Visitors from Idaho

We were so happy to have our daughter Nicole and her husband Kevin come to visit us. They were here for 9 fun filled days. We saw lots of fun sites, went on exciting excursions and ate way too much awesome food.

We had scheduled their visit when we had a slow week for us without any meetings, so we could enjoy our time with them. We picked them up at the airport and spent the first day here in Sarajevo. After getting some lunch at one of our favorite restaurants, we headed up to the Olympic Bobsled track. It hasn't been used since the Bosnian war but it is still a major attraction to visit.

The next day we traveled to Mostar, a city 2 hours south. It has a famous bridge that was built by an Ottoman Sultan. We also visited Blagaj, a monastery built in 1520 at the mouth of an underground river.

We spent a few days at the beautiful coast, the fall weather was perfect and we took full advantage of the warm sunny days. Boat tours and swimming, but the best was just spending time with members of our family. 

Nicole and Kevin had both served missions in Russia so they were excited to visit Podgorica, Montenegro. In our congregation there, we have many members from Russia. They both connected with people that they had similar experiences and memories from Russia to share. Our little Church only had about 5-6 local members attending when we got here last November but look at the number of people they have now. They are looking for a larger building to meet in. It is so wonderful to see new people from several countries join together to worship our Savior Jesus Christ.

We had more things planned to do but we decided to just go back to the beach and enjoy the water and the natural beauty of the Adriatic Sea and coastline.

The weather is changing here. We hate to see summer coming to a close but the leaves are starting to turn colors. Here the trees down need cold temperatures for the leaves to change, I think it's because they are getting dry. We know what winter brings here so we are holding on to nice weather as long as we can.

Happy Birthday, Elder Smith!

What do you do on your birthday when you are on a mission. . . well, that depends. If you are lucky, and you grew up as a Montana cowboy, you might get to go help with cows. 

Elder and Sister Lamb, our friends and the other missionary couple living in Sarajevo, are Humanitarian missionaries. They do PLENTY of work supporting the young missionaries and working with the branch (Elder Lamb serves as our Sarajevo Branch president), but they have additional responsibilities for the church's humanitarian work in the country of Bosnia.

  

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is involved with all kinds of projects that provide aid and service to all of God's children all over the world. The funds for these projects come from the financial donations of church members. Most projects are accomplished by partnering with local charitable non-profit organizations (NGO). The projects vary by location and need. The man hours to implement these projects are often provided by senior missionaries, like the Elder and Sister Lamb. Bosnia has some pretty cool projects that support family self-reliance and independence; green houses, beehives and bred heifers.

The bred-heifer project allows families to apply to receive a pregnant heifer. Their application is reviewed and the family is vetted to make sure the family has the sufficient facilities to care for the animal. The local municipality and the church each contribute 45% of cost of the heifer, and the family contributes the final 10%. The non-profit organization supports the project with education and instruction.  Simmental cattle are a dual purpose breed, making them good for dairy or for meat. When the heifer calves, she will "come fresh" and the family will have a good supply of milk, to sell to the neighbors or to a processing plant. The family might instead decided to make cheese and sell it.  If the calf is a heifer, the family usually keeps her for an additional milk cow. It it is a bull calf, he will be sold as veal at the appropriate age/weight. 

Anyway, Lot got to help with the bred heifer project this past week. The cows came eight at a time in a mid-sized cattle truck. The16 heifers had been quarantined and certified pregnant and were delivered to 2 different rural locations, outside of Doboj. The local families came to get the the cows and were loaded into trailers, trucks and/or sprinter van to be transported to their new Bosnian residence. 

That's when the rodeo began.

 

Sometimes the cows were not exactly in agreement with the relocation and had other ideas about how the day should go - LOL. 

Lot and Elder Lamb had a good day - meeting the new cow owners, a local vet, cattle importer (the cows came from Germany) and NGO representatives.

 

Where was I, while Lot was at the rodeo? I went with a sister from our congregation to the Bosnian coastal town of Neum. 

Bosnia has a very small coastline, only about 12 miles, but it is beautiful. Our friend, Iris, had invited Sister Lamb and I to take a day trip to the coast. 

We left early in the morning, rode the bus for about 4-hour and on the way, we made a friend. We spent a lovely day at the coast - we visited, rested, swam in the sea and ate ice cream and delicious pizza.

When our day was done, we rode the bus back home - arriving a little past bedtime. 

Now, lest you think this week was ALL fun and games - our week was also filled with sending and receiving emails, attending missionary and Zoom meetings and striving to care for others. And although these things are SUPER important and we enjoy doing them, they aren't very exciting blog topics - lol

We also went to the US Embassy here in Sarajevo this week. Due to the many border crossings we have made, we needed to renew our passports, as they are nearly full.

(photo credit, Maria)

Side story - when we renewed our passports last summer, prior to coming, the application asked us to indicate "regular or large". We foolishly thought, "we are getting old, but we don't need large print passports." What the questions was really asking was - do you want a regular sized passport/24 pages or thick/50 pages) We should have done a little more investigation about the questions - LOL. Life! :-)