Earthquakes, again?

 A couple of days ago I was awake a little before 6:30 am and the house started to vibrate.  It gradually built up until it was bouncing a mirror that leans against the wall behind Liz's desk.  Liz woke up and wondered why the mirror was bouncing against the wall, but never thought of earthquake.  It turned out to have been a 5.2 earthquake centered about a hundred miles south of Zagreb, so roughly 250 miles away from us.  That level of earthquake is fun and entertaining, but having been through a major earthquake less than a year ago, we are quite sensitive to them and have little sense of humor about it.  But life goes on.

Today, I got up early and went back to sleep during the morning.  After my nap I got in the shower and while I was washing my feet the house started to vibrate again.  It was stronger than the earlier one, and it built up to a much higher level.  Enough that I had the dizzy feeling you get when the ground moves under your feet.  I was waiting for it to get to where the shower would fall apart and the building fall down around me.  It occurred to me that it would be quite embarrassing to be found in the rubble with nothing on.  Very un-missionary like!  Luckily, it didn't do that.  It gave us a good shake, though.  This one was centered in the same area of  Croatia as the first one, but it was a 6.3 earthquake (110 times as strong as a 5.2 earthquake).

My first thought was that this was too much!  We should just go back to Texas where the ground doesn't roar at us and knock us down with buildings on our heads.  My second thought was that we are missionaries.  Our job is to help the people of this area, giving aid and comfort.  It is no time to throw in the towel and skulk away.  So we'll stay.

We normally go shopping for groceries on Mondays, but we were busy yesterday and went shopping after the earthquake.  To celebrate our good fortune in not being killed by earthquakes, I bought a special treat.  Milka is a brand of swiss candy:  their chocolate bars are even more popular here than Hershey is in the USA.  They have a regular-size chocolate bar with bits of Oreo cookies in them, but they are not my favorite because the bits of cookie are hard and make letting the chocolate melt in your mouth not so enjoyable.  But they have large, 300 g. bars that has a single layer of solid Oreo cookie and layers of filling on both sides, all covered by that luscious swiss chocolate.  Those are fantastic!  So I bought one.  I already ate half of it, which is quite outrageous.  Liz declined to celebrate with me, so I'll save the rest of it for tomorrow and (hopefully) the day after.

Christmas

 

I don't get to claim this photo.  Liz took it in The Maribor Park while visiting her friend, Petra, and her family.  I think it is an amazing photo.  I was home being sick at the time.

This extraordinarily-large tree is also in the park.

We have been on lockdown for so long we are beginning to get a little antsy.  However, we got fairly good news this week.  The government has decided to ease restrictions from noon on Christmas Eve until curfew begins (9:00 pm) on Christmas Day.  People can travel about the country, and we are allowed to have up to 6 people gathered together from up to one other household in our homes.   And most stores are also allowed to be open during those times.

    Who would have thought such a little easing would have us so excited?!?  The reason we are so excited is that it is enough that we can have each group of young missionaries over to our home (one at a time) so we can feed them Christmas dinner and spend some time with them.  This means we will eat Christmas dinner 4 times - 5:00 and 8:00 Christmas Eve with the two groups of sisters, and then noon and 6:00 Christmas day with the two groups.  Yeah!  Turkey with all the fixins over and over.  Yum!

I have had bronchitis for several weeks now, but it is finally beginning to clear up.  I take expectorants, antibiotics, and an asthma inhaler, as well as OTC Zinc and Vitamin D3.  It really sucks, especially the inhaler - it has little tablets in it.  You press a plunger to crush the tablet, give it a second, then suck it in and hold it for several seconds.  It is so caustic, you have to rinse out your mouth after inhaling, and it hurts all the way down into the lungs.  But it does help and I am getting over the bronchitis.

    Something in all those medications makes me sleepy.  About every 3rd or 4th day I sleep for about 18 hours.  Weird.

