Driving across Zagreb

 I wasn't going to do this, but I just feel like I need to write some things about being here in Croatia.

We have been here about 8 months, and we are getting used to things as they are here.  This photo (below) is of a street we use to go and return from the office, every working day.  It reminds me of the slot canyons of Southern Utah.

This is ulica Kralja Zvonimira.  It has two lanes on each side of a double set of Tram tracks.  The Trams are blue and you can see one coming towards the camera, and farther away, another one is going away from the camera.  The sidewalks are very narrow, and the balconies overhang the sidewalks.  These buildings typically have businesses on the ground floor and apartments above.  

At the end of this street is a square round-about.with a big building in its center - the Croatian Center of Fine Arts - which is currently closed.  We hope it will open in the next 10 months so we can go see it.

   Speaking of Art, we have discovered the opera and ballet venue.

Built in the 1850s, Austro-Hungarian ornate architecture.

We saw La Traviata a few weeks ago, and last night we enjoyed a program of Baroque music played on period instruments.

We sat in a loge just 2 over from the center loge where the reigning ruler would sit.

There are statues leaning out between each loge, and carvings of various classical things everywhere you look:  cupids, shileds, horns, etc.  Paintings up on the domed ceiling.  The building is old, but it is still a very nice place to watch an opera.

The other side of the room.  The guide book says it seats about 200 people

The Baroque music last night was very fun.  There are not enough period instruments (Old, the instruments made at the time the music was written) left for everybody who wants one.  They are not made to produce loud music - they are more favored for "occasional music", meaning it was played in the background at parties and meetings.  For example the bows used to play a violin.  Bows have a wooden stick to hold the ends of a  flattened string, traditionally made of horse tail hairs.  Period bows had a slight bow up, away from the string.  That slight bow makes it so the player can bounce the bow on the strings for various effects.  Later, someone tried putting a little more distance between the string and the stick and made the stick bow down towards the string.  A subtle difference, but it made the bow bouncier.  When a violin plays notes in rapid succesion, the player is bouncing the bow on the strings.  There are other changes, many of them done to make the violin play louder.  Old - cat gut strings which give a lovely, mellow sound.  New - steel or synthetic material strings to give a louder sound, at the price of a slightly brassy sound.  Old - the tuning knobs were simple wooden, tapered posts in tapered holes.  New instruments have geared tuning mechanisms that hold the tuning for extended times.  One sign of period instruments is that they have to be tuned frequently.  Enough of that.  The bottom line is that these concerts played on period instruments have a very pleasant sound, and are fascinating to watch.  The oboes and flutes were simple instruments with only one metal key.  One of the numbers called for a recorder, aka German flute, which had no metal on it at all.   They had an oboe (again, only one metal key), and a similarly-sized sham.  The two of them sounded wonderful.  A sham is an Aarab instrument that used a double reed.  Sham is pronounced with the a like in Awesome.  The oboe and basoon are the only shams left in modern orchestras, but baroque groups used to have them in all sizes and shapes.

We also took a day away from the office recently and drove down to KRKA National Park.

This is taken while standing on a boardwalk that crosses the stream.  You can't see that we were being crowded by dozens of other people who wanted to photograph this.

And a film clip:

It is fun just watching water falls.

KRKa has been on my bucket list from before we came on our first mission.  Then we came and saw Plitvice, which is much bigger, longer, and more developed, and which lowered the urgency of seeing Krka.  But, at last, we had our chance.  We didn't get very far up Krka because of the uneven trails and our weak knees, but Krka is plenty impressive on its own.  It was a delightful place to spend a day.

Last time we came on a mission we failed to learn Croatian and then we failed to learn Slovene.  This time we've only failed at learning Croatian, so we are improving!  The fact is that while we cannot put a sentence together, we find we can often undertstand what people are saying.  It's eery!

Through a series of circumstances, it is possible that Liz and I may acquire dual citizenship in Croatia and the USA.  She qualifies because her father was born here, and I'm with her.  If we do it, it will be a European Union passport, which means we can freely pass ALL the EU borders.  Things are weird with immigration now because everybody around here is worried that with all the refugees pouring out of  Ukraine, Africa, and the Middle East, terrorists may get a free ride.  Nobody really thinks we missionaries are terrorists, but they are so very picky about things that a number of our missionaries can't travel for offenses such as failing to get a stamp on their passport when they entered Europe.  Of course, the guards are the ones who sometimes neglect to stamp the passports, but we have some who are paying the price.  A nice EU passport should help with that.

