Snow!?!

 Last week I posted about spring.  It is true that trees are starting to bloom and the little daisies are out in full, but yesterday we saw snow.  We had been in Celje to meet with the young missionaries and do another apartment inspection, and we drove home as the sun was setting.  As we crossed the little mountain range between Celje and here it was raining, but the rain was hitting the windshield and not flattening out.  It was on the verge of being frozen.  And then we drove through a little snow flurry as we approached one of the tunnels through the mountains.  It was a short tunnel - about 200 meters - and on the other end there was no more snow.  We mentioned it and didn't think anything more about it.

This morning, it was sunny, although cold.  And this afternoon it has been snowing on and off, between periods of rain.

The grey crows stay here all year, but they don't come into town during the winter.  The pickings are better out in the farmland, I think.  In summer, it's better pickings in town.  They were in town yesterday, though.

Recently, we've started hearing rumbles that some of the members in Celje are angry at others in the branch.  I think we are finally hearing things because the members are comfortable with us.  Apparently, there was a trip to the temple 2 or 3 years ago and somebody said or did something that made some other people angry.  Yesterday we met with a member family who haven't been coming to church (not even via Zoom) for a while.  They were quite friendly and welcomed us in.  But something came up in our conversation that set them off on the big split.  It turns out the split is not against somebody in their branch, but against someone in another branch, and they, and others in their clique, won't even join a Zoom meeting because they don't want to see the people they are angry with, and they don't want to be seen.  We were undoubtedly squirming a bit, and we definitely were trying our best to avoid being on one side or the other, but we couldn't get them off it.  Whew!  It got hot in there!

Fortunately, Maribor and Celje are joining together and we expect to have Zoom only with our two branches soon, which should solve the "I don't want them to even see me" part of the trouble.  This could be part of being in a small branch where people can't hide in the crowd, or it could be the hot Balkan blood showing through, or maybe we just found the worst argument in the history of the mission.  Whatever, we are going to be focusing on "Love One Another", and Forgiveness, and Repentence, and such things for the foreseeable future.

We continue to be so very impressed by the love, and diligence, and hard work of the young missionaries.  They are wonderful!  It has been a real blessing to us to be working with them.  Of course, we feed them and encourage them, and basically treat them like our own grandchildren, and they seem to think we are grandparents, too.

Black Cat ushers in Spring

 I use our second bedroom as my office and I frequently open the window blinds to let in more light.  We are on the 4th floor of an apartment building, and there is a matching building 40 feet away.  When I open the blinds I can look right into the open windows of the matching apartment across the way, and they can look into our apartment.  The lady across the way has a cat, and it is stunning.  It glares at me whenever it sees me, but fortunately it never crosses my path. 

My neighbor - the black cat

Cats are very common in our mission area, and they seem to be generally larger than cats in the USA and with some different colorations.  I saw one the other day that was a plain, yellow cat except that it had rings on its tail of darker yellow spaced by white rings.  I didn't see it long enough to get out my camera, I'm sad to say.

We have been very busy lately, because Slovenia has allowed unrestricted travel in most of the country, and shops have opened.  One of the things we did is get another apartment for the elders in Ljubljana.  Liz did the leg work over the internet, but when we had one picked we drove down there to inspect it and negotiate.  It was perfect in every way, except that it has no A/C, which is now required by the mission.  The landlord was very friendly to us and was anxious to rent to us, but did not believe we need A/C and refused to install it.  They don't do central a/c here, they use small "Clima" units that cool one or two rooms, which is usually ample, and if they need more they add another Clima.  But we had to walk away.  Over the next couple of days, Liz talked to people, including asking the mission president for an exception on this east-facing apartment.  Finally she talked to the church's facilities guy and got a price for a Clima, which is not bad - 600 Euros including installation.  Then she called the landlord and got him to agree to reduce the rent for the first year if we pay to put one in.  Everybody liked that arrangement and we drove down again to get the lease signed.  

The church representative in Slovenia lives north of Ljubljana almost to the Austrian border, and we made an appointment to get his signature on the lease first.  To get there we had to go to Ljubljana, then turn north and drive into the mountains another 45 minutes.  That is almost 2.5 hours on the road, and he forgot about us and took his family skiing.  Grrrrr!  We found his house and waited for a half hour.  While waiting, I noticed a bee house nearby.

