We caught a weasel.....

Continuing the attic saga from my last post, I believe the squirrels have been killed by Jim's rat poison. It really kind of saddens me, but at the same time, I wasn't really thrilled to be sharing my living quarters with a bunch of squirrels! Jim also bought a large trap, just to see if he could really identify what kind of squirrel was in the attic. To our surprise we caught a weasel! What other kind of species we might eventually identify living with us, I'm afraid to speculate! The trap is baited and set, the elders have taken over the quest and we were delighted to let them be the defenders of the home! Now if we can only get the land lord to take us seriously when we tell him it's a land lord problem, not ours. This might go on for a while, it took 3 months for us to get a new refrigerator when ours went out. Fortunately it was winter and we used the back balcony to keep things cold. Hopefully the roof will be fixed and holes plugged up before we leave so the new couple taking over our house will not have to deal with unwanted guests!

Our furry friend. Our translator said she thought it was a ferret, but Jim thought it looked more like a weasel or a Croatian Kuna, (mink) . The Tadic girls and Maja, our translator,  took it far, far, away and let it go.

    We have been busy the last couple of weeks, getting projects closed and starting to pack up a few things. June will be a full month with our Humanitarian replacements going into the MTC next week and arriving in country on the 9th of June. Then we start a whirlwind of training and travelling to introduce them to all our ongoing projects and partners. We are sooooooo excited for them! I remember how excited and nervous we were, then exhaustion set in as we finished two weeks at the MTC and the long flight over here, The Winters come in on a Saturday, and of course we are in Bosnia for the week-end,  so we are making arrangements for the assistants to take them to our apartment in Varazdin and let them sleep for a couple of days until we return on the 11th. By then, it won't really be OUR apartment, it will be theirs, we will be staying in a hotel in Croatia until we train them in Bosnia and then they will be in a hotel and we of course will be here at our house, along with our creatures.





They met us at the cars jumping up and down, so excited to see us! The beds had already been delivered and set up, but they pitched right in helping us unload the cars!

    

Each house got a computer, monitor, new keyboard and mouse. The computers were donated to us from church head quarters in Frankfort. They changed out all of their desk top computers and sent them to the various country humanitarian missionaries to give out. I guarantee they will be put to good use here! Predrag, one of our translators will help them with the set up if they need it. The computers also have real, true live, LEGAL, software. Something pretty rare over here.

All the children got a new pillow and a new pillow case. Pretty cute, isn't she?



Each house got four new bunk beds with new mattresses. These cuties demonstrated how much they LOVE their new beds. This donation will increase the capacity of the orphanage, while also replacing 10year old, broken down beds and mattresses. This will be one of the last area project we do in Bosnia, so it was especially meaningful to us to have it be one that involved children. They just melted our hearts!




We are in the process of setting up another Neo Natal Resuscitation training here in Bosnia for November. This involved having Dr. Bennett and his wife Marcia come over from Utah to talk to the various doctors that will be hosting the NRT training. We met our Serbian counterparts half way between here and Sarajevo so we could have a hand off the good doctor and his wife that had spent time in that area of Bosnia as well. We saw some spectacular scenery on the way. This is just one of the little villages with a fortress on top of the hill, probably hundreds of years old.

 

We had to stop and get a picture of this beautiful river, This horse shoe bend reminds me of the Mississippi turn in Nauvoo.  Dr. and Marcia Bennett were so fun to be with for a few days, we enjoyed every minute of their stay!



This is out side on a balcony with Banja Luka in the back ground. The gentleman on the left is a doctor but also an administrator for the hospital, Dr. Bennett, The head neo-natologist for the hospital, Sister Bennett, Jim and I.



This week we went to a zone conference in Slovenia, it was a great day and we realized how much we will miss being able to associate with this great army of young men and women. What an honor it is to be a missionary! It was a long day and stretching was in order!

 The Member, Leadership, Support couple that are taking our place in Bosnia will not be in country until the middle of July so we will not have any over lap with them. They will do fine with out our input, all we do here is love our members and our missionaries, that's a pretty easy gig. They will do an awesome job, I'm sure. We are a tad attached to these people here, and at this point I can't even think of leaving them. No one will ever love them the way we do, Jim was asked to bear his testimony at our zone conference this last week about how our mission had changed us, among other things he said, "when we came here we were grandparents to 20 grandchildren, we leave with 26 grandchildren.......those being the children here in our little branch" They have changed us, made us better, enlarged our hearts and enriched our lives.  Grandma and Grandpa Erickson will always remember with great love the very first family to be baptized in Bosnia!


About three weeks ago we were just hanging out in our apartment in Croatia and the door bell rang. Surprised us because no one but the Jehovah Witnesses ever come to our door. Guess What??? It was a package from home! We could have cried! It just symbolizes how much love and support we have gotten from our friends and family our whole mission! Right up until the bitter end we are still being thought of and loved! Thanks Isaac and Sara, you made our day! We sent the Tadic girls off to girls camp in Serbia this Friday with three bags full of Monster Cookies to enjoy with the girls at camp. (The first EVER girls camp in these Balkan countries) They are making history!