Birthday Parties, Sunshine and Happy Easter

We attended the last concert in the series presented by The Sarajevo International Guitar Festival on Monday evening. We knew what we were doing this time. We got there early and had front row seats. The Spanish guitarist, Álvaro Toscano, was terrific! (you can find videos of his performances on YouTube). The Embassy from Spain has partnered with the Guitar Festival for multiple years and there were 2 rows of dignitaries from the embassy there that night. We throughly enjoy it. (even Lot - LOL)

On Wednesday, we, Sister Gunson and Thomas prepared and took a birthday party to Mira, one of our members who turned 84. She s a spunky lady, who lives about 45 minutes out of the city. We sang, ate cake, she opened presents and had a wonderful time visiting. I was happy that I found the balloon store in Sarajevo and we were able to find some great balloons. 

Thursday held a fun Relief Society activity, for the women of our congregation. Our group was small, but we had a grand time. Our theme was Easter. Iris gave a demonstration about "sarma", a traditional Bosnian dish of meat and rice wrapped in some kind of greens (cabbage, collard greens or swiss chard, depending on the season and availablity). She explained how to cook it and brought some sampling - it was delicious, YUM! 

Sister Lamb helped us dye Easter eggs, using onion skins as natural dyes. We decorated them prior to the dying with leaves and flowers. It was tricky to get the leaves and flowers to stay put, while trying to fasten them in a piece of nylon stocking, but some of them turned out beautiful.   

The final part of our evening was a short Easter message, provided by Ljubica, who joined us via Zoom from Mostar. All in all, it was a successful and lovely evening. 

Our branch president and his family will be leaving Sarajevo in a couple of months. They will be moving to Kenya for work and they are working on the process of getting things packed and ready to move. I told Marta that I would LOVE to come help get the yard in shape. (spending time in the yard is one of the things I really miss, while serving a mission) So we put our "work clothes" and enjoyed the sunshine, as we dug dandelions out of the grass and pulled weeds from the cobblestones. 

Warren and Marta has been a wonderful part of the branch. They have been generous and welcoming. We will miss them terribly when they go. They often invite the missionaries and neighbors for dinner on Sunday, which always feels a like home. And so it was on this Easter Sunday, they were wonderful hosts!

One of the best parts of this week was the opportunity we had to celebrate Holy Week and remember the last week in the life of Jesus Christ. As we gathered as saints, for Sacrament Meeting, the service was a great culmination of this week. The prayers, talks and music all testified of this truth, "He is Risen", Christ is risen, indeed!"

More travel and some culture (it involved a guitar of course)

 I love to travel and see new things but sometimes it's like, "No Momma, no! No more car time". It's like trying to get a 2 year old into a car seat after a long trip. 

We started out our week with going to Belgrade, Serbia for Zone Conference, another 5 hour trip. This one is a couple of weeks early because our Mission Leaders, President and Sister Cordray, have the wonderful opportunity to return to the USA for the marriage of one of their children. We are happy for them to be able to attend special family events. That didn't used to be the case for Mission Leaders. We traveled with our awesome young sisters that work with us in Sarajevo. We love our six young missionaries. We dread our next transfer because we will lose at least two of them.

Helen and I were both suffering with food poisoning for two days. We were worried about our trip but all was good. Be careful at pot luck events. This is the first time we have encountered anything like this. Some of the missionaries are worried about the water in these countries but that hasn't bothered us. My diet Coke will kill anything in my stomach 

Our Mission has started to rotate out a lot of the senior couples. That is one of the things we don't like. We have come to develop relationship with other couples and then they go home after their service is finished. We are happy for them but we miss them. But there is always more coming to take their places. I don't like change, but that is part of life. Over the next few months we will lose seven couples.

We spent much of Thursday afternoon with Emir, our friend and the church's advokat. We got documents notorized and visited two banks. Helen is getting setup as the country representative for the Church in Bosnia. I think we mentioned this before but it seems to be a long drawn out process. One bank was terrific and the other wanted more paperwork from the Area office in Germany. So, it still isn't complete. 

Helen was looking for live music online, and found that there is a five day guitar festival here this weekend. So of course, we went. They had a world class concert each night featuring a guitar soloist. They are classical artists (no bluegrass allowed). We went on Friday night with Elder and Sister Lamb, the other couple serving here in Sarajevo. One funny thing that happened.  As we were walking to the concert, we thought we had arrived and everyone were in formal wear The event had a big red carpet laid out and going up the stairs into the building. Each group was announced as they went up the red carpet. There were lots of cameras and a whole fleet of limos with people getting out. We thought this was bigger than we had expected. Then Helen looked at her GPS again and it said our event was on the next block. What a relief. LOL The guitarist was from Turkey and he was amazing! We were busy the next two nights but we will attend again tonight.