A Slovene bee house.  And old-fashioned hay racks behind it.

This one has 18 hives in two rows.  Between the bee-house and the house-behind is another Slovenian icon - a hay drying rack.  It's a bit hard to see, but it is a series of tall posts, with small poles strung horizontally below.  The roof slopes three feet on each side to reduce the rain while the hay dries.  These are still used, but not as much as before and now most of them are kept for tradition's sake, for decoration, or because it is too much work to tear them down.

A Slovene hay rack.  To the left is the modern solution to storing hay, making the racks obsolete.

Anyway, we waited for longer than I wanted, and gave up.  We couldn't reach him by phone, of course.  So we drove to the landlord's house.  He moved out of the apartment we want to rent, to go out to his family's farm which is an hour and a half from Ljubljana in far south-east Slovenia on a mountain-top from which we could see Zagreb, the capitol city of Croatia.  So that was a long drive.

We enjoyed visiting the landlord, Yuri, and his little family.  They have a large farm with orchards, forest, and fields for vegetables.  He told us he was delighted to rent to us because he knew we are good people, based on his contact with missionaries over the years.  We intend to visit him again, because he asked us to visit and it is SO beautiful up there.  We didn't take any photos, but we will next time.

By this time, we were about as far from home as it is possible to get while still in Slovenia.  We took the short route home, which took us on two-lane back roads through farms and hills and mountains.  Delightful driving, but by the time we got home we had been driving for about nine hours.  The good thing is we passed probably the prettiest bee-house I've seen.

This is the famous style Slovene bee house.  This one has sixteen hives, plus a smaller house at the side.  Notice that it has a tile roof.  It has been built to hold and service a honey business for generations to come.

Side view of the bee-house.  The entrance door is behind the smaller bee-house, which has two 3-frame nucs (one above the other) for temporarily holding young queens until they are needed, and two 6-frame nucs for holding swarms, or for mating multiple queens to be sold.  These are signs of a serious, scientific beekeeper.

Also, they have a gopher problem.  Beekeepers usually don't worry much about gophers.

This little bee-house is on the hill above the new, larger bee-house pictured above.  Six hives that are clearly still being used.  This kind of bee-house would be considered a hobby or family bee business, and is probably how the larger business started.  The larger bee-house is more serious and can provide a considerable amount of honey for sale.  The two together hold 22 hives, each of which can produce 100-200 lbs of honey per year.

Next, I thought it would be fun to show you a random hand rail on a stairway.  I am serious when I call it a HAND rail.

This is pure fun by a stone mason.  It is so surprising!

I just completed my final audit for this cycle.  Now I will have a month or less of review and follow-up and audits will be done until  June, when I will start on the next cycle.

And I thought to snap a photo of  primroses for sale in front of a flower shop here in Maribor.  The front row is all primroses.  Yellow, fancy colors, red with yellow centers, and two shades of yellow.  I love primroses.  Too bad they can't survive Texas.

Brrrrrr! But good news.

 It has been very cold here for the past couple of weeks.  Most of the week just ending it did not get above freezing, which is unusual here.  On the other hand, we have a lovely glassed-in porch and any sun warms it right up so that it feels like being outside on a warm spring day.  Just lovely!  Right now it is 37 degrees outside, and a comfortable high-70s on the porch.  We have some flowers on our kitchen table that get the sun and live in the temperature-controlled house.  They think it is spring.

Flowers on the kitchen table.

The orchids are a surprise to us.  They were in the apartment by the river when we first came to Maribor and they were in full, glorious bloom.  Of course, the blooms eventually fell off and the plant became unremarkable.  We have NEVER had orchids bloom a second time, although we have tried many times.  But we kept these on a window sill and nursed them along.  Liz finally put them in the spare bedroom, the room I use for reading, watching my computer, and working at my desk.  I made sure to open the blinds each day, but they only got a few hours of sun each afternoon.

To our surprise, we finally noticed a bloom stem growing up, and we started paying attention to them again.  The purple ones bloomed first and now the white ones are blooming, too.

Friday, we visited the grocery store and Liz picked up the little, yellow jonquils.  They were just poking up their heads at that time, but they've exploded into bloom today.

Perhaps the World is not ending just yet, after all.