Last views

 It is sad to leave loved ones behind.

We had a lot of things to do to prepare to leave on our mission.  One of them was saying goodbye to loved ones.  This photo is of our grandson, H----, with our great-granddaughters, L----- and B-----.  Photos like this will travel with us and keep us happy.

We got the house all set up so my grandson and his family can settle in and live there.

As of today, we are in Utah Valley, but not yet in the MTC.  We go there Tuesday morning - us and our 6 suitcases, plus carry-on bags.  It's bad enough living out of a suitcase, but doing it out of  6 or 8 suitcases is madness.

Going to Croatia again. Mission #3

 For the past year, we have been serving as Mentors to "Member and Leader Support" (MLS)  senior missionaries.  This was what is called a "SERVICE" mission: missions where you continue to live at home.  We had 6, and later 4 more-concise lessons to teach each senior couple, via ZOOM, within about 6 weeks of their Mission Training Center (MTC) start date in Provo Utah.  We really enjoyed working with those diligent, motivated, dedicated senior couples who were consecrating their time, talents, and energy to serving the people in their assigned mission.   Our particular delight was to mentor couples who were going to the mission where we served in 2020 and 2021, the Adriatic North Mission (ANM).  We had much better information about that mission than any of the others, so we felt we could share a more personal view for them.  In one case, we even had photos of their apartment to share, because we had leased it while we were there.

For the past several months, we have gradually and casually spoken about the marvelous experiences we had.  Then we began to talk about maybe going on another full-time mission, and gradually we began to think we should really do it, again.  When we got to the point where we seriously sat down and discussed whether we wanted to go on another mission, and it became a conversation about WHERE would we like to go.  We surprised each other a bit because we both wanted to go, and we both wanted to go back to the ANM.  We looked on the church website that gives guidance for this kind of thing, seniormissionary.churchofjesuschrist.org.  The website includes an option to "SEARCH OPPORTUNITIES", and I narrowed down the search to ANM.  There were 3 or 4 slots in the mission, but there were two that were tagged "Critical Need".  One was the same slot we had in 2020.  I was OK doing the same thing again, but Liz said she wanted to be the Office Couple which was also critical need.  I was OK with that, too, but last time we actually filled in for the office couple for about a month, and Liz was adamant that she didn't want to do that any longer.  But her reticence was only because she had just retired and was tired of getting dressed up every morning to go into an office for the day.  Now that she's been away from it for a while, she is anxious to do that kind of work again.

One of the things that made us think we'd enjoy doing another mission in ANM was that the current Mission President (Brian Cordray) used to be the Area Communication Specialist in Frankford, Germany back when COVID forced us to change the way the young missionaries were finding people to teach.  He taught them how to use Facebook to find people to teach, and as we watched, we saw that he is a great teacher and leader.  I can't say we are close friends, because we have yet to meet him face to face, but we had enough contact that we were comfortable calling him just before he went to Croatia to take on his new responsibilities.  We asked if he would endorse our request to be the office couple.  He was embarassingly excited to have us come and serve with him.

One of the things that happened in 2020 after COVID had reached its maximum impact on everything, was a major earthquake in Zagreb.  President Cordray clearly remembered that.  He kept asking us what he could do to get us to actually come and serve.  We told him we were in, but he told us he was going to make sure we had a nice apartment in an earthquake-proof building, and that the mission home and the mission office would also be in earthquake-proof buildings.   The mission home and office where we served in 2030 were condemned due to earthquake damage, so earthquake-proof is nice.  We aren't afraid of another earthquake (they are actually quite rare in Zagreb) but we are happy to have a new-ish, modern apartment.  A lot of the apartments we dealt with before were problematic for Americans who are used to plenty of room.  Our first apartment had a shower that was round with a sliding glass door.  It was about 3 feet wide, which would be OK, except that the water handle stuck out into the middle of the space, and a stray elbow could easily move it from warm to COLD, or to HOT!  That's not so good.  We feel confident that we will be happy as clams when they get us an apartment.

So, we applied to serve another mission.  Senior missionaries can list missionary slots where they'd like to go, and prioritize them, but you have to list at least 4 and no more than 8.  We put the ANM Office Couple as our first choice, and the other ANM critical-needs slot as our second.  We had to list at least 4, so we also put in for office couple in Hungary and Austria, but really we expected to get the one in the ANM office.  President Cordray called Salt Lake to request us for it, specifically.

