Moving is always a big mess, but we have high hopes for good results from it.

How is it SO obvious?

 How is it so obvious that we speak English?

Sometimes I get it.  We saw this poster a couple weeks ago.  Of course, being illiterate, I took a photo so we could translate it later.

Anybody seeing me taking this photo would undoubtedly know we were not native-speakers of Slovene.  Or that we were very forgetful.

   But it happens, distressingly often, that we walk into a restaurant and a server hurries over to serve us, already carrying English menus.  How did they know?  We have name tags on our clothes, but they are printed in Slovene, and the young missionaries who wear identical tags are supposed to speak in the local language.  It is a mystery.

People under the age of 30 or so almost always have some knowledge of English.  Older people don't, but they often understand German, a remnant of the days when this was part of Austria.  There is a farmers market just up Military Street from our apartment, and most of the farmer/merchants are older.  So, I try to use my small knowledge of German when dealing with them, and now even the ones we haven't dealt with often engage me in that language.  This became noticeable when I tried to buy a few chantrelle mushrooms a few months ago.  One of the merchants had lovely mushrooms in little plastic containers, holding about twice as many as I wanted.  I asked for them at the stall and used hand signals to indicate I wanted a handful. because I didn't have the word for it.  The lady said, "Kilo?"  And I replied, "Nein, ein..."  (No, one...) and I motioned a handful, again.  She replied, "Alles!", meaning I had to buy a whole container.  I asked, disbelievingly, "Ein kilo oder keine?" (One kilo or nothing?)  She nodded, so I walked away.  She was surprised that I walked away so I suppose she expected me to dicker more.  I am not good at that game.  We usually pay whatever they ask at first, and we've found that when we do that, they slip some extra into our bag to make up for it.  Perhaps in pity that we are so simple.  Anyway, that exchange, in poor German, was when most of the other merchants started engaging me in German.  But everywhere else, people speak Slovene or English to us, 

I have a bit of fun when passing people on the siderwalks.  Many people don't say anything as they pass strangers, but we try not to let that happen.  If I'm not thinking, I say, "Hi!."  If I'm thinking about it more, I sometimes say "Dobar dan." (good day), but if I'm in a gleeful mood, I say whatever other language comes to mind.  Buenos dias, Ciao, Guten Tag, O'hio, or Howdy.  I get some glares, some startled looks, and fairly often, a wry smile.  That's the ticket!

==================================================================

Monday and Tuesday, we had two days of auditor training, using Zoom.  The original plan was to spend three days in Frankfurt for this training session, and we would be able to mingle with auditors and others from all over Europe.  We were so very excited at the prospect of making that little trip!  We also had a temple trip planned.  COVID put all that out of the question, of course.

This is what our auditor training looked like:

(Faces blanked out to protect identities.)

We sat all day, hunched over my tiny desk, staring at the computer screen.  Still, it was a good meeting and we learned a lot of things it was good to know.

  I was asked to give a presentation on how we communicated during our audits.  Naturally, I chose to describe why we used Zoom and how it worked out.  (mostly very well.)  During it, we took the opportunity to share one of our favorite paintings, The Widow's Mite.

I won't bore you with how it ties in to auditing, but trust me, it does.

We are going to move

 The apartment where we've been since we came to Slovenia is awesome.  It is right along the river, next to historic sights, and just a short distance from the City Center.  The views out the windows are awesome.  But I mentioned before that it is very hard on my sore knee.  The stairs are not too bad, but they contribute to it.  The cobblestones are not very nice but if that was all, I could live with it.  The steepness of the hill going up to the Center is the worst of the lot.  And there is no parking!  The car is a half mile away.  The combined affect is that my knee is rapidly getting worse.  There is no way to avoid those things, and the only alternative is to move.  Well, we found a new place and signed a lease.  It has an elevator, a/c, a balcony which has Liz excited, and is a bit bigger than we've had, which is very nice.  Parking is in an underground garage next door.

The official church representative lives outside Ljubljana, and is very busy with his software company, but we found a time when he was in town and agreed to meet him at the Ljubljana church to sign the lease.  We also had to enlist the help of the elders to translate the lease into English for us.  We had started with a stock lease that had Slovene on one side and equivalent English on the other.  The landlaord added a few sections, and those are the ones we needed translated.

After that, we stopped at an outdoor restaurant for lunch.  There was a flock of Italian Sparrows that were quite amusing.  They had a space at the edge of a roof where they obviously feel comfortable waiting around.