We had our two friends from Sierra Leone come to Church again on Sunday. Nickson rides the bus for 7 hours to attend church. So tell your kids not to whine about a few minutes in a comfortable car. Michael is in a different facility an hour in the opposite direction. It is fun to watch them when they get to see each other. That joy, this is why we are here helping people.

On Sunday night we had a Tex-Mex dinner at the Casbeer's house. We love them so much. We are sad he has been reassigned to move to Kenya. He works for the US Embassy, they will be greatly missed. The young missionaries thought they were in Heaven with with all the homemade Mexican food. I have to admit I loved it too. There was even apple pie, rice pudding and brownies.

Sister Casbeer was have a party the next day, she couldn't blow up balloons so she had the juniors blow them up. We told them they had to do service for their dinner.

We are happy that there is time to have fun along with the hard work And these young people do work hard.

Sometimes the Week is a Blur

Sometimes the week is a blur. You go to bed on Monday night and when you wake up, it's Saturday morning. This is how I felt about this past week - YIKES!

We spent the most of our week in Podgorica. We celebrated the birthdays of two sister missionaries. Elder and Sister Allan graciously host Sunday dinner for the young missionaries at their house. Our friend, Nenad, joined us for the afternoon. It was "Happy Birthday", to Sister Porter. (Sister Allan has employed the "20" candles multiple times and luckily, everyone whose had a birthday at their house has turned 20- LOL) 

Then on Wednesday evening we went to one of the Allan's favorite fish restaurant to celebrate Sister Allan's birthday. Both were delicious meals and lovely events.  

The bulk of our week included the visits to congregation members, missionary meetings, language training, an evening English class and a trip on Thursday to the Montenegrin coast.

We drove with Elders McGraw and Biehn to Herceg Novi - a beautiful costal city that sits on the bay of Kotor. 

It was a lovely day there :-) 

 

After our meeting our member, Venessa and her husband, our day took us south to Budva. The quickest route was to take the ferry across the bay - and so our first ferry ride in the Balkans. 

In Budva we visited with Sister Niktina, her son, Rostislav and another member, Zelko. The Niktins are always gracious hosts of their city, we discussed the possibility of an upcoming service project and shared a spiritual thought.  

On Friday, it was back to Sarajevo. About 10 mintutes out of Nikšić, they really up the game of a "rest area".  Lot is modeling the permanent roomy roadside bench with a breathtaking view of Lake Slansko. 

(it looks like he was photoshopped in, but that really is the photo - lol)

As we drove towards Sarajevo and we could see spring was in full swing. 

It was so fun to see the blossoms on trees and the vineyards budding out, and fields that had been recently turned. Lot's "farmer heart" always is looking at the soil. 

Because we arrived in Mostar a little bit earlier than our appointment, we pulled in to check out to the regional airport (just  "airport slumming", as we call it) 

We met Elder and Sister Lamb at the home of our dear member, Ljubica. It was a visit to her, that was the purpose of our travel to Mostar. She was the gracious hostess, as always and we were blessed to be able to visit her. 

About half way between Mostar and Sarajevo, is the town of Jablanica. Our bodies were tired of siting in a car and we stopped at the "Old Neretva Train Bridge" - mostly because it has easy parking (which is sometimes tricky to find) and a wonderful place to walk and stretch one's legs. We were able to stroll over the new bridge and walk down to the river on the steps. 

On Saturday and Sunday, we gathered to watch General Conference - broadcast from Salt Lake City. In adjusting for the time change, we watched some of the sessions "live" and some recorded from the previous day. It is a unifying feeling to know that we were gathered with latter-day saints from across the globe, to hear the words of modern-day prophets and apostles. Some saints gathered in chapels with the local members, some in their homes with family and/or friends and others watching or listening by themselves - the messages given were inspiring and encouraging. We were grateful for this blessing and the technology that makes it possible.

We believe and teach, that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the same church Christ organized when He was on the earth - restored in our day. It has the same organization and authority as Christ's original church. 

And just as in former times, we believe that God continues to speak through a modern-day prophet, our dear Russel M. Nelson. His conference message to the world - "seek to fill your life with charity and virtue".