And we got our mission call to ANM to be the office couple.   YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We finished up our mentoring assignments for our service mission while we were preparing to go overseas, again, and now we are in our final week at home.  We've done all the myriad things we have to do to live in a foreign country, and to take care of our home while we are gone.  We are heading for Utah this Friday, and will enter the MTC the day after Labor Day.

We are absolutely delighted to be going on another mission for the church.  It is pure service, and performing service gives people joy.

I will try to post to this BLOG at least once a week while we are on this mission.

Back home

 We have now been home from our mission for 6 weeks, so it is beyond time to post a wrapup.

First, the dear sisters in Maribor (I think it was Sister King) posted this photo of a swan on the banks of the Drava River.  It is a gorgeous shot and worthy of posting.  Especially since the sun was setting on our mission.  I think the young people would say this is a meme?

And Liz wanted to keep a shot of this street just up the hill from Center in Maribor.

On the right is a LEKARNA, while on the other side of the street, just beyong the green sign, is a sign for a PEKARNA.  Lekarna is a drug store, and we used this one frequently.  Pekarna is a bakery, our favorite Pekarna for white bread.  When I wanted a seed bread, I went to a Pekarna closer to the riverside apartment where we lived at first.

Packing was a ton of work.  The apartment had to be cleaned out entirely, because the next senior couple will be assigned to Celje, instead of Maribor.  We took furniture belonging to the mission down to Celje and other useful things.  We bought an extra suitcase, and even so had to throw away many things we could have used at home, but were not critical

We spent our last night in the mission at a little AirBnB near the Ljubljana airport.  There had been snow on the ground for 5 days, and that last night fog rolled in.  It was still foggy when we took off the next morning at 7:05 am.  The sun was not yet up.  Once in the air, all we could see was a bank of fog below us, and that was the case almost the whole time home.   We occasional saw mountains poking up through the clouds.

Planes fly a little faster than the earth rotates, which leads to an interesting thing.  The sun came up on our first leg, but then we turned directly away from the sun and it set again.  A little while later we returned to flying north and the sun came up a second time.  That was cool.

We napped on the ride home, which seemed to keep us from getting jet lag.  We landed in Dallas at 2:15 pm, 14+ hours after we'd taken off at 7:05.  Liz's brother met us at the airport, along with all the Worth's who brought banners and signs to welcome us home.  Bill then took us to our new home and helped us unload our luggage,.  Then we drove our new Tesla (illegally, because the temporary tag expired months ago) down to Nancy's house for a celebration and dinner.  We were tired, but not severely.  We went back home reasonably early and had a good, long sleep.

Since then it has been non-stop trying to unpack and arrange our new house.  We didn't pack the boxes, so we had no idea where things were.  But, we are nearly settled in now, and the pressure isn't quite so great.

We spoke in our old Frisco ward, and next Sunday we will speak again in our new Little Elm 1st ward.  I am giving essentially the same talk again, with a few modifications.   I will just post the one I'm giving this Sunday.

Mission Report                              

Frisco 5^th Ward - January 9, 2022                Little Elm 1^st Ward – January 30, 2022

 Good morning.  My name is Earl Ashurst, and we want to report on our mission.

In July 2019, we became fully retired, and decided to spend August in Utah, where we attended BYU Education Week.  We had not firmly decided to go on a mission yet, but we attended the daily session presented by the missionary Department on serving as Senior Missionaries.  We found lots of reassuring answers to our questions.  We discovered that you can select your preferences on where and what duties from a list of hundreds of openings.  If you want to make a selection, you have to list at least 4 and no more than 8.

Sister Ashurst’s father was born in Croatia, and came to America with his mother as a baby.  Ever since I met Liz, we have adopted Croatian customs, such as roasting whole lambs at family reunions.  That led us to desire to do some genealogy work in Croatia.  We also wanted to see the countries that used to be Yugoslavia. 

But if we were to go, there were a lot of things to settle.  What to do with our car?  What to do with our house?  How would our children feel about it?  Would we be safe, able to afford it, etc.  These questions were overwhelming until we stopped to pray about whether we SHOULD go on a mission.  We received confirmation that it was the right thing for us to do, and after that everything seemed to simply fall into place.

