Four countries and exciting events

Our week started out with us in Montenegro where we had been for a week. We headed back to Sarajevo on Monday by way of Croatia. We love the Dalmatian Coastline, it is very beautiful. With all of these border crossings our passport books are getting filled up. We will probably have to get new ones before we are done here.

Once we arrived back in Sarajevo we got right to work helping our young missionaries with their work. We spent as much time as we could with our friends, Elder and Sister Stafford

They left for their trip home on Tuesday March 4th. We are sad to see them leave. We have gotten to be great friends in only 3 months. We had a lunch after church on Sunday, so Helen and Sherry Stafford made sandwiches for our part. They could get jobs at Subway.

We are happy that as of late we have been able to help share our beliefs with several people that speak English. We had a friend from China, that chose make covenants with God through baptism a couple weeks ago. This week our friends Alper from Turkey and Michael from Sierra Leone decided to become members with us. Even though we are in Bosnia, we meet so many people from all around the world. People are allowed into Bosnia and Montenegro are fairly easily, so many come here in hopes of getting into the EU.

As we drive around Bosnia we see lot of reminders of the war, that was fought here from 1991-1995. It was a terrible thing that has left many scars on the cities. Even more damaging are the scars, both physically and mentally that it has left on the people. For the older people it is still very tender for them. We see graffiti all around saying "always remember" certain events or battles. There are large cemeteries almost everywhere you look. 

On March 1, Bosnia celebrates their Independence Day. There wasn't a lot of activities during the day that we saw, but at night they had a huge parade with lots of fireworks and noise. 

(Sorry this week's post is late. I forgot to mention but this week we left early Monday morning to go to Belgrade Serbia for meeting until Wednesday night. Our hotel room was in the corner of the building and we didn't have internet.)