Auditing in Banja Luka & Sarajevo, Bosnia

Tuesday morning bright and early we started from Varazdin to Bosnia Hersgovina to fulfill some of our auditing responsibilities.  Our first stop was the border crossing at Jasenovac, Bosnia, where we crossed in 5 minutes. After a hint from President Bradford of the Banja Luka Branch, we found this small not often used border crossing station. What a relief after the crossing last time into Serbia, which was a 2.5 hours wait.

Banja Luka, Bosnia LDS Branch is also small in membership but housed in a 4 story building. The Church takes up the first two floors.

I was jealous of their five family history computers....I'm on a mission now to get at least one for our members in Varazdin.




We had lunch with the Senior Bradfords along the Vrbus River, walked through the fortress and took off for another 5 hours drive through the countryside of Bosnia, heading to Sarajevo, our planned stop for the night.

What beautiful countryside.  We took the mountain road, which at times was a little harrowing, but worth the amazing vistas and deep gorges.

We arrived in Sarajevo at about 7 pm and were able to find our hotel after only one drive by and u-turn!  Thankfully we had selected a hotel which offered free parking since parking on the street is almost impossible to find.

We found the Sarajevo LDS Branch just as they were finishing a music program put on by their 2 sets of missionaries...Sisters & Elders. They had a large crowd of people there to enjoy, young and old, members and investigators and friends.  It certainly looked like a thriving branch.  We were happy to visit with Elder Smith, who was our first Elder-son in the mission.  He transferred to Bosnia a couple of transfers ago and is loving Sarajevo.

The Newton's (Senior couple) gave us a very warm welcome. The audit went great and we thankfully checked into our hotel. The Rainbow Hotel.
We were excited to find we were on the top floor and had a 180 degree roof top view of the city.  It was beautiful and even more spectacular the next night when it started to lightening, thunder and rain over the whole city.


Next morning we met up with Pres. & Sister Newton and went for a short tour of the downtown area, the open international market, and had lunch with local fare. They treated us to a film festival movie, and then we hopped in the car for a longer tour of the area.  We were able to see where the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, which started WWI took place and other historic sites. We traveled out of the city, up into the mountains surrounding the town and it became obvious that Sarajevo is in the bottom of a bowl with mountains on all four sides. It was on top of these mountains that the Serbs set up their rocket launchers and fired down upon Sarajevo.

From wiki:  The Siege of Sarajevo was the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare. After being initially besieged by the forces of the Yugoslav People's Army, Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was besieged by the Army of Republika Srpska from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996 (1,425 days) during the Bosnian War. Nearly 13,000 of it's people were killed.  

We walked through an old hotel that had been used as a bunker site on top of the hill and now totally in ruins. 

















On a happier note, we walked along the bobsled cement run that was used in the Winter Olympics in 1984. The city is now modern and people of all kinds and nationality, religion and color flock there.  Our missionaries all say the best party about serving there is not knowing which religion a person believes in, if any, when they first start to talk to them.




                     Beautiful countryside around Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzgovina

                                 

Cooking at the Mission Home For Old & New Missionaries

On the way home from our Bosnia trip, we stopped in Zagreb and helped Sister Melonakos and sister missionaries purchase the food for this upcoming weekend.  We have been asked to create the menus and plan the food, and cook the food for the 20 missionaries leaving and the 14 new missionaries coming and their 14 trainers over the next three days.







Best part about this will be seeing everyone off, wishing them good luck with their future lives and then greeting all the wonderful, excited, anxious, willing new missionaries into the Adriatic North Mission.















We are excited about feeding their bodies, while they feed our souls!

Spancifest in Varazdin

For a whole 10 days, Varazdin holds a Balkan Festival, and thousands of people come to town to check out the local artisans and entertainers.These are our friends Zeljko & Ivan.

We were out of town for one week of it, but had fun on a couple of days walking through and enjoying the people and booths.


A couple of "odd" bands....and strange characters walking around.

New Varaždin Branch Presidency

Sunday, August 13th, Elder Crnich became President Crnich as he assumed responsibilities as Branch President for the Varaždin Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  His Counselors are Zoran Kociper and Stanko Cafuk, two humble men of God.  They are anxious and excited to work together for the joy and benefit of this small fledgling branch of the Church.  Remember them in your prayers, please!

