All Saints Day

This is only a tiny section of the huge Varazdin Cemetery.

In the center of the cemetery there is a statue of Christ on the Cross.
The whole area surrounding the statue was lighted up and people were on the sidelines praying.

This is an example of how large the graves are. The monument might have 5, 6, or 7 names with dates on it.

All Saints Day was November 1st.  It's a huge holiday here, everything was closed except the bars. I guess they are open all year round. We walked over to the Elders apartment and then walked on to the cemetery that night. We were just amazed at how beautiful it was! We walked for about an hour up and down the rows of lighted graves. We asked lots of questions and I share some of our new found information with you:
The grave sites are HUGE, they are just these enormous monuments, with beautiful granite platforms. How do poor Croatians afford such opulence in their graveyards? They sacrifice everything they have to afford to bury their dead, going into great debt at times. Also the grave sites bury multiple people.
How many people?  Sometimes up to six, or more. depending on how big the family site is.
Are they cremated?  Oh no. They are just buried soon after they die.
We have seen no Mortuaries. What is a mortuary?
Where do they take the bodies after death.  Oh they go to the church where the funeral is held.
 Does the hospital embalm the dead, then? That is not a word in Croatian. Okay, how do I explain this   one?
Do they drain the fluid from the body, and put in chemicals to preserve it a little longer? Until the funeral? That sounds terrible, why would anyone do that? Obviously, they don't embalm.
So every Croatian funeral is held at the Catholic Church with the priest doing the mass?  Yes, he gets paid to do it. But recently, people give money to the family instead of the priest to help out with the costs. Then the family pays the priest. If people give money straight to the priest, sometimes he just keeps it, even if it is over what the cost of the funeral is, so people have started giving it to the family.
Does the city pay for the upkeep of the cemetery? No, the family pays (the equivalent of $80.00 U.S.) a year for the upkeep.
Every Year?  Yes.
 That's a ton of money, what happens if the family can not afford that?  It is their duty to the dead. They sacrifice and borrow money if they have to.
So what happens if the children die and no one pays? Nothing. The cemetery still gets maintained. But if they are alive. They pay.
What is the significance to the candles?  They light the way for the dead to go to Christ. The more candles, the easier it is for them to find their way.
How long do the candles last? Several days, sometimes a week.
Other than going to the cemetery, how do people celebrate All Saints Day?  We have family dinners, drink and enjoy the time off work.

It was an interesting evening...left me thinking....
About This  or   About This
I'm so grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Great Plan of Happiness. What comfort it gives to us and  how blessed we are to have it for a foundation in our lives.

Apples..

The night before last Jim and I went with the Elders to visit some inactive members in one of the little villages close to our city. Both husband and wife greeted us with warmth and we had a lovely visit with them in their little living room heated by a wood stove. When it was time to leave, we stepped out into the crisp fall air, the wood smoke is lingering around the house, I  wanted to linger as well. Our new friends asked us if we wanted some apples.....Now in Croatia, you have to know, they are REALLY proud of their apples. Everywhere you go, out in the country, people want to give you some of their apples. We have been given many apples. And the giver always says, "these apples are pure, no spray, given to you just the way  God gave them to us."
   So this morning, Jim was working hard at his language study, I decided I would make some apple crisp for the Elders for dinner tonight. I started into what I thought would be a wormy sack of apples. "No spray, just as God gave them to us", kept ringing in my ears. As I began to cut and peel the apples, I realized that they really were pretty good. On the outside, they looked terrible, the skin was pitted, blotchy, and sometimes so discolored that I would have thought the apple inside would have been rotten, but not so much. The fruit inside was good, it was firm, sweet, and  tasty! These apple intrigued me. They were not at all like the apples in my favorite grocery store at home. (Kent's Grocery Store in Roy, Utah is the VERY BEST! in the whole world.)  They weren't like the primary song that I sang as a child. "Apples red  and apples yellow, round and juicy, sweet and mellow."  The skin was not pretty, they had problems, but....in the whole sack of about 10 lbs. there were only three apples that were infested with worms. For some strange reason, that really surprised me.
   As I sat and peeled I thought of how we are like those apples. Some of us are just the way God made us, we are far from perfect, but our insides are pure, our actions show that we care for our fellow men, and our hearts have a love for the Savior as we endeavor to follow Him.  There were three apples that had worms in them.. I saw where the insect had tunneled into the core of the apple, eating away at the good fruit and spoiling it. I couldn't help but think of how sin, sometime gets into the core of us. Just a little at first, then tunnels deep into our souls. As I cut away the infested part of the apple, I didn't throw away the whole apple, just the bad part.  Our Savior has provided for us the Atonement. To cut away the sin, to make us clean, and to redeem us. I guess while I was sitting at my kitchen table cutting up apples today, I just had an overwhelming feeling of gratitude come over me and I thought I would share it with you. How grateful I am for The Savior, for His atoning sacrifice, and for His love.
    The apple crisp was wonderful, but the time I spent pondering this great miracle was priceless....

Our First Package!!!!