  I'd flip little bits of bread out onto the pavement and the whole flock would swoop down and fight for it.  Italian sparrows are very similar, but not identical, to the English sparrows that are now so common in the US.  Notice how the male is puffing out his chest to impress the two hens.

  After lunch, we met with the Military Attache assigned to the American Embassy in Ljubljana.  He is a member of the church, and we've met before, but didn't have much time to talk.  It was nice to sit down with his family and just talk about living in Slovenia.    We brought his family a box of chocolate chip cookies we had baked, and the kids instantly loved us.  His wife arranged to get some new pants from the states for me, for which I was very happy.  Our primary topic of discussion was translation.     

  The young missionaries try to translate the church services for us, but they are at varying levels of fluency in the difficult Slovene language.  Sometimes we have a good idea what is being said, but there are frequent gaps where the speaker continues, but the translator is stumped.  Since neither of us has any other choice, we suffer through it.  Sometimes I suffer in somnambulance.  So, we brainstormed ideas on things we could suggest to make it better.

    The Military Attache rates a house built to US standards.  It was on a large lot with a good-size yard, including lawn and BBQ.  It is surrounded by a tall concrete wall, which appeared to be substantial, but it didn't really stand out in the neighborhood where it is.

    We drove back to Maribor with the lease, as evening approached.  We had an appointment with the landlord to give him the lease (3 copies, signed and sealed by the church) so he could take them to a notary for his signature.

We met the landlord's wife when we first looked at the new apartment, but we had never met him.  We knew he was a lawyer and that he thought we should all go together to a Notary to sign the lease.  Our church representative absolutely refused to drive to Maribor to sign the lease with a notary.  So we were hoping and praying that he would accept it with the signature and church seal on it.

As we talked to him, it was clear that he liked us and as we explained who we are and how we will be using the apartment, he got more and more comfortable with us.  In the end, he said that a notary is only necessary if we don't trust each other, and that he was completely comfortable trusting us.  He signed the lease and we distributed the copies.  Hooray!!!

So, we are moving to our new apartment at the end of the month.  The sisters are moving into our wonderful apartment.  We are releasing the other two apartments where missionaries have stayed for many years.  And the moves all have to happen right at the end of the month.  It will be a very busy couple of days!

By the way, we continue to be fascinated by fenestrations on the older buildings in Slovenia, just as we were in Croatia.  Here are some examples.

They stucco over the bricks and stones the buildings were built with.  And they love to add a bit of color.   It is quite nice to have pastels colors all around - yellow, purple, green, red, blue, and pink.  But it is the decorations they add that make them so wonderful.

     The silhouette at the right edge of the building is of Luciano Pavarotti, because the restaurant just outside is named after him.

This is a closeup of some of the decorations on the building below.  The same portraits are on two windows at the other end of the building, so these must be pre-cast and glued on.

This building stands out, partly because it is in two shades of grey.

9/11 in Slovenia

 I was thinking about this BLOG and it feels a little bit like a travel log.  You might think we are just holidaying here.  Well, we do try to take advantage of our P-Days, but we also do actual missionary work.  We are expecting the sisters and a young man I'll just call D. at our house in a couple of hours.  D. has a baptism date scheduled in two weeks and he has asked me to perform the ordinance.  I was very touched that he asked me to do it - the young missionaries usually do the honors.  We don't use baptisms as the measure of missionary success, but they are a nice affirmation that we are doing good.  He is a great young man, who found the church website and called in for information about the church.  His call was taken in Salt Lake.  The missionaries there  talked with him at length, then referred him to some missionaries in Hawaii to answer his questions (I can't imagine why Hawaii).  After several conversations with him, they got in touch with the sisters here in Maribor, where he lives.  So he has literally learned from missionaries all over the World.  This is not an unusual process these days.  COVID has been a curse in many ways, but it has opened up missionary work as a Worldwide service.  Our main tools are now Facebook, WhatsApp, and Zoom, and these tools work as well for someone on the other side of the World as they do for somebody on the other side of the block.

Now I've gotten that off my chest, we visited Ptui last P-Day.  Ptui is pronounced like the sound you make when spitting into a spittoon.  It is the oldest city in Slovenia and was a Roman town two thousand years ago.

This is Liz at the Orpheus Monument.  It was erected in the 2nd century AD in honor of the Roman Governor, Marcus Valerius Verus.  There are no actual Roman buildings left, but there are stones, pieces of columns, and stele scattered here and there, especially on this hill.

 

Behind the monument is the Church of St. George.  Inside is a statue of St. George in the standard pose with his spear in the dragon, unusual only in that he is standing instead of being astride a horse.