The BIG NEWS here is that the Slovenian government has decided it is time to open things up.  Starting tomorrow, we are officially allowed to gather in groups (with masks and social distance).  The young missionaries are so excited they've planned an outing tomorrow where we will all meet in Ljubljana and drive up to Lake Bled at the foot of the Julian Alps.  It will be too cold to do very much, although it is rumored that the indoor ice rink up there will be open.  The scenery will be amazing and the youngsters will have fun getting reacquainted.

The other impact is that it looks like we will finally be allowed to hold church meetings.  The last one we had was in early October, and even then it was for no more than 10 people.  It was by invitation only and mainly served to provide the sacrament to those who did not have family members who could do it for them.  The last time we had an open sacrament meeting was in early July.    We don't yet know if we will be allowed to hold fully open meetings next week or if the total number will still be restricted.

I see on the news that the scientists are warning that we could still face a spring surge in COVID cases, and that could shut us down again, so we are hoping for the best and will take whatever we can get.

Liz and I still do not have official visas to be here.  We applied immediately after we arrived in Maribor, and we have done everything we could do to get them, but COVID closed the offices and everything is backed up.  Without a visa, we don't have a government ID number that is required to get on the list for vaccination.  The vaccine is available here, now and we are in the first wave of eligible recipients, but we can't apply.  We are trying to work a back-door way to get vaccinated, but so far no luck.

Doing service in Croatia

 We can't go to Croatia right now.  We can't even go to the other major cities in Slovenia.  We are restricted due to COVID.  But I wanted to share what is happening in Croatia.

First, there was an earthquake in Croatia last December 29, in a town near the border with Bosnia & Herzogovina.  It caused a lot of damage and I saw an interview with the mayor who said that half the buildings in the downtown area were damaged too much to enter.  OK, and the lead-in is that the church sends relief to this kind of event.  Major quantities of relief goods - food, industrial water purification equipment, tents (not so helpful this time of year), blankets, hygiene kits, clothing, and so on.  The missionaries in Croatia have also been part of that effort and they have taken turns going down and working with our relief teams, the Red Cross and Catholic Charities to clear the rubble and get people cared for.  The missionaries provide basic grunt-labor in clearing things back so they can be re-built.

A photo one of the missionaries sent back, showing the damage they are helping to clear.

This photo brought back to me what happened to us in Zagreb last March.  Those triangular cracks are the same as what we had in the mission home, although worse than we had.  I looked out the windows in the mission home and saw the houses across the street where roof tiles cascaded off the roof and landed in heaps of rubble at the sides of the buildings.  Chimneys broke off and slid down and over the edge, bringing more roof tiles with them.  Some of them landed on cars and crushed them flat.

People here have often asked us if it's true that in America we build houses with wood.  They look like they expect to hear crazy when they ask it.  They are firmly convinced that bricks are better, and in many ways they are, but not if there are earthquakes.

Second, our missionaries went out to the camps where the thousands of displaced people were living.  The government brought in little, white containers (shipping containers?) for them to live in, and very few outside people go into the camps.  The missionaries shared stories of taking hygiene kits to distribute to all the residents and having people break down in tears, just to see a helping face.  Apparently the containers provide for basic needs, but no more.  It has been a cold winter, too, which makes it much worse.  I thought the missionaries were going to send us a photo of the little, white containers, but I haven't seen them, yet.

So, we are very grateful to be living in a nice cozy apartment in Maribor.

The Slovene Language

 When we volunteered to come on our mission, we signed up for a mission where no new language was required.  We were assured that we would always have translators available to help us when we need it.  We were, however, offered a chance to learn Croatian through the church's language program in Provo.  Almost all the instructors are BYU students who are "return missionaries" and learned the language while serving there.  Sadly, we were just in time for semester break and we were unable to connect with an instructor for more than an email or two.  So we didn't make much progress.

Now we are here and we have gotten along fairly well without speaking Croatian, nor Slovene, Serbian, Bosnian, nor whatever they speak in Montenegro (Serbian?).  However, you cannot live in a country without learning a little of it.  We know very well how to say Hello and Goodbye, Yes and No, and other simple things.

One of the things about the languages here (they are all related) is that they always pronounce every single letter in every word.  There are no silent e's here!  No slurring letters together until they disappear.  So that makes reading the words quite easy.  Simple rules.  Of course, nothing else about Slovene or Croatian is easy.  The structure and roots of these languages have no connection to the roots of English.  None whatever!

