New Years and second New Years

We stayed pretty close to home in Sarajevo this week. People in Bosnia take their holidays very serious. We thought when they had Christmas on Dec. 25 and then a second one on Dec.26 that we were done with double holidays. Not so, they take a half day off on New Years Eve to get ready for News Years. Then they enjoy New Year's Day. We went out to do some shopping on Jan. 2 and everything was closed again.  Helen looked it up both days are official holidays. Since the next day was Friday, why not just take it off too and start up on Monday - lol.

Helen tried to do some sewing for a friend of the Church. She downloaded a pattern from online. She used 30 pieces of paper to make the pattern. After taping them all together she tried the sewing machine that another couple gave to us. Wouldn't you know it, it was broken, drats. 

It has gotten pretty cold here and it has inversions for several days at a time. We received another 6" of snow on top of the 16" we got last week. The city does a decent job of keeping the roads usable. When it's cold and the air is bad, like today the air quality index was 255. But sadly people here consider that number as normal. We have the young missionaries over to the Staffords, who now live right above us (which is sweet) for dinner and they helped finish a hard puzzle. Sister MeKinnon is a master puzzler.

Yesterday we had a major Church cleaning to kick off the new year. All eight of us helped out to knock it out in good time. Then we all went for a nice Bosnian lunch.  It's great, all eight of us eat for $30. I didn't even mind paying when it's that inexpensive. haha

As you can see, every job needs a Supervisor, Elder Stafford volunteered for that job. Actually, he just finished his job faster than the rest of us.

This next week we head back to Montenegro with hopes of warmer weather and cleaner air.

Really though, we are loving our mission more every day. We have been going with the young sisters to teach a couple and have helped with other friends of the Church.