This is the Ptui castle and museum.  We didn't try to go up there because our P-Day is Monday and most things like castles and museums are closed on Mondays.  The white building sits on top of ancient walls.

This is a curious B&B in town.  They have a poetry festival each year, and visiting poets can have a disc made with whatever they feel moved to declare.  Most just have the poet's name and a line or two, but some put samples of poetry on them.  These are on the outside wall along the alley and they cover the wall for 40 feet or so.  Very cool.

OK, now on to 9/11.  We had a meeting with a man at 11:00, but he cancelled.  So, we decided to take a walk in THE Park.  There are several parks in town, but we went to THE Park.  There are lawns and trees, and lakes.  At the third lake there is the most marvelous, storybook view imaginable.

The weeping willow is so beautiful, and the lake in front, the lawn behind, and the houses on the hill.  What a sight!  I was standing on a little, wooden bridge when I took this photo and I imagine thousands and thousands of budding photographers have taken this exact same photo.  You approach it going up a hill and as you crest the hill, this is the view.

    The walk was a bit challenging for my damaged knee, but the paths were good and it turned out fine.  I did ice my knee on our return.  I had the long lens on my camera, and I think it is defective.  Most of the photos I took are out of focus, and it won't focus any better even if I do manual focus.  I did manage to take a few good ones, though.

Can you see the carp just under the water.  Carp aren't very exciting, but they are fun to see.

Sister Ashurst wanted to take a nice photo of pretty, yellow flowers.  I wanted to take a nice photo of Pretty Sister Ashurst.  It was a win - win.

Turtles are fun to see in the water.  They move so gracefully in the water, and so clumsily on dry ground.

This turtle was resting on the bottom of the pond in the shallow water.  I got to within four feet of him and he acted like he didn't have a care in the World.

I took lots of long-distance shots of ducks, but the long lens just won't focus on them well.  But these ducks were acclimated to all the strollers and let me get close.  I thought it turned out well.

Butterflies are rare these days, which makes me sad to say.  Butterflies are one of life's joys and we have nearly destroyed them.  This pretty lady landed in the grass and was fanning her wings.  When she closed them I couldn't see her at all.  Then she'd open them and look at what she shows!

This evening, we met with D, as I said at the beginning of this post, and the sisters taught him a lesson from a conference talk.  Then we all went up into town and had dessert.  What a beautiful day!   What a contrast from that 9/11 day when we all watched in horror as thousands of people had their lives snuffed out.

What is different here?

 I was thinking about things that are different here in Slovenia from what we are used to in the US of A. This kind of started when I made chocolate chip cookies for the sister missionaries to have when they came by for Sunday dinner (a tradition we are continuing here). So I'll start with cooking and move on to other

THINGS THAT ARE DIFFERENT:

- Flour: They have dozens of grinds of flour from very, very fine to coarse enough to be called cracked wheat. We have settled on 550 as our standard flour, but they range from 200 to 900.

- shortening: Crisco is not a thing here. We finally found shortening, but it is coconut oil based and is hard until it turns to oil. So it's hard to measure, although the scale works well as a measuring tool. We finally found a brand of "soft" shortening. It's still coconut based and harder than Crisco, but you can pack it into a measuring cup. The good thing about all this is that I don't have any more angst about using hydrogenated vegetable oil, aka trans-fat, in my cookies. Crisco claims there isn't any trans-fat in their shortening. I wonder how they put that one over? They must have some amazing lawyers.

- Butter: We couldn't figure out why European butter tasted so blah, until we finally realized it is unsalted. In the US, you have to search for unsalted butter. Once we realized that unsalted is the standard here, we started looking closer and found that a few stores have salted butter. Yummy once more.

- Vanilla: It's easy to find vanilla here, but it comes in tiny bottles. Also, it isn't very potent, so I just pour most of a bottle into my cookies and it works. I miss my home-made, gourmet vanilla.

- Sugar: Sugar here is in large crystals like you find sprinkled on pastries. It doesn't dissolve if you put it in baked goods. We found "small" crystal sugar, but it is still too big to dissolve, too, and my cookies were crunchy from hard sugar crystals. We can sometimes find "fine" sugar which is almost as fine as at home, and the blender helps a lot.

- hamburger: Slovenes love hamburger. Here, it is a mix of beef and pork, which is awesome. It is also partly ground meat like we call hamburger, and partly chopped meat about 3/8" pieces. It is great, but not the same. Recipes have to be adjusted.

