Another good week

We are at the point where time seems to be flying by.  Another good week here in the Adriatic North Mission - hard to believe we are approaching our six month mark.  But who is keeping track??

We made another quick trip to Zagreb during the week.  We drove up on Tuesday and back home on Wednesday.  We were delivering some items to the family refugee center in Kutina, just outside Zagreb.  We actually purchased the items in Zagreb, as we can't get things across the borders here.  We can't even bring a box of Bibles or Books of Mormon into Bosnia, which is an issue.  But that's a story for another day.  When we were at the store to purchase, we discovered that they had given the Red Cross a significant discount so we have money to buy a few other items they had requested.  We'll go back the end of the month to purchase and deliver the additional items.

John, Mario and Badi unloading the van (mostly Badi)

We placed LDS Charities stickers on all the car seats and booster seats

The children were so cute and wanted to help us with everything.  We needed some photos for our reports so we placed a car seat in the Red Cross van and let the kids take turns sitting in it.

Mario is a gem with the little ones

We have met and become friends with some awesome people that we partner with on projects.  They are compassionate and caring and we know this is more than just a job for them.

It took three geniuses to assemble the crib (instructions are there somewhere...)

One of the family rooms at the center, now with a crib

Friday night we had another bad thunder storm with lots of wind.  We had an appointment on Saturday in Maglaj (Mag-lie) to visit some schools that have no clean water.  One of the schools had a very large poplar (we think) tree fall on the roof and do significant damage.

Fallen tree on a school roof

Someone had cut the tree back from the roof and covered it with a tarp

We were with the principal and this was her first look at the damage.  There is still a week of school here before summer break.  She made arrangements with the teacher in charge to have the children enter from the rear of the school and not to use the front classroom.  The ceiling in that room is saturated with water and they are afraid the roof will cave in.  We are kind of dumbstruck that they would even consider allowing children back into the building.  But they have so few options.

This principal took us to four of her elementary schools that do not have clean water.  The bathrooms are squatty potties that are disgusting to use, especially for girls.

Squatty potty in an elementary school

Whoever thought those were a good idea?  Obviously a man...  They are all in deplorable condition; some of the metal is flaking off the pipes, they don't flush properly and often the sewer backs up into the bathroom.

Metal flaking off the pipes

There is no clean water for drinking or washing hands.  They have put signs up everywhere to warn the students.  They say it has been this way for 40 years.  The public health institute comes yearly to analyze the water and tells them every year it contains bacteria and is unsafe to use.  It goes no further than that.  The school districts have no money to fix anything.  That is where we're hoping we can be of assistance.  The schools need to do much prep work before we can come in, though.  We gave them a list of things to do - find out where the source of bacteria is from; in the community water source?  In the school well?  In the old metal pipes from the well into the school?  We need to know what to repair/replace before we start.  And again, we are dumbstruck that schools would be allowed to operate with these conditions.  We count our many blessing daily.

I've had a nagging earache for two weeks that traveled down into my throat and was heading for the other ear.  I hoped that it would just turn into a cold or better still, go away on its own.  I finally had one of our local partners make a doctor appointment for me on Thursday evening.  The office looked okay and the receptionist spoke enough English to help us.  The first doctor spoke no English, the second one who repeated everything the first one did, spoke a little English and apologized for his Russian accent.  If I didn't already have an infection, I'm sure I would have had one when I left.  No one wears gloves.  None of the equipment, like tongue depressors, are disposable, all are metal.  They pulled them out of a drawer and I can only hope they were sterilized at one point.  There is a very reputable medical school here in Sarajevo and I find it hard to believe they are teaching some of the things we saw.  They wanted to look at the back or top of my throat so got a small dental mirror from the drawer, warmed it in some machine that blew warm air, then rubbed the glass part on their hairy arm.  Both doctors did exactly the same thing.  And now you're putting that in my mouth???  I was fairly sure all I needed was an antibiotic but went away with prescriptions for an antibiotic, allergy medicine (I have no known allergies), pain medication and nasal spray.  We Googled all of them before going to the pharmacy and decided to fill only the antibiotic.  I'll take it for 7 more days and am feeling so much better already.  I let it go much too long.  We count our blessings every day.

Brother Rhees joined us for dinner today.  Camie and the five kids flew to Utah on Thursday and will spend the summer in Utah and Arizona, where her mother lives.  The baby is due July 19; Rhett will be here until early July, then join his family for five weeks.  We have invited him to have Sunday dinner with us every week while he is alone.  Today it was spaghetti and meatballs, salad and bread sticks.  We are amazed at how much the Elders eat each week.  And they are all so thin.  They went through two full boxes of noodles, 4 large jars of sauce, 40 golf ball size meatballs, 32 bread sticks and a huge bowl of salad.  It's a joy to watch them eat and to spend an hour with them.

We love serving in Bosnia and love what we are doing.  We bear testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel and the Book of Mormon.  We know Jesus Christ is our Savior, that he lives and loves each of us.