Gardens everywhere

I'm writing this Friday evening and Saturday, as we are leaving right after church on Sunday and probably won't have an opportunity to write on Sunday.

We have spent the week at home catching up from our travels.  We didn't know there was so much paperwork involved with humanitarian work.  We spend a lot of time on the computer populating spreadsheets, writing reports and entering financial information.  Creating a request for a new project is a tedious process with lots of information to provide and documentation to attach.  We requested two new projects this week.  One is to provide child car seats, booster seats and cribs for the family refugee center outside of Zagreb.  We partner with the Red Cross there and they have no way to transport the children to medical and other appointments without the seats.  The child safety seats are required by law in Croatia, the same as at home.  The second project is to provide workshops and counseling for mothers with severely disabled children to help them cope with their situation better.  At this time there are no programs in the public schools to educate or provide therapy for disabled children (with any disability from down syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, etc.).  There are also no social services offered to caregivers.

The Elders took our car Wednesday evening for transfers and didn't return until Saturday afternoon.  They wanted to stay in Zagreb until Sunday afternoon but we need the car no later than noon on Sunday to leave town again.  The ANM Senior Conference is in Lake Bohinj, Slovenia beginning Wednesday.  We are taking the opportunity to drive up the coast of Croatia to get to Slovenia rather than through Zagreb and staying inland all the way.  We should have lots of beautiful pictures to share next week.

The spring weather continues to be beautiful.  There are gardens everywhere.  I don't think I've seen so many tidy, well-tended, manicured gardens anywhere as we see here.  In a previous blog there was a photo of our neighbor burning his garden twigs and vines.  John has been friendly with him but he speaks no English and we speak limited Bosnian so it's been difficult.  We use our tablets and google translate with our landlord but we discovered this neighbor can't read.  He is Serbian and is 77 years old.  He is already in the garden when we get up at 6:00 am and spends most of the day there.  He is trying to teach us the names of what he has planted.  We had a somewhat uncomfortable but very funny experience with him the other day.

The driveway leading to our house passes by the side of this neighbor's house.  We were returning from our morning walk and said hello through the fence.  He motioned us in and lead us around the opposite side of his house.  We thought he wanted to show us something in his front yard, which is beautiful; full of tulips, roses, pansies and a variety of trees.  He sat us in chairs by the front door, went into the house and returned with an industrial size bottle of gin and three shot glasses.  Remember what a social culture exists here - you would never go to someone's house and not be offered something to drink, usually coffee or tea, and something to eat.  It's the same when we visit an office or business - we are always offered something while we wait or before a meeting starts.  It's not normally whiskey at 10:00 in the morning, however.

He was being so kind that we almost felt bad declining the drink.  We started saying, "ne alkohol" and he looked little hurt.  He kept pointing to the glasses and indicting just a little with his hands.  We continued with the ne, ne until he said "crkve?"  He was looking at our name tags and I think realized we don't drink alcohol because of our church.  Da, da we said.  Da crkve.  He seemed okay with that, then offered us kafu (coffee).  Ne kafu, ne čay (tea), ne duvan (tobacco).  He kept repeating "ne kafu?"  Then he offered Srpska (Serbian) kafu, like it might be different.  Ne kafu.  He kept shaking his head and repeating "ne kafu", as if there was no reason to live if we didn't drink it.  He finally sent his wife inside for something and she returned with some purple colored juice.  He pointed to one of his trees to indicate it was juice from the tree.  There isn't any fruit on the trees yet but we think it was plum juice.  And he assured us there was ne alkohol.  We hope we can still be friends.

The people behind us have a huge lot and have been busy all week.  We don't know if it was all family or friends helping but there was a big crew the day the tractor arrived to till and furrow the ground.  They immediately went to work planting.  We can hardly wait to see what comes up through that pretty dirt.

Large field behind our apartment

Planting crew in the field

Saturday morning we decided to be brave and climb the hill at the end of our block.  It goes straight up the hillside.  The pictures don't really show how steep it is.  John says it was a 45 degree angle.

The road to heaven, straight and narrow

It is probably only a half mile but it felt like five miles.  We stopped to rest and catch our breath a few times along the way.

About 3/4 of the way up, looking back down

We finally reached the top and had a nice view of the other side of the mountain, including the airport.  We watched a plane take off while we rested there.

View toward Dobrinja and the airport

We followed the road along the top of the mountain.  Several of the people we see planting gardens on the hill behind us live along here.

View toward the city from our hilltop behind the house

We weren't sure where the road lead so we just kept walking.  We finally started going downhill again and followed the road down to the other steep road on the other side of the house.  We were gone about an hour and a half and both of us are taking Aleve tonight.  We should be doing that walk everyday...

Beautiful hillside by our house

We are excited for a relaxing trip along the Croatian coast next week.  We feel so blessed to be serving in such a beautiful part of the world.  We're grateful for good health and amazing technology that allows us to keep in touch with all of you.  We love you and feel your prayers - keep them coming!  We need them personally and the young missionaries here need them.