Non-food

- Speed limits. The hiways here are fantastic. The freeways are all toll roads, but it's easy. We buy a sticker to put on our window and we are good to go on any tollway in the country for a year. The standard speed limit is 130 kph ( about 90 mph), but that is NEVER posted. You are supposed to just know. As we drive we sometimes encounter a lower speed limit and that is posted well. Later there will be a small, circular sign with the lower speed number inside and slash through it. That means you can go back to the standard speed limit. It took us months of driving here before we figured that one out, and we still sometimes miss the little end sign. When people start zooming past us, we assume we missed it and speed up.

- Drugs. We were encouraged to bring a year of prescriptions with us. The issue we've had is that we brought smaller supplies of OTC drugs like tylenol and ibuprofin. We used to buy them in the grocery store, but here you can only get them at a drug store. Tylenol and Ibuprofen are restricted here, although you don't need a prescription. I go in the drug store and they will give me a little box with 20 tablets inside. If I beg, I can get two. My OTC acid blocker requires a prescription here, and again, it comes in a little box with a few pills. We are learning how to work it, but we feel like it's more work than it ought to be.

20 Ibuprofen tablets in 2 blister packs. Far different than my Costco jug of 550 loose tablets.

- 220 v.: We knew about the voltage difference. What I didn't realize is how much the higher voltage stands up and shouts at us. It is common for a large flash to announce that the plug is not quite all the way in, yet. It can be scary, to say the least. I try to remember to make sure things are turned off before I plug them in, and that avoids the flash. We've also noticed that lots of people have a dread of an appliance that is left plugged in while not in use. Other than that, I am a big fan of 220 v.

- men's trousers: I have a big behind and thunder thighs. I'd like to buy a new pair of trousers here, but the racks are full of slim-fit, straight-cut, skinny-cut, and shorts. Nothing is even close to fitting me, except military clothing (not the image I want to express). All the men here wear tight pants, except old men, and I haven't figured out where they get theirs. My new missionary suit pants from the USA also have tight legs, but not as tight as the ones here. I wear my new suit as seldom as possible, because I much prefer looser trouser legs.

- Ties: Croatia is the place where ties were invented and became fashionable. Actually it was cravats they made famous, but they claim they invented ties, as well. There are stores around that only sell ties and nothing else. But very, very few men wear them anymore for daily wear. We rarely see a tie on anybody besides missionaries. A couple months ago, word came down that mission presidents can submit a request if they want to allow their male missionaries to omit ties, or wear blue shirts, or wear sandals. This should make us appear more normal and natural. President Field (bless his heart) put in his request, and now we don't have to wear ties except to formal meetings. HURRAH!!! We didn't want blue shirts, so he didn't even ask. He also got permission for us to wear sandals, but they have to have closed toes and we have to wear them with dark socks. Socks!?! So, I haven't seen any of the missionaries wearing sandals.

Maribor Castle - Revised

 We've been in town for long enough that we've walked past the castle several times.  We noticed that it has a museum inside, so we decided to take an hour and go see what it has.  It turns out the city government has collected most of the significant museums from around Maribor and combined them into an amazing display taking up most of the old castle.  

The entrance on the South has amazing flagpoles that are wooden spires.  Never seen the like before.

Inside, there is the ubiquitous gift shop, and a lot of display-previews of the various museums they've collected.  Then there was a display of the artifacts they've found from digging up ruins dating from stone-age through medieval time periods.  We were warned not to take flash photography, but that first floor was very dark, so I didn't take photos of ancient metals, buildings, gravesites, etc.  It was very interesting stuff, though.

We walked through the central courtyard into the other side of the castle, and they had a display of tools used by wheel makers to make this ancient (and not very strong) medieval style of wagon wheel.  (Notice that a spoke is missing from the higher wheel.)  That style wheel broke easily and couldn't carry very much weight.  They were fairly quickly replaced by spoke wheels which were still in use into the 20th century.  I am amazed they still have examples of this old style of wheel available, even in museums.

They had a collection of old cash boxes.   This one is dated 1756 and was the Stone Cutters' Guild cash box.  You can see the ends of several other cash boxes - all ornate, with a raised section on the lid, and large lock-sets.  The boxes are in immaculate condition - no doubt due to the loving care given to keeping them out of the hands of rough men.

This one is the cash box of the Miller's Guild and is dated 1671.  The two carvings on the lid represent the grinding wheels used in a grain-grinding mill.

This is a wonderful collection of beehive fascia boards - a famously Slovenian folk art.  They all have a notch on the bottom edge, which is where the bees go in and out of their hive.  Representations of these boards are found in all the gift shops and tourist traps in Slovenia and even Croatia, but the ones they sell are usually the funny ones.  For example, two men holding a cow by tail and horn while a milk-maid milks it.  If you've worked with cattle you know the next scene after that, which is funny.  Also lots of them where animals take the human parts and hunt the humans taking the animal parts.  But, the boards on display here are largely representations of Catholic saints who might protect the bees.  They are original and that's why some of them have beeswax/dirt over them.