One aspect of it is that they do not quibble about putting a vowel between consonants.  In English we have some words with two consonants (for example "sting" has two pairs, st and ng) and we might have a few with three, but beyond that we just don't do it.  Slavic languages have three's everywhere, four is common, and it is not hard to find where there are five.  I don't know an example of having six or more, but it wouldn't surprise me if I did find one.

An example of five consonents without a vowel between them - from a Sunday School lesson.Skrbno starts with five consonents and finally ends with a vowel.

So, why does this interest me?  I don't know.  There is not good reason, it just does.

  I had my 72nd birthday yesterday.  I would just as soon let them slip by un-noticed, but I live with a pack of females and they make sure no birthday goes by without a fight.  So I caved in and let my wonderful wife make my favorite dinner.  We had a pork roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, peas, and applesauce.  For dessert we had a German chocolate cake.  It turns out that German chocolate is not available here, so Liz began to search for how to make it from things that are available here.  The first thing she found is German chocolate has nothing to do with Germany.  Here is the true story from the internet (so it must be true):

In 1852 Samuel German, an English American Baker who worked for Baker's Chocolate Company, created a new type of dark baking chocolate. German made a sweet baking chocolate which incorporated more sugar than the average semi-sweet baking chocolate.

He invented the chocolate and it was named after him.  Did he have any German roots?  Perhaps, or perhaps his ancestors had a speech impediment that made it sound like they were speaking English in German.  Who knows.

Whatever!  Liz found a way to simulate German Chocolate and made a wonderful cake.  She topped it with the traditional coconut frosting, which was also a problem.  We are used to American shredded coconut that is sweetened.  It is not available here.  Here, they have toasted coconut flakes, and they have dried, ground coconut with the consistency of granulated sugar.  We bought some of each, mixed them together and it turned out just fine.

We even had ice cream to go with it.  Of course, it is quite different than American ice cream, but we didn't even quibble about that.  It was vanilla, which was close enough.  But it was a little hard to find.  They are very fond of Neopolitan ice cream here and it takes up considerable space in the freezer section of the stores.  You can find it with vanilla and strawberry, or with vanilla and chocolate, or with all three, but you have to really search to find a container of simple vanilla ice cream.

We have completed two audits so far, both for branches in Slovenia, so they were done over Zoom, of course.  Tomorrow, I get audited by one of my auditing staff and I will be wearing my branch clerk hat.  Liz will be the Assistant Area Auditor and is supervising it.  I anticipate no problems.

That will leave us with just two more audits we will do ourselves, and we will have ten more to supervise.  Then we will review them all and sign off on them, and that will be it for another auditing cycle.

What to do while quarantined?

 I am sure people all around the World are asking themselves "What do I do while quarantined?"  We are severely restricted here, with a curfew every night, and restrictions about leaving our homes, and restrictions on who can come to our homes (almost nobody).  Most of the stores are closed, and the rules about which ones are exceptions seem vague.  For example grocery stores and pharmacies are a clear exception and that is logical.  Children's clothing stores don't seem obvious exceptions, but schools are re-opening for the first 3 grades this week, so maybe that one works.  But then there are the real questionable ones such as perfume shops and makeup salons.  How do those qualify as essential services?  Perhaps I would know if I were female.  Home Centers are half open - because you have to have a Tax ID to buy things like light bulbs and 2X4s.  It happens that the Church has a Tax ID, so I can go to the Home Depot-like stores here.  Earthquakes are not common here, but they have been lately, so that is definitely a good idea.

So I try to get to the grocery store a couple of times per week, more for the outing than for the groceries.  And we search for ways to help the young missionaries.  Liz is the medical advisor to them, so she was reading up on COVID and came across some suggestions for boosting our immune systems.  As a result, she suggested that they all take Vitamin D3, and Vitamin C.  We had complaints from the missionaries that vitamins are either hard to find, or expensive.  So I took it upon myself to obtain vitamins for the missionaries in Slovenia.

Missionary immune-boosting vitamins

I found bulk bottles of vitamins on Amazon.DE (the German Amazon system) at a very good price.  I counted out 100 for each missionary and bagged them up.  We had transfers Monday, so I had the sisters take all these bottles and bags down to Ljubljana where the transfers took place and make sure each missionary got one.

