Go Croatia!!

All everyone here is talking about these days is Croatia playing in the World Cup finals tonight.  We were in Zagreb the night of the Croatia-Argentina game and the city was a mad house.  I'm glad we aren't there tonight!  John has mixed emotions about who to cheer for - his beloved France (where he served as a young missionary) or Croatia.  I love France as well, but how can we not cheer for Croatia when we live next door and it's part of our mission?

We've had a busy week meeting with several of our partners.  We were in Tuzla all day and met the Elders for a late lunch.  I neglected to take their picture and these are two Elders I don't think we have blogged about before.  Both are good young men and we really like them.  I've mentioned before how much responsibility the Tuzla Elders have running the branch group by themselves, plus all their other missionary and teaching duties.  No slackers are assigned to Tuzla.

Our church meetings have become more interesting lately.  It gets a bit noisy at times with translations taking place in English, Bosnian and German.  A local member was teaching the second hour class from Elder Echohawk's conference talk on forgiving.  There was quite an animated discussion between the three Bosnians (one an investigator) about if we forgive, then we forget.  It had been going on for awhile and I wasn't getting real good vibes, even though I didn't understand much of what they were saying.  Voices were being raised and they weren't looking at each other very kindly when I asked Elder Evans if things were okay or if we should attempt to move them onto something else.  It worked out okay and part of it is simply the Balkan way of discussing things.

We learned in District Meeting that we don't have District Meeting any longer, we have District Council.  And we no longer have investigators, we have "people."  I have a feeling "Mister Brown" will be returning to the missionary lessons (discussions to those who served missions in the 60's and 70's).  Ha ha!

Since I neglected to take photos of anything we were doing, you get to meet some of our branch members today.

Ian, Alexis, Shay and Malcolm Wood

The Woods are one of our embassy families.  Shay served in this mission when it was the Slovenia/Croatia mission and has retained his language skills.  He is the first counselor in the Branch Presidency and a big help with anything language related.  Alexis is the Relief Society President.  Ian is 4 and Malcolm was baptized in June.

Mira and Franz Graff

Mira is Bosnian, but lived in Germany after the war here.  She met Franz there and was married.  They returned to the Sarajevo area when her parents died and she inherited the family home.  She speaks Bosnian and German.  Franz speaks German and very little Bosnian.  He is not a member yet but brings her to church faithfully each week.  He joins the meetings, taking a smoke break in between.  He was baptized a Catholic and doesn't see the need to be baptized again.  He brings Mira to church because he knows they will receive blessings from it.

Iris Beglerovic with Sister and President Melonakos

Iris is also the only member in her family.  She was the first member baptized in Sarajevo about seven years ago.  She speaks English very well and translates emails and documents for us.  Her birthday was last Sunday and she brought a cake to church to share with all of us.

Sister Dunn, Kaleena McKell, Sister Smith

Kaleena is here doing an internship with an NGO.  She joined us almost 4 months ago and will be returning to BYU in 3 weeks.  She served a mission in Russia and can understand a lot of Bosnian.  The missionaries have enjoyed having another young member here with them.  We're going to miss Kaleena when she leaves.

Elder Roberts, Mario, Elder Evans

Mario is a special "people" that has been visiting off and on for about 6 months.  He lives in Rijecka (ree-yeck-a) but his mother is in Sarajevo and very ill so he visits her as often as possible.  When he is here, he tries to come to church.  Mario is very quiet and soft spoken and has a very sweet spirit about him.

Elder Evans, Zayko, Elder Roberts

Zayko is another "people" the Elders are working with.  He has very strong Christian beliefs and bears his testimony on Fast Sunday.  He struggles with life in general and works so hard to support himself but he has a great attitude.

We will be traveling most of next week.  Back to Tuzla to see if we can finalize a project proposal, then to Banja Luka for a day and on to Zagreb (hope the football craziness is finished before we get there).

In spite of all our complaining and murmuring, we love being missionaries.  We love living in Sarajevo and wish you all could come visit to see what we get to see every day (that was a hint...).  We testify of the reality of Heavenly Father and of Jesus Christ.  To quote Elder Echohawk's talk "The tomb is empty.  He lives."  We know him.  We love him.  We are trying to represent him well.