Going Home

This last week we took Ron and Wendy (Elder and Sister) Davison around Bosnia and introduced them to our various partners. 

On Tuesday we visited the town of Kalesija to sign water contracts at the Mayor's office.  While there we were admiring the Mayor's map of Bosnia.  The next things we knew, the Mayor had removed it from the wall and had it wrapped up so that we could have it.  Once again, this is why we love Bosnia and the people who we have met here.

    
Wednesday we stopped into the Tuzla Red Cross where we introduced E/S Davison to the Red Cross staff.  The Tuzla Red Cross has been invaluable in helping us with many of our projects.  We are going to miss them.

In the afternoon we went to the University Klinical Center (UKC) to visit with the opthamology staff.  As we have stated many times the vision screening project has probably been our favorite project.  We could not have done this project without the help of the wonderful staff in the Children's Ophthalmogy Clinic.  We hope to be able to come back some day to visit them all again.  They mentioned to us that the 62 outlying primary schools who were recently trained have begun initial vision screening in their schools.  The UKC are now receiving calls from parents to schedule appointments for their children.

Thursday we drove to Banja Luka to show the Davisons the city as we do quite a lot of work with the Banja Luka Red Cross and Banja Luka Rehabilitation hospital.  We are also looking into doing a vision screening project in Banja Luka as well..  Ron and Wendy quickly noticed the beautiful countryside and have fallen in love with this countryl.  While we were there we saw Elder Graham (a former Tuzla elder) and his companion, Elder Nielsen. 

Friday was a visit to the Tuzla Children's Home to see the finished work on a project we did there which replaced pipes and fixed leaks in the home.  The children who live in the home are delighted with the their new bathrooms.  The leaking plumbing had caused major damage to the floor.  It was nice to see the improvements.

 

Friday afternoon we went to a restaurant nearby and visited with the staff of UKC.  We had a delightful time. 

 

 

On Thursday we received information from the area office in Germany notifying us of a possible airline strike at the Zagreb airport beginning at 11pm on Monday, November 25th.  We were scheduled to fly out Tuesday, November 26th at 9am.  On Friday we felt prompted to call travel in Salt Lake and receive some guidance.  We are now flying out Monday, November 25th at 9am.  Hence Saturday was spent packing and getting everything in order.  We speak in church here in Tuzla at 11am Sunday and will depart for Zagreb after.  We will spend the night at the mission home and hopefully leave Monday morning.  We are not surprised at this new development, our whole mission has been a trail of our faith. 

 

Again, may we say that it has been a privilege to be able to come to the Adriatic North Mission as humanitarian missionaries.  We have loved living in Tuzla and have made many wonderful friends.  They will always be our friends.  It was not chance that we came here.  The Lord has been good to us and we will never forget our time here. 

 

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a blessing to the people here and we feel blessed to be God's servants.        

 



Our replacements

This last week we have spent making preparations for our replacements, the Davisons.  On Thursday night we packed two of our 4 big suitcases with various things we are taking home.  Friday we drove to Zagreb with the extra suitcases (we can not fit four people and all the bags in our little car).  We spent the night in Zagreb as the Davison's flight arrived Saturday morning at 11:00 am.  Their flight was a wee bit late, but not too late. 

They arrived after spending 3 weeks in Provo, Utah.  They left Salt Lake Friday morning and after 23 hours of traveling with 3 plane changes they finally got here.  We took them to the hotel, let them clean up and went for a walk around Zagreb.  We attempted to help them stay awake till bed time.  After a quick bite to eat and a nice walk through the center of Zagreb we returned to the hotel to let them have a short nap.  Nap over we drove to the mission home where we met President and Sister Rowe and their family. 

Saturday was the 9th birthday for these two girls.

    
President Rowe had spent the day with the girls (Jessica and Anna) and had us pick the Davisons up at the airport.  We had a pleasant dinner and returned to the hotel to let the Davisons go to bed. 

We began our morning early as the Davisons had an interview with President Rowe before we returned to Tuzla.  We drove to the Zagreb chapel where we met several of our former Tuzla missionaries.  We also saw one of our translators and all the other missionaries serving in Zagreb at this time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We left church after sacrament meeting so that we could return to Tuzla before it got dark.  We have done lots of talking in the car and over meals, the real training (hands on) will start tomorrow.  What have we have learned in our conversations so far; the Lord is mindful of the details of his work.  There is no doubt in our minds that the Davisons have a work to do here in Bosnia.  They have a solid understanding of gospel and humanitarian  principles and we know that the humanitarian work is being left in good hands.