A busy week! Making Youtube videos for the church, Serbian visitors and an appreciation event!

We spent the beginning of the week making you tube videos of some our Humanitarian projects for the church, 

Senior missionaries serving over communications in Germany, Cathy and Mike Otterson, came to Bosnia with a videographer from Denmark to create professional videos highlighting a few of our humanitarian projects.

Our first stop was the Unaccompanied Minors Home, a place for refugee children ages 11 to 18, usually boys but sometimes girls, who have been separated from their families, orphaned, or sent ahead on their own. This photo is with the amazing people who run the home.

  

The home is sponsored by a Catholic NGO called JRS (Jesuit Refugee Service). We have been involved in several projects there to help make it more comfortable for everyone living and working in the home. We’ve redone the roof, improved the heating and insulation, and installed a new kitchen. Our newest project includes a new driveway and fencing, and we’re adding a sports court so the boys have a safe place to play.

This beautiful woman in the photo with me is the children’s guardian. She is like a surrogate mother and friend to each beneficiary who lives in the home.

   

Here they are filming a few of the boys. One story I will share is of the boy in the green hoodie is from Iran. He was traveling with his mother when they tried to cross a river on a raft. The raft sank, and his mother who could not swim drowned. He has been living at this home for almost a year and a half. During that time, he has learned Bosnian, along with several other languages spoken by the boys living there, Turkish, English, Arabic, and Italian. Some of their stories are truly heartbreaking, yet you would never guess it from the smiles on their faces.

The next two days were spent with our amazing friends at Muslim Aid. We had the opportunity to visit 3 of our beneficiaries.

This amazing woman received one of our pregnant cows. From the income she earned from her first two cows, she was able to purchase two more. Her husband is disabled, the cow she received has helped them earn the income they need. This cow reminded me of a puppy, it would not leave her alone! While they were filming her interview, it kept coming up and nudging her with its nose.

And in true Balkan style, she had an amazing spread of food waiting for us pastries, meats, cheeses, desserts, and all kinds of spreads. This kind of hospitality continues to be a serious problem for my scale! It wouldn’t be so bad if the food wasn’t so AMAZING.

The next stop was to visit this mother of three who had received a greenhouse. 

  

Her greenhouse waas thriving! She sent me home with a big bag of spinach 

 Her little farm was so amazing, with 40 chickens, a cow, and a pig with 4-day-old piglets, 11 of them! They were all up and running around. So cute!

As if all the food we’d already been served wasn’t enough,we stopped for dinner on our way home at an amazing restaurant right on a beautiful lake. Charle had the trout, heads and all. 

Admir and Armin from Muslim Aid are seriously the best! They always take the time to show us some of the beautiful sights around Bosnia. Not only did they take us to the lake for dinner, but we also stopped to see these historic wooden mills in Jajce. They have been used for centuries to grind wheat, powered by the flowing water of the Pliva River. They looked like something right out of a fairytale. 

The last day of filming was spent in a small village in the beautiful countryside. This sweet home is shared by three generations of women, a grandmother, mother, and daughter. 

They once lived in an apartment in the city, but after the daughter was diagnosed with lung and heart problems, they sold it and moved to the country. The mother received eight beehives and is still learning the ins and outs of beekeeping. She hopes to sell her honey to help support their family.

  These women are so amazing. They had a nice garden with herbs and lots of flowers to keep the bees happy!

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They also treated us to an amazing spread of delicious food, smoked cheeses, fresh (raw) cheese, burek (my favorite Bosnian pastry), fruit and dessert plum cake. She even sent us home with some of the smoked cheese… sooo good! I think I’ll just stay away from my scale this week.

It was a wonderful few days. It’s always so nice to see how these projects are blessing lives.

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We had some visitors come see our beautiful Sarajevo! The Hansons and Bloods are senior missionaries serving in Serbia, and we gave them our “famous” Sarajevo city tour. I LOVE showing off this amazing city it has so much history and beauty. We took them to see the Tunnel of Salvation from the Balkan War and explored Old Town. There’s a high school right in the middle of Old Town, and we got a sneak peek of some beautiful girls taking their graduation photos. Their dresses were amazing!

This is how you do relief society when you have only one branch in the entire country of Bosnia... on zoom. We had our monthly activity at my apartment with a few who zoomed in. LOVE these ladies so much! One lives in Banja Luka 3 hours way and lower left lives in Mostar 2 hours away. They both zoom each for Sunday services and also for our activities. LOVE them all so much!

On Saturday, we attended an appreciation event at the Duje Center. It was a wonderful event. It was a privilege to accept an award on behalf of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the humanitarian projects we have partnered on with MFS Emmaus.

  

Following the ceremony, we were served an amazing four-course meal… yes, after this past week of feasting, I will definitely be staying away from the scale for a few days! After lunch, we had a nice visit with some of the government officials who attended. They wanted to thank us and our church for all the work being done at the Duje Center.

The event wasn’t in Banja Luka, so we stayed the night and attended church with our amazing members there. We also had two visitors from Zagreb from our District High Council. With our visitors and the young missionaries, we had 11 people in attendance!