Training, travels, and superstitions

We were traveling again all last week and then hosted a couple this past weekend from Germany who came to give training on the Centers for Young Single Adults.  It is kinda funny because we really don't know a whole lot about the area yet to be their travel guides but we gave it our best efforts.  They were very nice even though we got lost a few times and made a lot of mistakes trying to get them around Croatia and Slovenia and got our car towed away or as they call it here Spider (that's a story for another post).  They go home in three weeks to Utah.  They had a great mission because they traveled to 32 countries during their 18 month mission!  We are thankful for all they taught us about working with the young people in Europe.

Here we are with the couple from Germany in the middle and the other couple is over the Center for Young Single Adults in Slovenia the Hansens, we really enjoyed our time with both couples.

We went to the Saturday market and these wonderful musicians and singers and dancers were there in there traditional Croatian costumes. There were delightful and so colorful!

I have a few pictures to share from our travels over the last week.  We think we might stay in Zagreb this week, but travel to the coast for a baptism on Saturday.  We have seven baptisms schedule for this month!  It is wonderful so see so many young people accepting the gospel, it is such a big step for many of the them because their families are often in opposition to them being baptized.  
The focus we are taking here as Seminary and Institute Coordinators and the couple over the Center for Young Single Adults is to create an organized program for Young Single Adults so that they can gather together and be spiritually taught through Institute, have fun activities together and be given opportunities to serve and learn leadership.  The future of the Church in Europe is in the hands of this generation and so all we can do now is create the foundation for the future of the Church by working to get this program off the ground so that these programs can bless and strengthen these wonderful young people throughout Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia.

I just loved this Church in the picture above and below is a alpine village we drove through, we couldn't believe how small the streets were that went through these cute villages. 

This is a baby cradle that was in a wonderful museum in a mid-evil castle in Slovenia.  It is all made of wood, I thought of the movie "Tangled" when I saw this cradle, when the mean lady comes and takes her out of her cradle to live in the tower.

We drove down to this really great village on the coast right next to Italy to visit one of our young single adults.  She is working there for a few weeks.  We were really glad we took the time to visit her because she had no food and had only eating bread all week, she is here working to send money back to her family in the Philippines.  We felt very bad leaving her the next day since she is lonely and living in such poor conditions.  It really is amazing to see how much the gospel means to her.

Our Branch President's wife was baptized today, she is the one in the middle.  He told me he has been waiting for 8 years for her to want to be baptized.  They were both so happy today, she really is so sweet and kind.  That is their son her husband is holding.  And the girl making a funny face at the baby is so wonderful, she does everything in the branch here and most importantly she helps me out all the time and does all the interpreting for all of us who don't speak Croatian.  We wear ear pieces and she softly speaks into a microphone and translates all the meetings into English for us.  It is very difficult to do and we all appreciate her so much!

I thought I would share with you some very strange beliefs found in Europe:
The weather here is VERY hot and VERY humid.  We can't believe how hot it is I thought it would only be in the 70s, but I was wrong its 95 every day with about the same percent of humidity.  Its crazy hot, so we sweat a lot!  And the Croatian people believe if a breeze blows on you or the wind blows on you, you'll get sick, so they close all the windows and hate fans blowing on them and turn off the air conditioners at Church.  It is really weird and kinda of funny, but bugs the missionaries because we are sweating and hot.  They also put cotton balls in their ears so they won't get an ear ache from the breeze going in their ears even though the breeze is about a 100 degrees.  I think these ideas they have are superstitions  past down from generation to generation.  They also believe if you drink cold water you will get sick/cancer.  We still ask for ice and more ice whenever we eat out.  They all think we are crazy!.

From Carrie with love