Liz and I also take a Zinc tablet every other day, but it is possible to get too much of that one and cause other problems, so it was determined by the mission doctor to depend on the missionaries' youth and vitality, and skip Zinc.

Speaking of Amazon.DE, it seems to be much more limited than Amazon in the USA.  Sometimes I can get the things we desire and sometimes not.  Some things we miss from the USA are available but for vastly inflated prices, so we pass on them.  For example, a 2 Kg (about 4 pounds) of chocolate chips goes for about 30 Euros!  That's about $37.  Sam's Club and Costco have 5 lbs. bags for less than $10.

A 12-pack of 12 ounce cans of Dr. Pepper can be had for 28 Euros, or you can get 24 1/2 liter plastic bottles for 36 Euros.  They are heavy, though, so shipping will be about another 20 Euros, and it will take about 2 weeks to cross the border into Slovenia.

But, in keeping with my desire to end on a positive note.  Coke Zero, Pepsi zero, Snickers bars, and M&Ms are readily available in all the grocery stores at reasonable prices.  Almonds and cashews are easy to find, but generally are sold raw and unsalted.  I have learned how to soak them in salt-water and roast them myself.  They are delicious.  All kinds of produce is abundant and very good.    So, Life is good!

Friendly Fire

 Liz and I frequently lie down at the end of the day and snuggle under the blankets while we hold hands.  However, we both sometimes twitch as we go to sleep, so we know that there is less disturbance if we break our grips before we go to sleep.  Sometimes we forget, though.  A couple of nights ago, we broke our grip, but had our hands close together.  As it turned out, my left thumb was just above Liz's open hand.  I fall asleep rapidly, so I was in deep sleep when she violently jerked.  As she did, her hand closed over my thumb as she jerked her fist towards her.  The result was that she wrenched my thumb backwards, which was quite painful.  Today, it still hurts.  It is only a sprain, but I believe it is the only time she has ever physically hurt me.

I did the weekly shopping alone the other day.  We usually do it together, but sometimes we get over-booked and have to divide to conquer.  One of the items on the list was honey, which I was very happy about.  Slovenia is a beekeeping country and they are very proud of their varietal honeys.  The little isolated valleys in the hills and mountains of Slovenia are perfect for producing honey from a single flower, which is the very definition of varietal honeys.  I was anxious to try some more.  We have had a jar of Acacia honey since we came here, and it is very good, a nice light-colored honey with a mild flavor.  But this time I bought LIPOV, Slovenian "lime" honey, which actually comes from Linden trees.

Lime Honey

It is slightly darker than Acacia, and is very thick.  But the main feature of it is the strong lime flavor.  It is quite startling.  It is not unpleasant, but it is a bit overwhelming.  I had a peanut butter and honey sandwich for dinner tonight, and frankly, I couldn't taste the peanut butter at all.  The effect is somewhat like menthol, but not a menthol flavor - just the power of it.

I like the label a lot.  The art is the kind of painting popular on the front boards of Slovenian beehives.  It depicts a Slovenian bee house on the left with an old man relaxing nearby.  The boy in the tree is holding something (perhaps a smoker) up towards a honeybee swarm, and the man on the right is bringing a box to give the bees a new home.

Speaking of new homes, our landlord came today with a plumber.  They put in a new shower control to my specifications.  I have had trouble with bumping the long handle on the shower faucet and getting either a chill or a burn.  So the new one has no handle on it.  It is operated by simply turning knobs.  They also put in a new sink faucet with a flexible spout so it can be pointed in any direction.  We are very happy with both.

Life is good!   But, later as we sat down together on the couch to get a quick update of the daily news, Liz was crocheting.  She has a cute, but excellent, little pair of scissors shaped like an egret or some such bird.

Liz's sewing scissors

They slowly slid across the couch and fell into the gap between cushions, nearly disappearing.  Being a helpful sort, I reached in to retrieve them before they disappeared entirely.  Easy.  I didn't even feel the end of them, but when I pulled them out, that needle-like tip was buried in my middle fingertip.  And when I removed the scissors, it bled like crazy!  And yes, it hurt.

I told her she needed to take better care of her olde man, and she must have been a bit remorseful, because she didn't rip my head off.  That's a good sign.