Activities, Celebrations and yes more driving

We had some fun times and some great experiences this week. The week started out on Sunday with Elder McConkie's 19th birthday. (Yes, he is a relative to Bruce R McConkie if you are wondering) He is an "outstanding" missionary, that is a pun because he is 7 ft. tall. He has already signed with BSU to play basketball upon his return to the States. So as much as I hate to say it, I might have to become a BSU fan.

He is a pretty serious young man so we thought to liven things up we used trick candles on his cake that kept reigniting. He was quite confused.

On their P-Day, the young missionaries decided they want to do lunch and a hike around town. That didn't sound too bad so we agreed to go with them. Little did I know that their idea of a hike at 19 is much different than my idea of a hike. When they said they wanted to hike up to the top of the mountain to an old fortress I thought they were kidding, they weren't. Five miles later we got back down off the mountain. We did have a nice view of the city except for the terrible smog. The best part of the hike was when we were on top of the mountain and it was time for one of the five "calls to prayer" that the Muslims do everyday. We could here about 10 imams doing their calls from all over the city.

When we got back to the city, we visited what is referred to as Pigeon Square. Sister Gunson said one item on her bucket list, for Sarajevo, was to feed the pigeons. She had second thoughts because she kept the bird seed in her hands and the birds didn't care where it was, they wanted it.

Later in the week we went with our young sisters to visit a man who is at a refugee camp an hour up in the mountains. His name is Michael and he has an amazing story. He is from Sierra Leone, and was in prison because of his religious beliefs. Someone bombed the prison walls so he was able to escape. His Pastor told him he should leave the country so he made his way to Northern Africa. He crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Greece and then walked from Greece to Bosnia (about 700 miles). He and a friend were going to walk clear to France but he felt impressed to stop here. After a series of miracles we met him and heard of his amazing story. He was led by God to find a better life, we are happy we are part of his ongoing story. Below is Michael with the young sisters and our good friends, Elder and Sister Stafford.

On the way back from visiting with Michael we saw the Olympic downhill ski runs, built for the 1984 Olympics.

We finished our week by driving up to Banja Luka, a city 3 1/2 hours North to meet with a few members of our church there. Banja Luka is the capitol of the Republika Srpska, which is one of the three divisions of the country of Bosnia. To end the war for Bosnian independence the UN allows the country to be separated into 3 small areas kind of like states within the larger umbrella of Bosnia. Anyway Banja Luka isn't overly friendly with the US. They want to side with Russia so we have to be careful when we are up there. We only had two members and two friends in attendance but they were very happy to see us. We only go up there once a month to check on them.

The drive was pretty because it was snowing and the trees looked like they were all flocked.

We are still getting in a lot of windshield time but I guess that is what we do. We are looking forward to when this country all turns green with leaves on the trees.