Our first choice for a mission was an opening for an auditor and Member & Leader Support assignment in the Adriatic North Mission, which includes most of the countries that were formerly Yugoslavia.   We called the church auditing Department, who confirmed that we are qualified to be auditors.  They suggested we call the seniors in Osijek, Croatia currently holding that assignment.  They were helpful and encouraging.  They suggested we call the Mission President, President Melonakos.  Before we had a chance to call him, I mentioned to my sister-in-law we were looking at ANM.  She immediately contacted the Mission President’s wife, who had been her roommate at college, and told her we were “Golden”.   When we called the Melonakos’s they were anxious to have us.  And when our call came, we were assigned to that mission as Member and Leader Support missionaries, and as Assistant Area Auditors.  The support role had us stay in one place and get to know the people.  The auditor role let us travel and visit every branch in the mission.  Or so we thought.  COVID changed everything.  Only in our final few months did we have a chance to visit the 5 countries, and almost all the branches.

The Adriatic North Mission has 5 countries with 5 different banking systems.  There are 4 currencies; 3 languages; and 2 alphabets.  But it has some of the most interesting people and places to be found anywhere.  People from all over Europe, and many other countries go there to vacation for the wonderful beaches, islands, caves, waterfalls, castles, Alps and delicious Mediterranean food.  They love all the visitors and welcomed us freely.

We arrived in Zagreb, Croatia in mid-February, 2020, and were assigned to Osijek, as expected.  At that time, all we knew about COVID was that a strange new virus was affecting people in China.  Then we heard that it had exploded into Italy, which was scary because Italy is just across the water from Croatia.  In fact, I saw Venice twice – while standing on a tall building in our mission’s boundaries.

One thing happened during this time that is very similar to what recently happened here.  Elder Gary E. Stevenson was scheduled to visit the mission a month or so after our arrival.  All the members were very excited to have an apostle come, and the branches were gathering contributions for renting buses to get to Zagreb and meet him.  But as the date neared, all apostolic travel had to be curtailed due to COVID, and his visit was cancelled.  Everybody was extremely disappointed, just as we are that our recent scheduled apostolic visit was cancelled. 

We had Sacrament Meeting only 3 times in Osijek, and then all meetings were shut down in the first wave of quarantines.  It was almost a year before we attended a live Sacrament meeting again.  All over the World, missionaries were sent home due to the COVID expansion.  The European AREA made a special request that we be allowed to stay because missionaries held so many key leadership positions there.  So,  the young missionaries stayed, and we senior missionaries had the choice to go or stay.  We had just arrived, we knew health care is very good in Croatia and Slovenia, and our family supported us staying, so we decided to stay.

You know, The Lord is in charge!  The standard “finding” technique for the missionaries at that time was talking to everybody they met on the streets, and sometimes knocking on doors.  As COVID restrictions came into being, the Europe Area Presidency held a Zoom meeting to tell all their missionaries that Zoom and Facebook were going to be the new teaching and finding tools.  Here is the kicker.  Just the previous November a missionary rule went into effect that all missionaries in Europe were required to have an Android smart phone, some had them before then but at that point all had to have them.  Less than 4 months later, the new pandemic forced us to use those phones for almost all missionary finding and teaching.  We got new phone rules, but isolated, quarantined people all over Europe were also using their phones more than before.

Over the next few weeks, the missionaries took the basic direction they received from the Area, and found ways to contact people using Facebook.  They joined groups and tried to be “Normal and Natural”.  When they had a request from a Facebook friend to explain why they were living in Europe, the subject of the church naturally became part of the discussion.  The number of productive new contacts sky-rocketed, as did the number of lessons taught.  They were much more effective as quarantined missionaries than they had been before, and they remain so today.

Zoom  became our standard  tool for more than missionary meetings.  We had Country-wide Sunday services for about a year, with Sacrament only if there were priesthood holders in individual homes.  Sister Ashurst and I reportedly conducted the very first church Audit via Zoom in Europe, with two Area auditors listening in to monitor and to see if it was going to work.  We couldn’t go out of our apartment, so we video audited, which was revolutionary in the church.  My understanding is that they have now decided to continue video audits for remote locations, even after restrictions are lifted.

After only a few weeks in Osijek, we volunteered for a 3-5 day special assignment in the mission office, in Zagreb.  It stretched into about 3 months because the government shut down even internal travel and we couldn’t go home (to Osijek).  We lived in the Mission Home with President and Sister Melonakos, who quickly became best friends.  They are lovely people!  We lived in a bedroom tucked between their bedroom and the President’s office, so we heard almost everything that happened in there.  The rules imposed by the governments of the mission were changing daily.  Total chaos!   President Melonakos made the inspired decision to bring all his missionaries into the 5 capital cities.  This helped them avoid the stress of being isolated, but it also discouraged quite a few members in the small branches.  Sunday attendance remains lower than before. 