A few weeks ago we were in Ljubljana for a doctor appointment.  While I was waiting, I noticed this clock on the wall.  It is simply a mounted photo with a clock movement in it, and numbers stuck on.  Simple!  Pure genius!  I like it.  I think I'll make some when we return.

While I was sick, I was sitting around a lot because I'd get out of breath every time I got up and moved around in the least amount.  I watched some movies, but then I started reading The Lord of The Rings again.  I've read it many times before, but I find great delight in reading it over.  In fact, I have read it so many times I've literally worn out two copies.  They were only paperback copies, but still, they were dog-eared and shredded.  I've also given away several copies of it.

Golden Anniversary

 Fifty years ago, I woke early and prepared to drive to Manti.  I had spent the night at my parent's home, but it was the last night I would ever spend there as resident instead of guest.  Once again, Liz and I rode in her parent's car for the long drive to Manti.  The previous day, when we were there to be endowed, was exhausting.  This day's temple work promised to be less so, but it would be followed by a reception with dinner and dancing.

We arrived an hour and a half before the ceremony was scheduled - I didn't know why.  It seemed to me like there were hordes of people around me that day, all of them wanting to give me comfort, direction, or advice.  Liz and I met together with the temple president and matron, and then we separated so she could go to the bride's room.  I was interviewed by other brothers who told me how it would go, how married life would go, and how the eternities would treat us.  Finally Liz and I were reunited and after a brief, confusing, visit at the veil we entered a sealing room.  I was surprised to see family (from my mother's side) sitting in the room waiting for us.  They had driven at a more reasonable hour to be there.  They knew the sealer, too, although I was sure I'd never laid eyes on him before that day.  I was told he was a great uncle of mine.  He sat us down and talked to us, too.  I remember he told us never to go to bed angry, but to talk until we had worked out any differences we had.  I don't remember anything else he said, until he began the formal ceremony.  I remember that, because it was the important part of it all.  I also remember looking into the mirrors, one behind each of us as we knelt, facing each other over the alter.  The mirrors reflected each other so that we saw repeating images of ourselves going into the distance, each image smaller than the previous one.  The ceremony was short, and we were married.

A side door to the Cathedral in Maribor.

We then went to an office where we signed our marriage license and received a copy - the other copy to go to the county office to be registered and recorded.  Liz signed an official change of name form as she took my last name for her own.  And then we left the temple, posed for photographs at the temple doors, and drove back home.

We must have eaten somewhere along the way, but I don't remember that at all.  I remember being enthralled with the beautiful girl beside me who was now my wife.  I didn't know what we had ahead of us, but I knew this was what I wanted.  I thought everything would be good.

And I have to say that being married to her for these last fifty years HAS been good!  I still love her, and now that love is based on experience and shared wonders.  We were a good, if perhaps an unlikely, match.  We have raised our six children and watched them become adults who are better than we were.  Grandchildren came into our lives and have been our joy.  And now we even have a great-granddaughter who gives us another level of joy.

Oh, what a wonderful World.   Oh, yeah!

Winter is here, even if the date doesn't say so. Dec. 11, 2020

 Winter officially starts on the winter solstice, which is always around December 21.  However, we have had ice and snow for the past couple of weeks.  The first couple of storms were only little snow events where the snow didn't last.  Then, on Wednesday, Dec. 2, we had a larger storm where it snowed all day and the forecast was for one or two more days just like it.  That was disturbing because I had to go to Ljubljana the next day, less than a 2-hour drive but over numerous small-mountain passes and bridges.  The next morning, I nearly bailed on the trip when I looked at the forecast and Google maps showed numerous stoppages along the tollway between Maribor and Ljubljana.  But, by the time we headed out most of the stoppages had been cleared.  It was a little dicey getting out of the parking garage and up the hill to the main road but the road was merely wet, as you can see below.

It seems like the snow plows must be very localized, because there were places like in the photo above where the road had been plowed, and then places like in the photo below, where the cars were pushing slushy snow aside or packing it down into ice.  

