Charles on the local news!

One year ago today, we arrived in Sarajevo to begin our humanitarian mission. It has been a life-changing experience. While we miss home and our family, we have loved every minute of being here. It’s hard to believe an entire year has already flown by… and now we’re officially on the six-month countdown!  We're planning to make the most of every single day. 

We have just one branch for the entire country of Bosnia, with members scattered all across the country. To help us visualize just how spread out we are, Charles plotted our members on a California map for comparison. The distance stretched from the Mexican border up to Monterey and across to Las Vegas. That’s how spread out our little branch family is! 

Thank goodness for zoom so we can all attend church together each week.

We have a group of members in Banja Luka, which is about a 3½-hour drive from us. 

Each Sunday they faithfully join our church services via Zoom. Once a month, we make the 

7-hour round trip to worship in person with these amazing members. 

If you’re wondering why we’re all bundled up in the photo, it’s because the church heaters weren’t working. It actually felt colder inside the building than it did outside! 35 degrees. We had a visitor come from Slovenia, Sven Sambunak, the district councilor over Bosnia. 

On those Sundays, I organize a linger longer and serve lunch after church so we can enjoy extra time visiting together. Since I was able to get the heater working in the kitchen, we all happily squeezed in there for lunch to stay warm! 

We try to visit members who live outside of Sarajevo and aren’t able to attend church regularly at least once a month, we travel to see them and bring them the sacrament. We have a set of missionaries join us. I love all of these dear members so much. Their faith and devotion are such a good example to me. 

We had another amazing Zone Conference in Belgrade Serbia. We love seeing all these missionaries every six weeks. 

Our mission president, President Cordray, is a man of my own heart… because photos are very important to him! He always makes sure we get the serious group photo and then we do my favorite fun one too.

If you notice the Sisters are wearing blue, it’s because we coordinate our colors for our pictures. Sister Cordray's favorite color is blue so this month color was to honor her.    President and Sister Cordray are the BEST!! We love them so much!!

Winter is starting to wind down, so we were finally able to plan a service project at the Duje Center.  We were all pretty excites to get our hands dirty.

A few of us spent the day working in the greenhouses, digging ditches and getting everything ready for planting, while the rest of us harvested turnips. After they were dug up, a few of us trimmed off the tops and bottoms of each one. It was a lot of work, but we had so much fun!

  

 

         We had a few senior missionaries come out and join us, the Smiths and Schmidts. 

The picture on the left was our ditch digging crew... notice our smiles. We loved every minute.

This is about half of the turnips we harvested. I had no idea turnips could grow so big! 

I don’t usually use turnips in my cooking… but after seeing those, I think I might have to 

give them a try.

 

Last Sunday we had a visitor from Zagreb visit. Elder Newton is our Senoir Elder who works on all of our visas. With 5 countires in the mission he stays pretty busy, Our church attorney, who works with Elder Newton to help keep all of our visas legal and in order, was able to come to church as well. It was so nice to have him with us.

The Bosnia Branch Relief Society, about half of whom join us each week on Zoom.

 

After church we enjoyed a linger longer lunch. We move the chairs out of the chapel and turn it into our dining room.  We love these people so much.