Another week of travel, meetings and visitors from Idaho

This week we were blessed to have a Mission Tour from Elder Jack Gerrard. He is a General Authority w ur church, and the fun thing is he was raised in Mud Lake, Idaho. I didn't know anything good came from Mud Lake except for hay. haha The meetings we were in were all very uplifting. 

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We did a lot of border crossings this week, I think there was five times we crossed. August is the month that Europe shuts down and goes on vacation. Guess where all the poeple from the northern part of Europe go? Yep to the Balkans, so the crossings are from 1-4 hour waiting time. I do many things well, but picking the fastest line to get in doesn't seem to be of my gifts. 

At one crossing we saw several old open top Model-T type cars. They had signs on them that said London to Signapore road rally. I thought that couldn't possibly be true but some young elders stopped at the same gas station as them and yes they were driving these hundred year old cars that whole way. They had planned for it to take 3 months to complete. 

We had to stay in Belgrade for two extra nights to do other assignments. The first night we met up with another couple to visit for a bit. While we were visiting we could see a large bod of people gathering in the next block. Afer a while the Parkinsons, he other couple, said they should get home while they still could. They knew what was going on. The next morning they sent us articles from the news that showed they were anti government protestors. They clashed with the police and the police used tear gas and flash grenades to break them up. 

The next night we were coming back into the city from being in another town and we couldn't get back to our hotel because the police had he roads blocked. We were on the south side of town so we drove clear around to the North side, we got to the block where out hotel was, tree building away the the police wouldn't let us go on. So we drove down a side strret and found one street still open that the police were using to move more police in so we went down it and right in front of our hotel was one parking space open. 

There weren't any others for blocks. Heavenly Father does loves us. I went into the middle of the street to take these pictures of the riot police in their riot line and the protestors who had just overrun the police cars down the block. Helen made me come inside the hotel. She was no fun :-( 

When we got back to Sarajevo we had a fun treat, three of the Perrin sibling from our home town of Grangeville had come to visit Sarajevo. Callie had served here a few years ago as a young missionay and had come back with her sister Elise and brother Kade. They had two college roommates as well. They spent the weeked with us. They were sleeping all over our apartment. Helen was so happy to have some friends she knew from Idaho here. 

This week is our half way mark in our mission. Wow how did that happen? It seems like we just arrived here last week. As we look ahead at the calendar we don't see any let up in our schedule. Sometimes we wake up and don't know what country we are in (LOL), but we like staying busy!