Every day life

We've had a fairly routine week here in Sarajevo.  We did get the car registered, with the help of our local attorney.  It is quite the process here.  The insurance agent does most of the work, including a police check.  If there are any outstanding tickets or unpaid fines, you can't register your vehicle until they are resolved.  Since all the vehicles in Bosnia are registered in the Church's name, there can't be any violations on any vehicle, not just the one you are trying to register.  So all the missionaries must be obeying the law while driving - there were no violations and our car is registered for another year.

We have wondered what our neighbor does with all their garden produce.  Even if they canned, dried, froze or preserved it some other way, they grow far more than those two old folks could possibly consume through the winter.  Today on our walk, we saw her selling vegetables in the middle of the huge apartment complexes across the road from us.  We see people selling all sorts of things over there, all through the year.  She recognized us and greeted us.  We sort of felt obligated to buy something so we bought lettuce, potatoes and carrots.  All for 2.50 marks ($1.57).  Then she gave us four apples for free.

Free apples from the neighbor's tree

I'm glad they were free; I sure wouldn't have paid for them!  But it was a thoughtful gift.  The apple orchard is somewhere up the hill behind the house.  We see him bringing buckets of apples down the road in his wheelbarrow.  We have a few apples John picked up off the ground in our backyard.  They aren't quite as rough looking.  Maybe between all of them we can salvage enough to make an apple crisp.

Fall seems to be burning season here.  They really burn year round but it is very bad right now.  They burn all the roots and plant refuse from the gardens.  It smells really bad and creates a lot of pollution.  This is the field behind us earlier in the summer.  He just lets it grow wild, then comes with a scythe to cut it down.  He leaves it in mini haystacks through the summer.

Neighbor mowing his lot with a scythe

 

You can't see the scythe very well but I didn't want him to know I was photographing him.  It gets fairly long before he cuts it down.  Yesterday he burned it.

The lot after burning the dead grass

We had done laundry and had the windows open when we smelled the burning grass.  We hurried to close the windows but our clean cloths probably smell like we have been camping in them.

Friday was Zone Conference, my favorite missionary event - NOT!  This time we had to leave the house at 5:45 am and drive four hours to Banja Luka for it.  Then after sitting in the meeting until 4:30 we had to drive back to Sarajevo.  The Elders had taken the train the day before and thought they would spend another night in Banja Luka but President didn't want them out of their area that long.  We waited until they finished their interviews with President, then brought the Elders back home with us.  We dropped the Elders at 9:25; that gave them five minutes to get inside their apartment so they met curfew.

Zone Leaders Elder McNeil and Elder Criddle teaching us about the restoration

AP's Elder Sharp and Elder Sorenson teaching us about the Gospel of Jesus Christ

We listened to President Nelson's talk from the new mission president's training seminar at the MTC.  He listed his five wishes for the new presidents:

1. Focus on your spouse and family.  There is no competition between the Church and your family, you can love and serve them both.
2. Focus the missionaries to be loyal disciples, now.  They should have at least one convert on their mission - themselves.
3. Focus on the local leaders and members - especially ward mission leaders and the temple and family history consultants.
4. Focus on the doctrine of Christ - and teach that.  Eternal life is the greatest gift from God. There are two unfulfilled promises yet to happen; scattered Israel will be gathered and the Lord Jesus Christ will come again.  The Book of Mormon will be the instrument through which this will happen.
5. Focus on the blessings of the priesthood.

I'm writing this Saturday night.  We will leave right after church tomorrow for Bihać.  We are delivering goods to the refugee settlement and getting contracts signed for the new vision screening project in that canton (county).

Sunday is day 10 of the Book of Mormon challenge. How can I stay on the good path?  Helaman 5:6-12 and David A Bednar Converted unto the Lord, October 2012.