To the Market

Saturday:  the day we clean the church.  We walked in the door and the junior elders came right to me asking me to help with the computer.  Alas, the computer is beyond my skill level.  A lot has changed in the many years since I retired from computer work.
    In a nutshell we have two issues at the chapel.  First, we don't have internet service.  Apparently we missed paying a bill and the service provider is refusing to restore our service.  So, we've been getting along by setting up a cellphone hot spot and connecting the computer to that. 
    Which leads to the second issue:  as of today the computer will connect to our hot spot and everything looks like we are good, but no website will download.  Nothing!  So I put in a call for help to our facilities person.

After the church was clean, the guy who made that amazing video of Osijek suggested we all go to the old fortress.  It seems that on the first Saturday of every month they have an open air market there.  It was very interesting.  There were two gramophones like I've never seen before.

On the front of this one is the picture of a dog with its head up to the bell, and it says "His Master's Voice".  It is a gorgeous piece.  Sadly, I didn't even ask how much they wanted for it.  Things are amazingly cheap here, but even so that will be an expensive thing to have.

This one is also a wonderful piece, but it's only silver.  It says "Gramophone Grand Master" on its face.  How amazing to have two of these rare pieces here.
    Then there is the china, which is exquisite.

It's not quite a Faberge egg, but it IS beautiful, and you can see they had lots more on the table.  There were vendors all over the square with this kind of amazing antiques.  There were also lots of military cast-off equipment.
    The other thing we'd heard were there were honey vendors.  They make lots of honey in the Adriatic, and many of the small beekeepers (which are mostly gone in the US) market their honey in the local markets and it is mostly varietal (meaning varieties).  I bought a bottle of acacia honey, only to discover two more jars of that variety at our apartment.  I wish I had bought one of the other varieties, but there will be plenty of time for that.  I talked with one of the vendors.  She and her husband keep a few trucks with their hive on them.  When my brother John was in Germany he sent home photos of them, brightly colored hives held on the truck with metal braces.
    I would love to have included a photo of the market, but you can't publish photos of people without their written permission, and how could that happen in a busy marketplace?

After that we walked along the banks of the Drava River for a while.  It will be prettier after the trees and flowers come out more, so no photos yet.  However, I couldn't resist this panorama.

The river was behind me, so this is looking into town.  I liked the yellow building, the modern green building, the ancient stone wall in front of the car, and the church.

    We are liking being here in Croatia.  We have lots to do, and go to bed tired every night.  We don't feel overworked, but we don't take much lazy time.  Our mission president's wife keeps encouraging us to take more time for ourselves, so we are taking a joy-ride to Zagreb on Monday.  We'll do some sight-seeing, and visit Ikea and the "American Store".   Life is good!

Visit to the B family

Yesterday Liz was feeling under the weather, and we had an appointment to meet a family who live about 40 minutes away.  So I left her sleeping and went with the young elders.  The B family are a man and wife who don't speak a word of Engliski, while you probably know how much Croatian I speak.  So the elders translated.  Brother B., it turns out was born the same year I was.  They are long-time members who were sealed in the Frankfurt temple in the 90's.  Even though we couldn't talk to each other, Bro. B. and I hit it off very well and I can't wait to go see him again.  His wife was a beautiful woman who now has no teeth, and is still a beautiful person.  Unfortunately she recently had knee surgery, so she couldn't get around much. 
  They live in a modest home in a little farming village where all the houses are along the road. except for a very few.  We drove through many of these villages along the way.  It is north of where we live and there are a fair number of Eastern Orthodox churches, to only a few Roman Catholic, which is not surprising so close to Serbia.
Here is a photo of the Eastern Orthodox church in their village.

It looks like it is pretty new.  I wonder if the E.O. church is throwing money into buildings in these little  places to cement their claim to the area.   I thought of this because there is another of these little churches just a few miles along the road that is under construction, and it looks like the same plan - rounded at one end with the door at the other.  Here is another one:

Sorry about the poor framing - the car was moving as I took it.
  And then there was this one.

This is actually two churches with a house between.  The one behind attracted my gaze because of the gold lettering around the onion dome, but it is the same size (or maybe a bit larger, and with a clock) and shape as the others.  It is clearly older.  The church in front looks to be a very small version, but brand, shiny new.  What's up with that??  Maybe all three are connected and the small building is the third addition to the old church?  Anyway, they are pretty buildings.

