A photo blog..

  Once again we were honored guests at a family party. Our son, Blake called us via Skype to join the family for our little Ian's birthday party. All the sudden we found ourselves at Chucky Cheese with about 20 of our kids and grandkids. Wow! What fun! I almost could taste the yucky pizza and diet coke! Oh how I miss my babies! One by one, I got to see them, well, most of them. Some were just too busy to stop and visit the long lost grandma and grandpa, but we did get to visit with most of them. Thanks Blake, it was a great party! We love Skype! And are so grateful for the technology that allows us to keep up on what is happening at home.

We miss these little darlings!

    I thought I'd do a photo blog of some of our activities this week. I just have such a mish-mash of things going on in my brain that I can't settle on any one thing to blog about. So what you see is what you get!



 This is a picture of Jim getting a speeding ticket. Yep! It was a good day! Truth be known, we have a target on our backs when we are in Bosnia. We have license plates that are from Zagreb, Croatia. So we get stopped all the time. They don't really like the Croats. Once they find out we are from America and Humanitarian Missionaries they usually tell us to go on, but not this guy. He gave Jim a $20.00 ticket, it could have been more, he was trying to be a little nice. Our translator had to go to the post office down the street and pay it before we could leave. Jim shook both cops hands and told them, "havala" Thank-You. What a guy! Twenty bucks lighter, but polite!

We went to a little town about 2 hours away from Banja Luka, called Doboj. We were on our way there when Jim got the before mentioned speeding ticket. We visited a little hospital there that invited to come see their maternity ward as a follow up to the NRT training. As we were leaving I saw this ambulance. It's a little fuzzy, but it says, "From the People of Japan". Wow! How the tables have turned, I hope we are all remembering the people of Japan and their generosity when times were better. It made me think of the responsibility we have to care for and help others when we can, because you never know. .. Tomorrow you might be the one needing the help.

There are TWO babies in this little wire basket. Mothers are on either side of their baby with six mothers to a room.  I have now been in 5 different hospitals doing follow-up for NRT and never have I seen one single father in any of the rooms. Interesting??? They are trying really hard to be mother/baby friendly but haven't gotten very family friendly.

This is our delightful hospital staff that took us around to see the hospital. Notice the only one with a stethoscope around her neck. She is a doctor; the others were either mid-wives or nurses. They are not allowed to use a stethoscope.

 This is the bed where they put the babies right after birth to do any NRT procedures, weigh and measure.

                                                        The hospital operating room.

Fortress in Doboj. We didn't get a chance to go inside for lack of time, we want to do a project for the hospital so we will be going back to this little town and hopefully schedual our time a little bit better.

This is the closest thing to a computer in the hospital. Some of the doctors have personal computers at home, but the hospital administration  will not allow internet access. The cost is too much.

This is the "new" up-graded model in the pediatric department. The other was in the OB department.

This has got to be one of my all time favorites! Our wonderful Doctor in Doboj proudly holding her newest delivery! She and her staff deliver an average of 1,600 babies a year in this hospital. They get their pre-natal care in their own viliages, but come into this town to deliver. Doctors need to decide when they start a practice, do they want to work in a hospital or in their own office. It's either, or. Not both.

Our two Varazdin Elders come every Monday to write e-mails to their families. We usually take them grocery shopping but this day was the first warm weather and they decided to write quick letters and then go finish off their prep day playing basketball. Can't blame 'em, can you? It's been a long cold winter here. Spring has come to Varazdin and we are all enjoying the possibilities of shedding coats and sweaters.

Family Home Evening at our house with our Varazdin members. It's been our goal to teach them that F.H.E. can be fun!

Our little Bosnian family watching conference with us. They learned the fine art of playing Conference bingo, Jim and I spent Saturday morning covering all the English words and putting Serbian words in their place. I think it was worth the effort. They seemed to enjoy their first time watching conference.

Well, that's  our week, Blogger has put on a new editor evidently and it has no spell checker, so if anyone out there has a way of getting the old editor back or somehow figuring out how to get me a spell checker I would appreciate any help I can get. Life is really tough for someone like me who is a computer idiot! and a terrible speller! Love to you all, even google blogging people who I've been losing my temper with for the last few hours. If you don't see a post for  awhile, know that I'm just disgusted and will return when my spell checker does.