I want to tell you about three days in April 2020 to illustrate what it was like. At that time Quarantines in Croatia included a ban on travel between counties in Croatia, but they were to end that weekend and the government was scheduled to meet over the weekend to discuss renewing restrictions. 

 Day 1, Saturday, the county borders opened.  I woke with the feeling we should go back to Osijek to bring back our things.  When I went downstairs for breakfast, Sister Melonakos walked in and said she had a feeling we should make a mad  dash that day and get all our things back to Zagreb.  When President Melonakos joined us, first thing he said was that he wanted us to take the big van and go clean out our apartment in Osijek, and bring back the elders serving there too.  Clearly the spirit was speaking to us that morning, and it was a good thing.   We went to Osijek and back, about 8 hours of driving, that very day.  We had a delay as we entered the freeway, waiting while police escorted a monstrous caravan of semi trucks carrying goods across Croatia to other countries.  We also noticed that particular rest areas had police who only let the semis in and held them until the next convoy.

Day 2,  at 6:20 a.m. there was a major earthquake in Zagreb, a 7.2.  We were still in bed, but we were both awake.  We grabbed each other as it threw it us back and forth.   The Mission Home and the Mission Office were both severely damaged.  The home is still unoccupied and possibly condemned, and the office is still under construction. 

Day 3,  the county borders were closed again, except for  those convoys, emergency vehicles, and relief.

Fortunately, the early time of the earthquake meant there were few people out and about, so injuries were relatively low.  Most of Zagreb has buildings right against the sidewalks, and bricks and roof tiles rained directly onto the streets.  The church helped with aid, cranes, and volunteers, including as many elders as could be spared.  Earthquake damage to the buildings was extensive.

There came a time when we could travel within Croatia again and we were anxious to visit the village of Hreljin where Sister Ashurst’s father was born.   We made the trip after three months in the mission home.  We found the house where he was born and visited some relatives.  We also found the village graveyard and photographed every headstone in it, using the BillionGraves app.

Shortly after that, President Melonakos assigned us go to Maribor, Slovenia to support the branch there.  And he wanted us to look out for the missionaries, because they had been without any senior support since the senior missionaries went home, 3 months before.

We had been in quarantine so long we weren’t quite sure we could get into Slovenia, but when we got to the border crossing, the guard looked at our passports, stamped them and waved us through without ever saying a single word.  Two days later, that border was closed again.  We were in a new country, but restrictions remained for a long time after.

The sheer beauty of Slovenia is breathtaking.  We drove back and forth across Slovenia for the next year and a half, and we still marvel at it.  We’d cross the mountain ranges and each time we went over a pass, we’d look down at a little village nestled in the valley bottom, with a church spire rising above the roofs.  Beyond are fields on the slopes of the hills with cattle grazing, or vineyards, and almost every valley has either a castle or a monastery on top of one of the peaks.  It takes your breath away!

We mostly had sisters assigned to work in Maribor, elders in the town of Celje, and 4 companionships of Slovene missionaries were in Ljubljana.  We visited them regularly and became very close to all of them.  They are wonderful!

Shortly after we settled into Maribor, the sisters called and asked if they could teach a lesson to a young man, in our apartment.   The church building was still closed due to COVID rules, and gender rules required them to have somebody with them, but at that time they could teach face-to-face.  That was the day we met David.

David loved to read, instead of playing soccer or things like that.  When he was 12, he started reading the Bible every day.  When he was 20 he started actively searching for a church that taught what the Savior taught.  When he was 23, he found the Church of Jesus Christ website.  By the time he called Salt Lake to arrange to be taught, he had already read the Book of Mormon, knew the baptism worthiness questions, as well as the temple recommend questions.  And he was busy reading the Doctrine and Covenants.

We didn’t have to lead David into the church.  He pulled and tugged us along with him.  He was ready and anxious to be baptized, and politely let us teach him first.  He was in our home almost every week.  He didn’t know any of the elders, so he asked me to perform his baptism.  That surprised me, because the young elders normally do baptisms and I didn’t expect to baptize anybody - but I was thrilled to do it.  After that he wanted to go to the temple.  Sister Ashurst and I taught him the temple preparation classes, and counted the days with him until he could go.  Sadly the COVIDS kept us away from the temple and his temple recommend has not yet been used.  He is still waiting, and anxious to go.