We had about five miles of that.  However, once we got onto the tollway, it was nicely cleared and the roads were wet, but easy enough to drive on.  We took it nice and easy and had no troubles whatsoever.

The drive to Ljubljana is always stunningly beautiful, but the snow on the trees made it a different kind of beautiful than we've seen before this trip.  Last winter we didn't see any snow at all, but of course we didn't get here until February.  So, while it snowed in the morning, and again that night, we had a lovely day.  I saw my doctor and got pre-cancers frozen off my face.  We met all the missionaries and delivered little packs of cookies to them, and got home again before the afternoon snow got really going.

On the way down, we saw a very-long backup of trucks and cars on the other side of the tollway, and I told Liz that I certainly hoped that was cleared before we came back.   Vain hope!  It appears that the problem was inside one of the tunnels through the taller mountains.  Most are not very long, but one is about 2 miles inside the mountain, and it looked like that was the one with the problem.

The tollway is mostly just two lanes in each direction, but there are a few spots where a truck lane opens up on the right side.  We were passing one of those on the way home, when we came to the back of the line of trucks.  Of course, they were off to the side in the truck lane, so we pressed on, albeit slower than we had been going.  When the road came back down to two lanes, I was surprised to see that the trucks were politely staying in the right lane while most of the cars continued in the left lane unchecked.  But it couldn't last.  Eventually we came to a halt, too.  We estimate we passed five miles of trucks inching along in the right lane before we had to stop.

We inched along in our left lane for about a half hour and came to this reader-board.  You can see that by this point there were a few trucks in the left lane, but it continued to move faster than the right lane.  There were three pressurized-gas trucks in front of us, and we conjectured they are allowed leeway in this kind of situation to get gas to people who need it for heat.  Who knows?  Anyway, it wasn't long after this that we were forced to exit and follow a windy 2-lane road along the valley floor to the far end of the three tunnels in this stretch.   Total distance of backed-up traffic was close to 10 miles. Then, the traffic moved smoothly along the 2-lane road and we were soon back on the tollway.  The backup was simply from forcing traffic off a 4-lane divided highway with a speed limit of 130 kph onto a 2-lane back road with a 70 kph speed limit.

I have had a winter bronchitis infection in 4 of the last 5 years, and I have another one this year.  It became noticeable about a month ago, but it always starts small.  The mission doctor said to take expectorants and call him again if it got to where I could hear noises in my lungs.  A few days ago it got to where I could hear it gurgling in my lungs when I laid down to sleep, so I called the mission doctor again.  I explained the treatment I had used before and he prescribed an inhaler with powdered steroids to help the lungs heal.  He also wanted to prescribe an antibiotic, but I asked him to hold off on that.  Too many antibiotics have already disturbed my intestinal flora and fauna, and they always give me a month or more of disturbance.  Who needs that?  Yesterday it had me pretty low and I hardly moved out of my recliner, but today I am feeling much better.  I expect to have a couple of weeks of that kind of back and forth before it gets better - and maybe longer.

With COVID all around us, exploding through the previously nearly unscathed country of Slovenia, I need to stay isolated.  COVID on top of a stubborn Bronchitis is a serious combination with a poor prognosis.  We have no clue when the new vaccine for COVID will become available here, even though they are already administering it in England and Wales, with several other countries close behind them.  So, I can't afford exposure.

We are still in full lockdown in Slovenia.  We think the government is keeping it locked down in hopes that the infection rate will decline in time to open stores for Christmas.  We still hope so.  Stores have Christmas wares on display, and in the Center (the Slovene word for the town square) they have set up lines of little booths in preparation for a Christmas Market Festival.

One interesting aspect of the Maribor winter is that the temperature seems to stay fairly stable night and day.  Today has a hi of 39 degrees Fahrenheit and a low of 32 with humidity at 100%.  Looking at the long range forecast, most days have a range of 10 degrees or less, but there is one day where it will be 45 and 28 because the sun will peek out for a while.  It's been like this for several weeks.