Yesterday evening I left Liz behind again and went to the English language class at our church.  The young elders taught a lesson in basic English, while I took the more advanced students into another room for a Conversation class in English.  The lesson plan suggested starting out playing "two truths and a lie".  That was a flop.  These people don't lie and it embarassed them to do it in a game, so much that it was too easy.  After that we read a little story that used all their vocabulary words, and then we just talked about it.  It was fun!  I'd use a word they didn't recognize, so I'd try to explain and pantomime until one of them got it.  Then they'd all chatter in Croatian until they reached consensus and go back to English again.  It was very friendly and happy.  We are gong to hold this class every week.

Liz is feeling much better this morning. 
One of my duties as an auditor is to teach all branch presidents and branch clerks and assistant branch clerks about being responsible with finances and record keeping.  There is a set presentation to use.  We have eight junior missionaries who are newly called as branch clerks or assistants, and one new branch president.  They are all over the mission, so I set up a Zoom conference call.  We use the Zoom app a lot in this mission because we ARE so spread out.  The material is pretty boring stuff to present, but Liz and I switched off and tried to make it a little entertaining.  We'll be auditing them in a few months, so I hope they took notes.

Excellent video

There is a man in our branch who came to "game night" with a nice HD video camera with a pro handle and multiple levels.  I tried to ask why he needed levels on it, but his English is nearly as bad as my Croatian.  Finally he got one of the young missionaries to translate.  He said he likes to make semi-professional movies of things he sees.  Recently he completed one about Osijek and he showed it to me on his camera viewer.  He was very proud of it when he showed it to me, and I have to admit I was impressed.  I hope you enjoy it.

https://www.facebook.com/krunoslav.jagorinac/videos/187574842419476/

Today, Liz and I got our new sofa and bed.  Getting it in and the old stuff out was a big chore.  Afterwards we decided to take a nice walk and find a place to have lunch.  The food here is great and even the small stands make excellent fare.
  The street we live on is one-way and we always turn off before the end, but today we made a discovery.  We have noticed that there is a grand catholic Cathedral of Peter and Paul not too far away, but we've never gotten close to it.  Today we found out that it's at the end of our street as it curves to the north.

It is so big I couldn't get it all in with my cellphone camera.

So there is a lot of space around it.  All around are up-scale businesses: shops, restaurants, hotels, electronics stores, etc.  And traffic is not allowed in the square, which is why we've never driven by it.

  Liz got a phone call as we walked around it, so I had a lot of time to look at it, and as always I noticed details, which I won't go into here except for a few.

  This is what's above the pic above:

I love clocks, and it has a nice one up there.  Also the bells are in this tower.  They ring the quarter hours and ring out the hours.

  When we walked around the corner, we were surprised to see scaffolding.  They are busy cleaning the brick and stone and repairing it.

You can see cleaned brick and stone to the right, and still-dirty stone and brick to the left.  It looks amazingly better clean.  There are gargoyles at this end of the building, but nowhere else.

What is the point of gargoyles, anyway?

It seems like the main door is on the cleaned side, below an immense rose window.  I'm sure Dan Brown (The DaVinci Code) would have lots to say about it.

Curiously they didn't clean the tops of some of the spikey spires, and they seemed to have missed the concrete rain caps, although the ones where we first came around are shiny bright.  Maybe they are refining their technique as they go.

Below is a closeup of the doorway so Dan can get a good look at all the secret codes.

Actually, I am enthralled by stone carving like this.  Did you know that my great, great, grandfather went to my home town to carve stone for the State Capitol?  Of course not, but he did.  He worked one year in his profession and then had to become a farmer.  Anyway, can you imagine working on a big chunk of  marble with those intricate cuts and delicate flower petals, and making a slight mistake as work is nearly done, and breaking it in two?  Doh!

And then there are the bullet holes.  I'm glad they are fixing those in the cathedral as they clean it.  But I noticed this little house at the corner of the cathedral.

It's not too surprising the army took pot shots at the cathedral - it's too tempting a target.  But why shoot up this little cottage?  Hundreds of snipers in there?  Maybe it had "Serbs go home" spray painted on it?  In any case, a lot of ammo went into that wall.