The 2nd floor has an extensive collection of art, sculpture, uniforms, and ladies' dresses and accessories.  This is the ubiquitous (in Croatia and Slovenia) St. George slaying the dragon.  We've seen him in nearly every Catholic church we've visited here.

This is a painting of the old Marburg (as it was known back then) walled city.  The castle is at the upper, right corner of the city and is bright white.   At the bottom, the old bridge is shown.  To the left of the bridge a bit and outside the wall, is the Old Vine House as it's known now, and our apartment is just back from that.  In other words it is built into the wall of the city.  That explains why the outside walls in our apartment are 30 inches thick!  Really, truly.

This is a gold-plated sculptured painting of the adoration of the Magi.  We think of the magi as "The three Wise Men"  Scripture never gives a number of  Magi who came, and this depicts nine already there and a long train with more Magi about to arrive.  When I taught seminary, I loved to offer $20 to the first student who could find the scripture saying there were three.  It inspired feverish searching, but my money was safe.

We took the elevator (thankfully - my knee was killing me) to the third floor and entered this long promenade.  At the far end is the entrance into the ballroom from the old, royalty days, which was a theater in the 20th century, and is now used for events like weddings.  This promenade is where people would come to cool off, meet in small groups, get drinks, etc.  The flowers are lovely and the view is nice.

This is a high-wheeled bicycle in front of a photo of an old cycling club's membership.  The photo has a cycle that is peddled while sitting - the precursor to a recumbent bike.  There is another with a woman who appears to be set up to peddle with her hands, or maybe that's how she steers and it's also a recumbent?

I love clocks and this one is amazing.  If I ever get a lathe again, and the inclination, I might attempt a copy of it.  I probably won't do so much carving, though - I'm more into simplification.  But wouldn't it be wonderful?

This is the grand entrance up to the ballroom.  The royal couple would ascend on the red carpet, smiling, and waving at people they know or want to impress.  Magnificent!

Next we went back down the elevator to the basement where they have the apothecary displays.  The old-fashioned bottles, jars, and little drawers were a fixture of apothecary shops all over Europe and America.  Asia did it a little different, but they also had tons of small drawers.  The photo above is the left side of this display and below is the right side.

My bride was stunned at this display.

I was awed by the the space behind it.  Here is a huge mortar and pestle, an infuser, a distiller, bags for vital chemicals like dried asofoedita weed (no medicinal value, but vital to make pills smell like medicine).

We did not get to the display of money, although they had about 50 gold coins from the 1100's on display in the little preview displays near the entrance.  Those were hand-struck and a little rough, but they were in mint condition - no teeth marks that I could see.  We'll have to go back to see the rest of the money.

After we left the museum, it was way past lunch time because we spent so much more time there than we'd planned.  We had visitors during lunch and I decided to try out my new camera on close-up shots.  These wasps are quite happy that restaurants have largely moved outdoors to prevent COVID-19 spreading.  Amazingly, they are much more docile than American wasps.  People swat at them and the wasps simply go away for a while.  I haven't seen anybody stung by one.

A nice close-up of my friend.  Cute, isn't she?

And since we are doing entomology today, I found this spider on the window sill back at the apartment.

These photos are OK, but what I really need for good close-ups is a better lens - a macro lens.  One of the wasp photos is pretty good, but wasps are at the large end of the insect World, and this little spider is, too.

The next day, Wednesday, we drove down to Ljubljana where we had an appointment with an orthopedist for an evaluation of my knee.  The news was good.  We had a very friendly, intelligent young doctor who gave me an injection of corticosteroids.  He said it should help for a half year, longer if I'm lucky and careful.  He also said there are other injections we can try if that doesn't work.

1. Platelet enriched plasma.  They take blood, spin it to separate the components, then add the platelets back into the plasma and inject it in the knee.  It makes the tissue think it doesn't need to get inflamed in many patients.

2. An injection of stem cells.  This also eliminates inflammation.  He said the stem cells do nothing to repair the cartilage in the knee, though.  Bummer!

3.  Hydrocortisone, the oldy but goodie.

This makes me hopeful I can remain for our entire scheduled mission.  If one injection doesn't work, I can try the next one and hopefully get through 18 more months.  If the above fails, they will send me home for a knee replacement.  I don't want that!