Tomorrow is the big day for us, although we celebrated it with our children and grands before we left on our mission.  It will be our fiftieth anniversary.  Fifty years ago today, Liz and I got in her parents car along with Grandpa Stevens, to go to Manti where we took out our endowments.  Then the next morning we drove back again and were married and sealed for time and eternity.  It was a happy time for us, and I have never regretted it.  Liz and I have had ups and downs like anybody, but our love for each other remains firm and strong.  I am a very lucky man to have found her and won her hand.

Thanksgiving

 

This photo was taken just outside our apartment about two weeks ago.

Today Liz and I went for a nice, long walk (6,300 steps) after Zoom church.  The fall leaves are still hanging on, but won't be here much longer.

We had been hoping to give the young missionaries in Slovenia a nice Thanksgiving meal and gathering.  The Mission President authorized 7.5 hours for the celebration (including travel time) and we had a plan to get us all together.  However, with increased COVID isolation that was impossible.  We used Zoom to contact them all, but no face-to-face contact at all.  I set up my computer with Zoom tuned in and sent a message to the missionaries that we were very happy to share part of the day with them up until 6:30 pm.  We visited with several of them, and had two companionships online with us as we all ate our separate meals.  That was nice.

That evening we had our kids call in and we actually had all 6 of them online for quite a long time.  Pure heaven!  We were on Zoom from 12:30 until past 10:00 pm, and loved it.

President Russell M. Nelson gave a Thanksgiving fireside chat where he invited everybody to post something every day for a week on social networks telling things for which we are thankful, and use the hashtag #givethanks.   It was fun posting every day, and easy to find good things for which I am thankful.  The Worldwide response has been terrific, and I got lots of likes and responses to my posts.

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

One of our duties as Assistant Area Auditors is to train all the leaders in the mission.  I have prepared a training course over the past couple months.   As I completed it, it occurred to me that we have not done anything for the local leadership - only the young missionaries who serve in leadership roles.  (We are down to one young elder who serves as a branch president, but we continue to have quite a few who are branch clerks or assistant clerks.)  I did a quick review and my training course is appropriate for all of them, so I sent invitations to District Presidents and clerks, as well as all the branch ones.  I also included the Mission President and the Area Auditors to whom we report.

  I have set 7 times when anyone who wants training can tune into my Zoom account and get the one-hour presentation.  Included are how to find further resources they can use for self-training.  I addressed things that frequently come out during audits, and how to fix them.  And I explained how to use each screen in the finance systems of the church.

  Yesterday, I had one district clerk who tuned in, and 3 young elders.  Other sessions will be at varying times over the next five days.  It will be interesting to see if any of the District leaders join us.

I am also going to put the presentation on a shared drive where missionaries can reference it at any time.  In preparation for that, I am going to modify it again, and convert it into a PDF format.

The next round of audits starts next month, so here we go again.

Facebook

 I haven't talked about this while posting on this BLOG, but missionary work has changed because we are not allowed to talk to people on the streets like missionaries used to do.  It is against COVID-19 restrictions.  So, we have switched to using Facebook as our missionary contacting tool.  As senior missionaries, it is not our job to find people to teach any more than any other member of the church, but the young missionaries ARE tasked with finding people.  In our new, isolated World, they spend their days posting on Facebook about things that they enjoy.  When people respond to their posts, they make friends, and when their new friends ask about why they are here in a foreign land, they explain about their calling as missionaries and this leads to gospel discussions.  It is less intrusive than stopping people on the streets, and we have found it to be much, much more effective.  In this time of massive unemployment and forced isolation, people are online more and are open to exploring things.  Elder Uchtdorf instructed us to be "normal and natural" in this work, and as we make friends.  He feels that we will never go back to the kind of tracting and street-contacting we used to do.  