Sunday

Today, I was sustained as the Branch President's 1st Councilor, and as the Elder's Quorum President's 1st Councilor.  Then I was invited to sit at the head of the congregation, where the branch president translated everyone's testimonies for me.  He is excellent, so I can't object.
   Strange thing:  An old man nobody knew came in at the last minute and sat at the back.  After the Branch President opened the meeting to everybody, this man jumped up and came forward.  The essence of it was that he is a Catholic and has been in lots of "temples", by which he meant cathedrals.  He's been in the one in Rome, and Paris, and London and many others and they are nice.  But we don't need a temple.  Our worship of Jesus Christ is in ourselves, not in a temple.  Well, OK.  So after he sat down the members gave their testimonies and they were awesome!  Nobody challenged the old man, but a couple of them did discuss the blessing of attending the temple.
   The singing was accompanied by the elder who just joined us this past week.  He is fairly good (although he played too fast), but he made a few mistakes and lost the tempo a couple of times.  So after the closing prayer, the old man jumped up again and sat down at the piano and started to play.  He made some chord runs and then tried the hymn we'd sung.  He struggled a bit, but he was obviously sight-reading so he did fine.   He sat at the piano playing VERY loud for a while until I motioned everybody to join us in the classroom.  He seemed a little deflated that nobody challenged him.  He joined us in the classroom.  He wanted to set the topic of discussion, but the Sunday School teacher took over and led us into the lesson.  He asked a question and had everybody take turns giving our take on it.  We all did and when the old man's turn came he had something to say (I wasn't able to follow it very well).  The branch president was after him, and again, just answered the question and didn't challenge what the old man said.  How awesome!  I thought it was perfect.  I think he wanted a confrontation, but he got a Christ-like response and a lesson on being led by the Holy Ghost.  Afterwards the elders talked to him for a few minutes and then he left.  I wonder if we'll see him again?  I hope so.

Another strange thing happened this week.  I walked out of the church yesterday afternoon and as I walked up to the car I noticed that two lug nuts are missing from the right-rear wheel.  I checked all around and only those two, and they are next to each other.  Odd.  We have a Hyundai I-30, and it does not come with a spare tire.  It is equipped with a tire pump (which is also missing) and no tire, no jack, and no tools.  If I had a lug wrench I could have taken a lug nut from another wheel and had at least 4 of 5 lug nuts on each wheel, which is fairly safe.  As it is, I don't feel safe with it at all.
  Tomorrow, I'm going to an auto store down the street to get lug nuts, wrench, pump, and maybe a couple of washers we need for a chair.

I should mention that we are very happy here.  The people are wonderful once you overcome their initial reticence.  They are friendly, scrupulously honest, helpful and generally exceptional.  They are also somewhat downtrodden by memories of the war:

This church is apparently abandoned.  It has multiple medium-caliber shell holes in the roof and spire, and small caliber holes throughout.  These reminders of the civil war have to be painful for people who live here.  I think it's why people don't make eye contact when we are walking.

Transfer Day!

One of the young elders is involved in transfers this go-round.  Plus the mission president asked that we come over with them - to tell me my assignments here, and so we can get a feel for the kitchen so we can do the cooking for next transfer.  In addition the sister in the couple doing the cooking this time around is the Mission Medical Advisor who is turning things over to Liz.  So we needed to go, too.

This is the other side of the building where our church is located.  It is magnificent, but deteriorating.

   So we all piled into our little car, with the elder's luggage, and headed for Zagreb.  First stop, the MUP (combo gov. and police station) so the elder can let them know he is leaving, which is a visa requirement.  Then we stopped at the church to finish the financial work started Sunday afternoon.  Then we had to stop at the toll booth to get the tolltag updated into my name.  Whew!  Finally we could get on the road.  We've only been here a week, but the countryside is noticeably greener than it was when we came.  And the farmers were out plowing and cutting and getting the farm year started.
  There are aspects of the drive that remind me of Fillmore.  I saw a couple of herds of deer.  Without their antlers, they look remarkably like whitetails, but of course they are European deer.  There are small hunting stands in the fields, just like you see in Texas when you drive around.  The other thing I enjoyed was seeing ringneck pheasants out in the fields.  When we came I saw them, but never close enough to confirm they were ringnecks.  But this time they were closer to the highway and it was obvious what they were.
   On the road to Zagreb we follow along a valley with farms and livestock.  There are villages at the bottom of the hills bordering the valley.

This is pretty typical of them.  The main road in town runs along the base of the hill, and people have built out from there.  Farms extend into the valley, which looks like it is approximately 10 miles wide.  Some of the houses are painted in bright colors, and some look as innocent of paint as a newborn babe.