Shortly before we came back, he was called as a counselor in the Branch Presidency.  He was also hired by the church as a translator – the only member who reads and speaks both English and Macedonian fluently, as well as Slovene.   We look at him and his dedication and spirituality and can’t help thinking he will soon be the Branch President, and an important leader.  We are still in contact with him and will continue to be.   Every missionary returns with tales of someone “special” they found and taught.  David is certainly ours.

Well, I am nearly out of time.  On our mission we learned some important things.  That Croatia and Slovenia are safe places to live, with great health care, and awesome food.  They are also beautiful places to visit.  We are planning to go back as tourists next summer, if the COVIDS don’t get us.

 Most of all, we truly learned to love the people.  And to love the young missionaries.  As the only seniors in Slovenia, we helped them and directed them, including conducting the dreaded apartment inspections.  But we also fed them, counseled them, and simply loved them.  We increasingly loved each other, too.  Truly, we got more out of our mission than we put into it.  It was a Grand Adventure!

DK hits a home run!

 You would think the end of a mission would be a time when you could back off and slow down a tiny bit.  I think most missionaries don't actually do that, but for us, it has been a tremendously busy time.  We are closing down the apartment where we have been for the last year and more.  The church won't need it, because they are putting our replacement couple in Celje.  Closing it down included showing it to new prospective renters.  We also had quite a few things that were passed to us from prior senior missionaries.  We try not to accumulate things we don't need, but it is overwhelming how much stuff we are moving to Celje and how much more is going into our suitcases, of which there are more than we brought with.

We also were busy arranging for the new apartment in Celje.  It was used by the last mission doctor we had, about 2 years ago, and has been vacant since then.  The family who own it, have had it going back into the late 1800s.  They love renting it to the church, because we pay on time, and take care of everything.

This is a corner of one of the two living rooms in the new apartment.  That is amazing woodwork on the coffee table, with rare and expensive woods.  The lamp is about 100 years old and is ready to crumble at the slightest touch.  But behind it is one of the amazing, old tile fireplaces they have here.  There are three in the apartment.  This one is about 7 feet tall.  You can see the grate at the bottom.  They are designed so you only put a few small pieces of wood into them and when they get hot the tiles radiate heat.  And they are gorgeous.

All the furniture is old, but it was hand made to order by the family.  It is far larger than any other senior missionary apartment in the mission, but the price must be good, because once we pointed it out to the office, they jumped all over it, and got a contract right over to the owners.

The elders were talking about what to call this apartment.  They kind of settled on "The Celje Mansion", but Sister Ashurst is campaigning for "The Villa".

--------------------------------

We have been saying goodbye to the young missionaries as we see them for the past week.  But today we said goodbye to the members of the Maribor Branch.  Some of them drove for more than an hour to be there and hear what we had to say.  I spoke about 1st Corinthians 13, and how much I love all of them.  Sister Ashurst told them of a dream she had about thousands of Slovenes joining the church.

The best part of it all was that DK will be called as a counselor in the Branch Presidency.  He has wanted more responsibility from the beginning and finally it is coming to him.  He is ecstatic about it.  The current branch president is also very excited, because he is hoping to train up someone who can take over for him.  He has been branch president of a bout 15 years, needs a break.

We have a special relationship with DK.  We were there for his very first lesson by the missionaries.  I was privileged to be able to baptise him.  And we have had him in our home almost every week since we first met him.  Sometimes we just visit, but he usually has a question or two that lead to discussions about how the church works.  He is still eager to learn more.  I am sure we will have an ongoing friendship with home:  HERE WE COME!!

White Christmas

 Thursday, Liz had an appointment to see the orthopedic surgeon in Zagreb to get her stitches removed, etc.  Fortunately, it was for 4:00 pm, because we woke up to about 4" of snow on the ground and more falling.  At about 10:30, the sisters called to ask me if I could help them get to the train station with their luggage - one is going to Zagreb in preparation for her return home, and the other is going to Ljubljana to form a trio with a companionship of sisters there.  When I got back, I noticed that a significant part of the snow had already melted on the roads, while at the same time the snow level had increased to more like 6".  Not true on the sidewalks - they are a mass of slush and ice.  However, we decided to make the trip to Zagreb.  I was nervous about it, especially when it started to snow again.