   At the start of it, one companionship of young missionaries were tasked with creating a Facebook page for the Adriatic North Mission, with content about the gospel and the church.  Then, there was a page for each of the five countries in the mission, and finally a page for each major city in each country.  While we've been narrowing our focus to the cities, we have also found quite a few people who are outside our boundaries, because Facebook doesn't recognize or work with boundaries.  Our missionaries are teaching people all over the World, even while trying to find people here.  Today, the Mission President announced that we are going to be spreading out our view into the rural areas, so that we are not just focusing on the cities.

   We are using Zoom and WhatsApp video for teaching in a lot of cases, although face-to-face teaching is still best and we do it when we can.  In the beginning of using Facebook, it was assumed that the young missionaries would be technologically savvy and able to do the work in novel ways.  That was mostly correct, but some of them were like me - techie, but not a fan of Facebook.  They worked at it and have gotten better and better.  More recently, the Area has assigned a Facebook expert and a marketing expert to give us weekly lessons on how to be effective missionaries and use Facebook even better.  Their presentations have been fascinating.  This doesn't affect what we are teaching or how we make connections with people, but it seriously affects how good we are at making our initial contacts with them.  More people are being taught than we even dreamed of before we turned to Facebook.

    There are other social networking tools that we could be using, but we have focused on Facebook  so that we can all learn together and can help each other.  In the future, we may use the other programs, but meanwhile the missionaries have become so good with it they are teaching about as many people as they possibly can.  One of our current worries is that we are making so many new contacts that we might loose track of some of them that are already interested in learning more about the gospel.

   We love the missionaries assigned to work with us here.  They are wonderful, and inventive, and interesting, and enthusiastic.  What a marvelous thing we have been allowed to do by coming here to SLOVENIA.

Out walking

 Well, we are restricted, but not imprisoned, so we try to get out and take a nice walk around town every day or so.   Yesterday there was a high wind alert, so we stayed inside like good little doo-bees.  The wind didn't blow, though.  Today it is a bit windy, but we were bundled up.  Tonight will be the first freeze of the year - low of 28 predicted.  Tomorrow night is supposed to be 21, but I suspect this is kind of what winters will be here.  Highs chilly, lows hovering around freezing.  It snows, but I haven't seen any photos of significant amounts.  Mostly, it rains.

    So, I took some cellphone photos.  First, a door.  There are tons of interesting doors around here.  

This an ordinary building, but it dates back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire days.  Very interesting.

This four-pool fountain is in a popular square just outside the palace.  Behind it you can see windows through the city wall.  There is a closer view below.

This dates back even farther than the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  The Turks tried to invade Europe starting in about the 1100's or so.  The Yugoslavian countries mostly stopped them.  Maribor was a major crossing point of the Drava River, and so the City of Maribor was built as a fortress.  This is a part of the Palace.  It was built as part of the Old City Wall, and is just about the only piece of it left.  There are some older walls along the riverbank that might also be parts of it..  From the different-colored stone, I expect this was the back gate at one time.  But the window is clearly defensive and gives a hint of the 4-5 feet thick walls.

These are old windows from the courtyard into the cellar of the palace, and even they are defensive, because the palace doubled as the reboubt, or last place of defense.  But these windows were inside the walls.  The low, grey wall bottom-left in this photo is the where the main wall continued across town.

This is the well in the same courtyard.  It's hard to see, but the pulley for lifting buckets out of the well is still there.

I took this photo just to show how the outside walls of the fortress sloped.  Difficult for troops to climb.  It was never conquered while the big artillery was trebuches and fighting was almost all done with bows and swords.  Of course, once big cannons were built, this kind of fortress became obsolete.

Here is a Christmas display in the window of a shop in the Center of Maribor.  Pretty up-scale stuff, but the shop is closed by COVID restrictions.  We still think (and the shop owner clearly agrees) that the intent of government is to clamp down hard now so they can loosen it as Christmas approaches.

This is an Advent tree, for counting down the days until Christmas.  Advent calendars in various forms are very popular here.  In this one, each day you open a drawer and take out a little ornament to hang on the hooks on the ceramic tree.  Very clever.