We got our first mail from home! How Fun! How Fun! Our Mission President came over here from Ljubjana, Slovenia, (where the mission home is located). He met us at the church and the first thing he said was that he had a package for us! I couldn't wait to get home to open it! How mean that I had to sit through two hours of church! It was worth the wait though!   Yummmm! Candy corns on Halloween Day! How great was THAT timing?  American gum, sugar free everything! Splenda, hot cocoa, Crystal light, mapleline, measuring cups, measuring spoons! PICKLES! I almost cried, I was so happy! Oh and we can't forget notes and  pictures from the grandchildren! Now I will have something to put on my fridge! Also our daughter, Crystal, sent DVD's for her entertainment starved parents! ALOT of them! Should keep us busy for date night for the next few months!



My kitchen art...



Yeah! Isn't it just perfect!

    Okay, this is the funny part about the box.... About a month into this mission I started doing the stupid hot flash thing...Long story short. I realized I had forgotten to bring my estrogen with me. It took me about six or seven weeks to start feeling the effects and realize what was going on. So I asked Crystal to send it to me. I also have been going nuts with nothing to do with my hands while we are in the car. I'm so used to doing Raggedy Anne hair that I felt like I was just wasting time. So I asked her to send the Raggedy Anne patterns to me as well. Soooooo, on the this HUGE box, she wrote on the customs receipt:  ESTROGEN and RAGGEDY ANN PATTERNS.  It got through! Didn't even get opened at customs! This is a new and wonderful way to get thing through customs. They must have thought "Wow that's a LOT of estrogen! Moral of the story?
Don't mess with a doll maker that needs her estrogen! I bet they are still laughing at the mission home!

Oh Thank-you all who helped put the box together.. It was wonderful! And Crystal thanks for going to all the effort.that you did to make it so amazing! And also making us laugh so hard we cried!

Today is a holiday here in Croatia, so we aren't working. It's all Saints Day. Tonight we will go to the Cemetery and try to get some pictures. The town has been a flurry of activity all last week. Selling flowers and candles for the graves. Beautiful flowers! The graveyard is pretty spectacular as it is, one of the most beautiful in all of Europe, I've been told., so we will be excited to see it all lit up tonight.

I stand corrected, I'm not working today. Jim is submitting a major initiative, wheelchair project to our Area Specialist in Frankfurt. I'm the only slug in this companionship, I blog, he works. Sounds good to me, what do ya think?  I am so grateful for our laptop, it is wonderful! Jim works on the church computer and so the laptop is essentially MINE! Thanks, Rusty, for getting it for us, I'm not sure what we would do without it. Our companionship might be seriously jeopardized if we were fighting over computer time!

This week we are meeting with our local Red Cross to set up a closing ceremony with them for the wheelchairs that just came into Zagreb. We are doing the first distribution of them here in Varazdin.
We are also working on a few other projects this week and then next Sunday we leave right after church to go to Banja Luka, Bosnia. We will be there for three days, helping with a neo-natal resuscitation training.

I made a grand purchase this last week. I bought a new apron. I found a little store in the centar that sold what Jim calls "Moo" aprons. It's his Finnish coming out. It cost me about $16.00. It's the traditional clothing of all the little old ladies here. Anytime they are doing work, inside or out, they wear these aprons. Many times when I see them out in the country on the street they have a scarf over their head tied under their chin as well. I got it just in time, because we had some Church Education Missionaries from Albania come visit us for the weekend and I broke it in, using it  to cook dinner on Sunday for them and the Mission President and his wife. The Missionaries from Albania are the parents of Jodie Kapp, a dear friend of ours that lives in our ward back home. Our grand-children, Chase and Mason, go to school with their grand-children! It was fun to meet them and spend some time with them.

It doesn't do much for making me look skinny, but it does keep me clean!

We love you all so much.  This morning, As I started into the living room, I saw Jim at our coffee table, staring down at all the pictures we have under the glass. I said to him,"do you miss them?", He quickly turn away, and muffled a "Ya, I do", before we both teared up a bit. We do miss you but we love our work and couldn't be more happy as we serve the Lord here in Croatia.

Our coffee table.  All the walls in the apartment are made of cement, so we hesitated to drill holes in them to put pictures up. Putting them under the glass on the table was our solution and we love it! Our family photos are just right where we need them!

Family Home Evening in Croatia...

This week started out with a wonderful Family Home Evening at our house for the branch members. We had six members and four non-members! That's more than we ever get at church! We were very excited! Our focus was to help them understand that F.H.E. could be FUN! We had a short lesson, I tried to teach them how to play fruit basket, (it went over like a lead balloon) but the chocolate cake and music were both hits! One of our members is a street singer and he brought his guitar and he entertained us until about 9:30 at night! What a fun evening! It was our Branch President's/ Elder Nitta's Birthday as well so it was an event! Jim and I went to bed that night a little tired, but happy to see so many people out and see them happy and smiling. It's so hard for our members to get together for a social...not sure why. I think they all just work hard and don't really make time for fun. While we were having a good time the Elders got a phone call. Elder Nitta is being transferred to Zagreb and we are getting an Elder Andersen. The only thing that is constant is change.