The snow on the trees is very heavy.

As we climbed onto the small range of mountains betwwen Slovenia and Croatia, the snow increased, but the roads were little more than wet.  At the very peak, there was a short stretch where I felt the tires slip a couple of times, but we had no trouble with it, to speak of.  After clearing customs and heading back downhill, the roads got better and there was a lot less snow.  By the time we got to Zagreb, it was just a powdering.

  We stopped at the church and dropped off some Christmas things for various missionaries and to watch some of the lip synching performances - we had missed it during our conference the week before.

The surgeon took out the stitches and told us everything was fine, except that he wanted Liz to keep the brace on for 6 weeks, but after 3 we could increase the range of motion to 60 degrees, instead of the current 30 degrees of motion.

We went prepared to stay the night in Zagreb, if we needed to.  But everything looked OK outside, so we took off for home.  I have admit that I was very stressed about the slush on the roads, and the worry about the temperature dropping below freezing  - but it never did.  We drove home without incident.

Friday, I had to run some errands, and we had to get serious about packing up all our junk.

This is the bridge next to our apartment.  I was trying to get a photo through the windshield to show the snow after 24 hours.  This one also shows how much Slovenes love to walk.  The packed snow was slippery and the air was frigid - near zero, but look how many people are out there.  The bridge leaves one exposed to the full force of any winds and the chill factor is large.

I went into Center to pick up a special bakery order Liz made.  It wasn't ready, but I did take some shots of Center.

Looking East at the little shelters in the Christmas Market, and the big tree in the center of the roundabout.

This is the City building with the infamous balcony where Hitler spoke.

And this is looking West, towards the Maribor Hotel with stripes where their huge skylights let out the heat.

Today, we did more packing and moved the last of the stuff that is staying with the mission to the new apartment in Celje.  We are debating whether to call that apartment "The Vila", or "The Celje Mansion".  It is an older building, furnished with marvelous antiques.  Despite that, it is quite nice and has modern appliances and other touches, including the largest refrigerator in the mission.

This coffee table in the living room is worth a fortune!  It is incredibly difficult to find wood like this!  And it was masterfully incorporated into the table.

This is the bedroom.  It has an oversized King bed in the middle of a room that is about 40' long, by 15 feet wide.

On the way home tonight, we joined a Zoom call with all Liz's siblings.  We do this every week, but tonight's  was the last one while on our mission.   In a few minutes, there is another Zoom call with all the senior missionaries.  This one is strictly social, and we all love it.   It, too, will be our last.

Tomorrow we will give our fairwell talks to the Maribor Branch.  

We have two more days.

More adventures as our departure nears

 

The castle in Varazdin.

Before we came, I surfed the internet to try to figure out what life on our mission would be like.  One of the people I talked to mentioned the white castle in Varazdin.  I found a photo of it looking up the main road in town with this white castle at the end.  Seeing that castle was high on my to-do list.  But, COVID changed everything and we never got a chance to go there until just the past few months.  We went there  in August because the main border crossings into Croatia had big delays, up to several hours, while the small crossing near Varazdin had wait times counted in minutes, although slightly out of our way.  When we drove through the flatlands into Varazdin, I finally got to see the castle, and found it to be unremarkable.  To begin with, we have seen hundreds of castles while here.  This one is attractive in itself, but the setting is not particularly enticing.  So, my reaction was, "Ngha."

Contrast that with the cathedral in Celje.  It is across the street from the LDS church, right next to the police headquarters.  It is part of a continuous row of large buildings, which makes it extremely inconspicous.  We enjoy seeing these old churches, partly because we both read a book centered around building cathedrals while we've been here - "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follet.  So, we were waiting for the young missionaries one day and decided to go inside the Celje Cathedral.

It is closed off, so you can't go all the way inside except when they are conducting services.  The remarkable chandeliers, and use of extensive, but focused, gold leaf are remarkable.  More subtle is the extensive carvings on the ends of the pews.  It was very difficult to see the art work, but I did not see anything about St. George, which is unusual.

MAJOR MEDICAL

Last week we were in our preparation for departure, which is making us frantic to get everything done.  We had a packed schedule, including giving our farewell reports to the missionaries on a mission-wide zoom call, and had a Christmas Conference in Zagreb on Thursday and Friday, which only made it more intense.  