This road is a tollway with restricted access.  There are rest stops at frequent intervals where you can get gas, food, and sometimes lodging, but those services are fenced inside the tollway.
   The rest stops are clean and very nice.  The actual restrooms are in a separate door from the food area (great idea!) and one we stopped at had a woman sitting there collecting a small coin for cleaning it.  At that same place a trucker walked over to a tree right in front of where we parked, unzipped, and watered a tree.  He didn't even turn his back.  I guess he couldn't afford 2 kuna.  (about 30 cents)

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This is a hotel at one of the rest stops.

We stopped at a member's house for a visit and lunch, and on the way into town we passed this brick yard:

They seem to use these standard bricks for construction everywhere.  They are finer than American bricks, not as porous, and with lots of air gaps for insulation and for running wires.  I'll try to find one where I can take a closer pic.  Someday.
 

I took this photo as we drove through the village.  The houses are better maintained here than in the city where we live, but even so, if you look closely at the taller building down the street a bit, you might notice that the end of the building has no facade and no glass in the attic window.  This too reminds me of Fillmore.

This is an abandoned building in a row of nice homes on the main road through this village.  I would guess maybe 500 people live here.

   So we drove to Zagreb and the Mission Home.  We let the elders take the car from there to the apartment of the elders with whom they are swapping, while we stayed on at the luxurious mission home.  We've now met several of the senior missionary couples and they are delightful - after all we've all made the choice to come here and serve.  All are missing chocolate chips, but I am thinking I will be happy with chopping up chocolate bars and using the chunks.
   At the mission home, we met three sisters who are going home.  We helped the other senior couple prepare their dinner so they could have a relaxing meal and chat with the mission president and his wife.  When they were done we cleared everything up and loaded the dishwasher.  Then the mission president invited us to join them and the sisters who are leaving us for a "what do we do NOW?" chat.  They asked the sisters what was their best experience, and would they bear their testimonies, and so forth.  The mission president gave them some good advice on how to go back to ordinary life and make the adjustment.
  Then one of them asked how they are supposed to find Mr. Right.  Well, that opened the floodgates.  The other senior couple had definite opinions, the mission President and his wife had definite opinions, and we had some, too.  We were all telling them how we made the grade with our marvelous insight and so forth, when it occurred to me that we were getting entirely outside left field.  So I asked if I could throw a monkey in the wrench.  I said that we'd all given good advice, but marriage is all about making a commitment.  So once you find someone you are willing to commit to for the rest of your life and beyond into eternity, and he is also willing to make that commitment, all the other things just kind of go away.  Nobody argued, and we moved on.  I was pleased with that.
   Next day, Liz got training on how be the medical person for the mission (gulp!).  I got training on how to be the techie guru for her.  And president Melonakos finally gave me my assignment in our branch.  I am in the branch and elders quorum presidencies.  Oh, and by the way, would we be in charge of planning the next all-mission senior missionary get-together - preferably to be held in Serbia (where we've never been), and of course we will make the announcement with ALL the details at a meeting in April.  We told him we are delighted to serve, which we really are.
   After that we packed up and drove back to our home city with a new (to us) elder.

   Today we bought a new mattress for our bed (neither of us have been sleeping on the old, lumpy one), and a new sofa.  The current sofa is nice leather so old that all the stitching gives way if you touch it.  It's hard to sit on it without touching stitching, so the stuffing is on the move.
  This evening we had the delightful experience of attending the English class the junior elders are teaching.  Starting next week we will be leading the advance class in conversation.  We'll have some talking points, but mostly we will just talk with them.  There were seven people there who are studying English.  They know the elders are going to lead a religious discussion after the class, and all but one stayed for it, but they have no obligation to do so.  The church provides the study manuals and the students seemed very motivated to progress.

First day at church

We went to church early today so we could greet the members.  There were 15 members, plus we four missionaries, which is good for here.  Liz and I introduced ourselves and bore our testimonies at the beginning of Sacrament meeting, and then the junior missionaries gave the main talks.  Of course, our Croatian language skills were woefully, and obviously inadequate, but the Branch President translated for us. 
  In priesthood meeting we were discussing missionary work and the leader asked what we could do to help build up the membership.  It's hard to jump in with things when the translation lags so far behind the conversation flow, so afterwards I suggested to the Branch President that the front of the building could present a better image with a little repairing.  So a few of us walked out to take a look.