This is our translater, Tihana and her mother. Tihana is a member, we are working on her mom.



Elder Nitta pretending to blow out the candles..he REALLY  blew them out before I got the picture snapped, so I made him do it again! Making Chocolate cake with
Croatian ingredients was interesting.

 Tues. we went to a little town outside of Varazdin to visit a rest home. It was so fun to see the little ladies in their aprons and head scarfs. I so wanted to take a ton of pictures, but was a little hesitant to offend. Maybe another time. I did get one of the president of Caritus and one of the sweet little ladies that he was visiting with.

The President of Caritus visiting one of the little ladies in the rest home that we went to visit.
The older women all wear these traditional scarfs, both in the house and out.

 I had promised the A.P.'s that when they came into town the next time, I would make them cinnamon rolls. They were the ones who looked long and hard to find us just the right place to live. Just so happened that they were coming on Tues. night. So I attempted cinnamon rolls, Croatian style. Everything is Croatian style....hand kneaded, (where is my Bosh when I need it?), flour comes in probably 5 or 6 different grinds, tip 450, tip 500...so on and so forth. Now I ask you, just which one is best for cinnamon rolls? It's all a crap shoot! I just guessed. Sugar is like little crystals, not fine at all. Powdered sugar is also not the same powdery consistency. I usually use margarine in the dough, but the margarine here is like lard..Really YUCK! So it's butter all the way around.  Anyway,  the Elders, (Jim is trying to break me of the habit of calling them, "boy's" ) got their rolls and I think they enjoyed them. It took me all afternoon, what a mess!

  Weds. morning we headed to Bosnia again. We had an appointment to meet with Elder Wondra. He is the Area Seventy over the little orphan countries that have not yet been opened up to missionary work. We were a little nervous, for two reasons. One, we have never been called to meet with a general authority before, I can't remember even shaking hands with one much less meeting with one. Two, we were a little concerned that they would want to scoot us over to Bosnia. Now we know that at some point in our mission we will probably be transferred to Bosnia. We love it there and look forward to Bosnia being opened up for missionary work. What an honor it would be for us to be the first ones to be able to go there legally. HOW EVER....we had never anticipated the attachment we have for Croatia and the people here in Varazdin. So you see our apprehension for our Weds. meeting with Elder Wondra?  Number one...two seconds after we met, we felt at ease. He was so kind, so gracious and we immediately felt very comfortable with him and his darling wife. Don't know why we worried so much..We went to visit a little family in Bosnia who are getting the missionary lessons from the Country Group Leader. (Who and What is that you ask? It is a Branch President, without a branch.) Ed Rowe is the Country Group Leader in Bosnia. He is an American attorney who works with the Bosnian government two days a week.  So we had a wonderful experience with this cute family and then Jim got to help Elder Wondra set Brother Rowe apart. It was an amazing blessing and an experience I won't soon forget. We then went out to eat with them and talked about the church in Bosnia, Elder Wondra encouraged us to to wear two hats as we work in Bosnia, he didn't want us to move there, not yet any way, but he does want us to look for opportunities to teach the gospel as well as do humanitarian. We are to remember that spreading the gospel ,(especially in Bosnia) is as important as humanitarian work and we need to keep that fresh in our minds. We made that commitment to him. We said good-night to him and his wife, grateful for the wonderful opportunity to meet with them and feel of their spirit and love for the gospel. Especially their love for the people in Bosnia. Your prayers for this country, so devastated by war, so crippled by intolerance and so in need of the gospel light would make a difference in getting the church legal I'm sure.
    Thurs, morning we met with the Red Cross director again to tell her that the kitchen project had been approved, she was so happy! What a great job we have! We took her to lunch and visited with her about the church getting legal. She was puzzled as to why it was so hard, we talked very honestly and openly about missionary work and how important it was to us and to the church. She has never seen a missionary, never seen "Elders" walking two by two, white shirts and name tags, scriptures in hand. Can't imagine that we would save and plan for our boys to go on missions and then send them away for two years. She was so impressed, looks forward to the day when she will see them walking in the streets of Banja Luka. It will come! That same time we will be walking the streets as well, with our name tags on, right now we take them off when we hit the boarder, so as to not hinder the legal process.
   We spent the day today looking for stoves for the kitchen here in Varazdin, spent most of our time being lost in Zagreb. It felt like a wasted day, but it's all a part of the process. Even our trusted GPS aka. "Ned"  was so lost that we thought he had blown a circuit or something. Finally found the place about 3:00, the man that knew about the commercial stoves had just left, "you know, Friday and everything" businesses here just don't work the same as they do in  America.
   Another week that has seemed to fly by....I somehow look back and think where did it go? The weather here is turning cold. Yesterday I looked outside and it was bright and sunny. WRONG!! It was bitter cold! October in Croatia, don't be fooled by the sun! And yes, the rummors are right. They do turn off the heat in the apartment building at night. About 11:00 P.M. it goes off and at 6:00 A.M. you can hear the clink, clink of heat coming into the radiators. Guess who doesn't get out of bed until I hear that little noise?