Wednesday evening, Liz bent over to clean something off the floor and felt a pain in her knee - the one that hasn't been giving her trouble.  When she stood up, it hurt quite a lot, and as the evening passed the pain got worse.  She took both Tylenol and Advil and went to bed hoping it would feel better in the morning. 

It was not better in the morning, and she needed both my cane and my supporting arm to get down to the car for the trip to Zagreb.  That didn't do my bad knee any favors, but we managed it.  When we joined the conference in Zagreb, it was obvious Liz needed professional help.  She and Sister Field conferred and selected a private clininc, and we immediately drove there, after having the sisters unload the food we'd brought.

The clinic was awesome and we met an orthopedic specialist who examined Liz and had X-rays and MRIs taken.  He diagnosed it as a burst meniscus.  He said it will not get better, and if left untreated it would get much worse.  He recommended immediate arthroscopic surgery.  We agreed and he decided to stay a little longer at the hospital the next day so he could schedule her.  They gave her a pair of crutches, and we returned to the party to find most of the food already gone.  We got some ham and some salad, and  the senior sisters had saved us the last pieces of Liz's carrot cake.  Nice sisters.

We were going to stay in the Mission Home (the "palace"), but it has stairs of uneven height.  We made a reservation at a hotel after Sister Field told us to submit the receipt for reimbursement by the mission.  It was a nice hotel with elevators and we got a reasonably good night's sleep.

The next morning, we drove to the surgical hospital owned by the same private clinic where we had seen the doctor.  Strangely, that surgery is located in Krapinske Toplice, which is almost half way back to Maribor.  It is a tiny little town in an out-of-the-way corner of Croatia.

First thing, they gave me a phone number on a slip of paper.  Then they told me was to go away and call back after 2:00 to see if she was ready.

The yellow building across the car park is the Surgical hospital.

I got some breakfast and drove over to Krapina (pronounced CRAP-eena) to check out the Neanderthal museum there, only to find it closed for the season.  I was looking forward to seeing a cave where cave-men lived, but no luck.

By 2:00, I was sitting in the foyer of the surgery, and when I called the number on the slip of paper, the nurse told me to call Liz directly and she'd tell me all I needed to know.  That was rude, I thought.  Liz was getting physical therapy and had an hour to go.  It turned out to be more like 2 hours.  I saw the surgeon as he was leaving, and he told me the meniscus was oversize, so he cut off some before he sewed it back together.  Also there was a lot of damage to ligaments, which he repaird while he was in there.  Also, she had a stray tendon stretched across the knee cap, so he cut it out.  Wonderful.  In the US they probably would have scheduled another surgery for those other things.

Finally she came out with her leg bandaged and fitted to a brace whose purpose is to prevent her bending her leg too much.  She will have to wear it for at least 2 weeks, which puts her wearing it on the plane home.

We had to drive back to the Zagreb church to pick up the Maribor sisters, and load up dishes, gifts etc.  By the time we left it was dark.  After we left town I noticed the lights were pointed way too low.  I had noticed this before, but now with a full load, it was bad.  I could get by when there were other cars around, but once out in the country it was not enough light to go highway speed.  I slowed down a lot and still felt uncomfortable with how little I could see.  

SO,  here we are, closing the apartment (the next senior couple will be quartered in Celje) and finishing our packing, with Liz hobbling around.

Last Monday was P-Day, and the missionaries had permission to go to a movie, Sing 2.  The talking was all in Croatian, which the young missionaries thought was a great immersive language school.  Fortunately for me, I've seen Sing and the plot is similar.  And most of the movie is music, which was in English.

In the theater lobby they had this photo Op wall set up.  Sisters King and Chandler, and Elders Pollock and Kjeldsen were still excited from the movie.

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Too Old to learn new tricks?

Over the last week, I've been thinking about those low headlights.  It occurred to me that we had the whole front panel of the car replaced not too long ago.  So, yesterday I drove back to the service center to demand they adjust the lights.  When the service manager heard what I wanted he gave a big smile and said he could help me.  He took me out to the car, turned on the lights and showed me a little wheel-control in the dash above my left knee.  It is for adjusting the headlights when the car is loaded.  Who knew?  So, today we are returning to Zagreb for Liz's follow-up exam, and we will have fully functional headlights.  Hurray!

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

And, finally, I took a photo of another Sloveneian bee house along the way to the service center.

This bee house is on stilts, but the legs are not built into the beehouse.  The house is sitting on a frame.

I assume the whole house can be loaded onto a truck and moved.