Charles on the local news!

My favorite day of the week is Sunday. I love going to Church but what makes Sundays even more special is seeing and talking with some of my favorite people. 

     

My nephew James was visiting Nathan so he jumped in the photo. 

Nathan was in New York last week and this was the view from his room.

                             

                             

 A couple of weekends ago, we were in Zadar for a beautiful wedding. The bride is the youngest daughter of our longtime friends, Mišo and Ankisa Ostarcevic. Charles first met them way back in 1979 when he was a missionary in Yugoslavia, we’ve been close friends ever since. 

                       

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    When we found out their daughter Ema was getting married in her parents hometown and that their photographer had canceled last minute, I was happy to dust off my old photography skills and help out.  Big thanks to @alminijum, an amazing photographer in Bosnia, who kindly lent me his camera and lens for the weekend. Couldn’t have done it without him!

We did a bit of humanitarian work recently, delivering honey extractors to our beekeeping beneficiaries 31 in total across three different cities! The extractors have a big drum where you place the frames from the beehives, then spin them (kind of like a washing machine on the spin cycle) to get the honey out.

 

It was such a great experience, and we're always thankful to team up with our awesome partners at Muslim Aid. They handle all the training for the beneficiaries.  The real bee expert is Admir, the one in the green shirt. He’s been teaching Charles everything he knows about beekeeping. Charles is excited to have his own beehives when we get home.  Admir told us he reads my blog, so I just wanted to give him a little shoutout here and say how much we appreciate him!

 Another favorite day of the week is Monday, it’s our day off with the younger missionaries. We spent the day exploring the city. We have three new missionaries, two of whom just started their missions and have never been to Europe before. It was so fun taking them around old town Sarajevo to show them the sites.   

                    

We visited the largest mosque in old Sarajevo. The Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque, which was built way back in 1530. We were able to go inside as long as we covered our heads and took off our shoes. It’s such a peaceful and beautiful place. 

 

Also some shopping... another favorite of mine!

Turkish Delight is everywhere in old town! It’s a jelly-like candy dusted with powdered sugar. Several different flavors and some have chopped pistachios. 

       

 

To make the tour complete we had to feed the birds at Pigeon square 

We ended the day and dinner at Jeljo's. A restaurant that is famous for their authentic Bosnian ćevapi . A meat sauage with a pita bread chopped onions and kajmak (a thick creak sauce that taste like a blend of sour cream and cream cheese) So good! 

 

We have a small group of members from our Sarajevo Branch who live in Banja Luka, about a 3.5-hour drive from Sarajevo. They join our Sunday meetings via Zoom each week. Once a month, we try to visit them in person to join them for the Zoom meeting and share the Sacrament together. On this particular visit, Maria, wearing the green dress, gave a talk to all the members over Zoom. In the photo of the computer screen, you can see a member speaking in English while the missionary standing beside him translates into Bosnian.

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Last Sunday, we had 34 people attend church! I couldn’t resist sneaking a photo.
Afterwards, we enjoyed a linger-longer potluck lunch together.

 

There was also a change in our Branch leadership. President Parkinson from the Mission Presidency and Brother Dragomir Savić of the District High Council traveled from Serbia to set apart the new leaders. Charles is now the President of the Sarajevo Branch and his councilors are Muric Beglerović and Elder Hall

 

Meet 2 Latter Day Pioneers. Dragomir Savić on the left is one of the first members.of the Church in Serbia. He joined the church in 1986 and Haris Rozajac was one of the first members in Bosnia and the first missionary to serve a mission from Bosnia. He served his mission in England

 

Haris and his wife Megan live in Utah with their adorable little girl. They are here visiting for a few weeks. We couldn’t be more excited!

Fun fact: our son Nathan and Megan served as missionaries together in Sarajevo when Haris joined the Church. Five years later, Haris and Megan met up  at BYU and the rest is history!

This is a picture of them during their missions. Nathan is in the middle Megan is on the left and Haris is on the right sides of Nathan. I have always loved this picture.