Audits in Serbia

We left Varazdin Tuesday, August 1st, 7am and were making good time on the freeway until we hit the border crossing from Croatia into Serbia.  It was four lanes trying to merge into two and then once you get to the guard house and they check you OUT of Croatia, you again try to merge from the booths into three lanes with everyone pulling in ahead of you if they can, while we wait again for the Serbia guard to check you through. There were buses of people and large trucks but I felt so bad for the car ahead of us, full of children....we were 2 1/2 hours getting through the border.  We have heard of 4 hours from other missionaries.  You never know.  

Our first stop was Sremska, Serbia.  A very small town, very old and has a feel of a town struggling to survive.  

They did have a historic site of Roman ruins and a beautiful river running through the town. 

The Senior couple there are doing great though and loving it.  The senior elder is a former high school football coach and he has joined the coaching staff at the MLF in town.  He is thoroughly enjoying it.  They also live in an apartment which has a grape arbor across the backyard, which gives it a European flavor and is beautiful with large green and purple grapes hanging down.  

The Sremska Branch was in an older historic building, but had plenty of room and personality inside. Sister Decker senior missionary posing in front of it. 

However, the audit took nearly 4 hours there and we were late heading out for our next appointment, so had to call and postpone for another day.  

We then drove an hour and half to Beograd, which is the largest city in the Balkans.  It does give the appearance of New York, with it's mini skyscrapers and lots of traffic and pedestrian activity.  

We found a hotel "Hotel Rex" a block away from the church which advertised free parking...which is a big deal.  

The hotel wasn't that great but it was close and seemed not too far from the center of town.  It was actually about a 25 minute walk but lots to see along the way.  If it hadn't been so hot...over 100 and the middle of the day, we would have enjoyed it a lot more. 

We took lots of pictures of the fortress which is an old 1500's military compound overlooking the joining of two rivers, the Danube & the Sava.  

These iron doors were original made in the late 1500's.  Enormously heavey and solid.  Nothing was getting through them!

On the way back to the hotel, something funny happened.  In the distance I saw two older men dressed in dark dress pants, white shirts and ties, waiting for the traffic light to cross. Coming up from the back of them, I thought how impressive they looked amid all us other tourists.  As we got closer I looked around to see what office they might have come out of...nothing seemed to connect to them.  Coming up behind, I peeked around one of them and sure enough there was the missionary name tag!!! They were visiting the city for training from Frankfurt Germany.  What a great surprise and I can now say I know how non members feel and think whenever they see the missionaries walking about and don't know who they are....They WERE very impressive!

The audit that night went well.  The branch president there is a native Serbian but speaks very good American and his clerk is a man who works for the American Embassy.  His name is Moody, from Bountiful!!!  Our next door neighbors in Bountiful are Vicki & Larry Moody.  Although this man didn't know them, I am pretty sure they are related somehow.  

Next morning off we go this time for Novi Sad.  It was another 1 1/2 hours away but this time through beautiful fields of harvested wheat fields, corn and sunflowers. 

Acres and acres of sunflowers. I guess this is where you get your sunflower seeds from!  It was beautiful country and didn't feel quite so hot just because of the fields of green.  This part of Serbia seems more productive and there were manufacturing buildings where Brand name products with familiar names are being made...Bosch, Nike, etc.

The branch there is housed in a beautiful homelike building with a shaded backyard, lawn and Serbian outdoor cooking stove, where the members I'm sure have parties and activities.  It felt very home-like and comfortable.  The inside of the church was an home remodeled for church use, with beautiful with crown molding and wood floors.  Very nice.  

Can anyone read this cyrillic "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints?"

After the two hour audit (which is normal if everything is going well), we went to the senior apartment and appreciated their "setup".  Their windows overlook the Danube and the city fortress (every town along the river seems to have a military fortress).  

We walked across the bridge, watched the local military practice water-boat maneuvers and had lunch at a restaurant along the river.  

Although here again it was so hot that it wasn't a pleasant as could have been.  No one seems to appreciate air conditioning like us Americans and of course you have to ask special for "ice" or "leda".  

It was nearly 5 pm when we decided it was time to head for home...5 hours away. We went through the border crossing on a smaller road and didn't have to wait very long, so thankfully we were home by 10 pm.  It was very interesting and we loved visiting with the young Elder's and the senior missionaries about their experiences and the members in their areas.