Liz took this photo as we left to go home.  The church has a couple of plates on the wall to my right so people know we're there.   As we stood there looking at the building with a view to repairs, I noticed the wall is pockmarked with holes.  Bullet holes as it turns out.  If you look above the plate with the name of the church there are some big ones, and one is at my left shoulder right on the corner of the doorway.  If you zoom  in on the wall to my left you see lots of smaller holes, which I suspect are shrapnel holes from grenades.  This is just a small view of a very large building a block long.  The whole thing is pocked.  Doorways were clearly targeted.    These are remains of the war of 20+ years ago.  The whole Yugoslavian army was headquartered in Serbia, so Croatia was pretty helpless when Yugoslavia broke apart and Serbia decided to make everybody into Serbians.  Some of the members told us they were trying to stop the tanks with hunting rifles, and some of the current members were wounded.  So, even though it all ended a long time ago, feelings are very sensitive.

  But back to the repair of the building.  The Branch Pres. said he'd like to see it repaired, but there are some issues.  The church just owns the one apartment (the one with yellow flowers on the window sills) so any repair has to be coordinated with the building supervisor.  And then there is the government, which sometimes designates buildings like this one as "cultural sites".  That's bad/good.  Good in that the government will help with costs.  Bad in that the red tape becomes stupendous.  Step one is that most of the tenants in the building have to want it done and agree to pay half the cost.  Usually you can't find tenants who can afford any repairs at all.

  BTW, the state of our building is very typical here.  As we drive around town we see a lot of repairs going on, but much, much more that still needs to be done.  Croatia has been depopulating as people go to other countries to get better jobs, leaving an increasingly bad situation at home.

  The name of the street is Krešimira, which refers to Krešimir Cosic, who played basketball for BYU back when Liz and I were there.  He became a big hero in all of Yugoslavia, before the war.

Saturday (P-day)

Today is P-day for the junior missionaries.  Technically us too, but it's meaningless for us because we get to schedule all our days as needed.
  1.  We called our landlord and asked him to come over.  We had a list of items, some of which he gave us what we want and others that he basically told us to suck it up.  He is a young guy and he owns ten apartments in this building or nearby.   He was very nice and obliging in general.  No wonder we've heard such good things about him.  The big surprise is that he's a young guy.
  2.  The landlord meeting went longer than we'd hoped, so we were late for our 11:00 appointment to meet the elders for cleaning the church.  It is an apartment in an old building.   They build to last here, so most places we've seen have solid wood floors, tile window ledges, carvings, etc.  The walls are made of an interlocking brick with air spaces built in - sort of like concrete block, but solid so no air moves through like it does with concrete block.  It is sad that a lot of these beautiful old buildings are falling into serious disrepair.  Lots of concrete castings and fascia is falling off, and lots of buildings are abandoned or unused.
   So, back to cleaning the building.  We had some decoration arranging to do from a past list, so Liz tackled that.  I asked the elders what was left to do and they said to sweep the stairs coming into the apartment.  It is at the bottom of a stairway so I asked if the church owns the building or just the apartment.  The rumor is that we own it all ( the street is named after our most famous Croatian member) so I walked up the stairs to see if they needed sweeping.  Boy Howdy!  Do they ever!?  As I went up they got dirtier and dirtier, with increasingly large piles of junk on the landings and even pots of dead flowers on the stairs.  So I opted to sweep them all, but not haul out the junk.  I made clouds of dust and by the time I reached the bottom I had a big pile of sand and grit I was sweeping along with me.  Liz came out to tell me they were waiting for me, but she fetched a dust pan so we could throw it all into the garbage can.
  3.  We didn't have time for lunch so we all piled into our car and drove to our apartment.  We had an appointment to meet a member family with the junior missionaries and the family lives in easy walking distance of our apartment.  The first impression as we entered the house was the heat and the smell of wood smoke.  It's been cool each day and gets below freezing at night.  Wood fires are hard to control and I think it was hotter than they wanted.  They are an older couple, and another member who lives nearby joined us.  Very nice, but very little English, although more than we have Croatian.  After introductions (they thought we must be cowboys like John Wayne because we lived in Texas) the junior elders taught them the Sunday School lesson.  She offered us a soft drink which tasted a bit like Dr. Pepper, and as we rose to go she insisted we each take a bag of potato chips.  These came from a food donation they get, but they don't eat them.  This is a bit tricky:  they are getting financial and food help and are dirt poor, but they wanted to give us something to show hospitality.  We didn't really want the food, but you can't offend them, so in the end we each took one bag.
   The home where they live is a study in contrast.  They have nearly nothing.  But they have some cabinets in their home that would make any woodworker drool over the the fancy grain and french polish and carved accents.  They only own four glasses, so Liz and I had to share one.  The kitchen was so small they had the fridge in the living room and stored the dishes on top of it.  But they are nice old people.