Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Let's Pretend it Hasn't Been Six Months


On the 13th of October we will have been on our mission for 6 months!  In each of those 26 weeks we have said on Sunday, we will write on our blog this week about - whatever wonderful and interesting thing has happened or will happen.  Then the week evaporates and we feel yet another week behind.  But now we have completed the longest move ever, we live in Maribor in the eastern side of Slovenia, we have traveled many places in the mission and in Europe and really, there's no catching up.  But writing about our experiences is still the best way to keep them fresh and we have a year or so to go,  so let the repenting begin!

We received a new assignment in the mission so we moved after a quick 5 months in Kranj.  That sounds so short, but we had really settled in there and it was hard to leave.  Our primary mission assignment has been to work with young single adults throughout the 5 countries (President Grant calls it the 54321 mission - 5 countries, 4 currencies, 3 languages, 2 alphabets, 1 mission).  The goal is to meet with them in their home countries in small groups occasionally, hold some country or zone activities for larger groups and twice a year organize a large whole mission get together. 

 There are also regional conferences like one in Romania which we and some of our mission young adults attended, and we help encourage them to go to those. Romania was a great experience, the YSAs were so much fun and we all went to Bran Castle as part of the activity.  For being known as Dracula's castle, it's actually a nice little family castle. 


And our brief time in Budapest, Hungary on the way was amazing.  What a beautiful city.



Our fall conference is now behind us and we begin our visits to young single adults around the mission. The move to Maribor was a long process.  Greg was sustained in July, but the senior couple who was here was not released for a few weeks.  Then we found that we needed a new apartment, plus we had a trip to Romania and one to Frankfurt scheduled,  so it was September before we actually moved.  We made the hour and a half drive  from west to east many times and grew to love the landscape of the trip more with each drive.   The branch is small and it has a unique personality and while a native speaker and resident is always the very best thing, the members have welcomed us warmly.  Our apartment is only a short walk from the church.  Greg's 1st counselor is a Slovene man with a fascinating military history and the other is a young missionary who is a language buffer for us.  We have two strong families, and  several single people who attend with faithful regularity.  It's a sweet little branch and we are happy to serve here. Our walk along the river to the church is quite lovely.




This part of Slovenia is only about 30 minutes from Graz, Austria.  While there are no Alps, we have lots of tree covered hills and the Drava River that bisects the city.  The old town is beautiful and we live in a new building in the old historic district called Lent.  



We have a view of the river and cute little balcony full of flower boxes which Jayne loves to fuss with when she is seeking peace. 



Our apartment is small, but very well arranged and we love it.
So here we are, a third of the way in to our mission and we can hardly believe it.  We were warned that it can be hard to fill the time, but for us it has just flown.  We miss our family and friends so much, but the richness of our life and opportunities is just a wonderful thing.  Here's hoping we get it all in writing!

As this monument in the square near the Maribor old town, we are very grateful that the plague ended 800 years ago.  And that so much lovely art was created in memory of that time.  This piece has stood in Center since the 12th century,  a mere century or two after Vikings landed and centuries before Columbus. Mind boggling.



Monday, July 13, 2015

Early May 2015

For a period of days which rapidly turned into weeks it seemed that events and new experiences flew in and through our lives like crazy new birds! We arrived in Zagreb after a perfectly uneventful flight (except the Dr.Pepper Jayne was saving for one last drink in Europe was confiscated at Frankfort - where we had a second security check).  We were met by our mission Presidents, the David and Judith Grants, and the new mission couple whom we had met at the MTC, the Del and Linda Hallings. That friendship has become one of our favorite things in the mission, they are so great.  We arrived just in time for a Young Single Adult mission-wide conference at the mission home and it was just delightful to meet so many of our young adults so quickly and all together. We went bowling one afternoon and these three young men on a team were having so much fun.  They are from Slovenia, Bosnia and Serbia, countries where only a decade ago there were strained relationships at best, war at worst. 


The Grants were so welcoming and spent a few days getting us over our jet lag and turning us loose in a car to explore Zagreb a bit (after our driving-in-Europe mini course and receiving a GPS unit to go with our car).  We remembered most of the tips - no right turns on red, a circle with a bar in it means no entry, traffic circles are great and scary, right of way is marked with a bold line on the intersections, and watch for pedestrians and bikes all the time because they are everywhere and they live in harmony with cars.  Then there are oddities like street names that are hard to see and change randomly, many roads are too narrow for two cars - but they pass anyway, and the traffic lights are:yellow-slow, red-stop, yellow again-go now, green-no really, go!  This is our first photo in the Adriatic North Mission, a mausoleum  in Zagreb, with one of the many gorgeous magnolia trees in full bloom.


Then it was time to pack our bags again and follow another senior couple who led the way to Kranj,(pronounced Kran with a whisper of a ya at the end) about 15 miles from Ljubljana (pronounced lee-ub-lee-awe-na).The minute we crossed the border into Slovenia we were absolutely enchanted!  It was rolling, forested hills with churches everywhere and charming villages and farms built in every lovely valley.  As we neared Kranj, we were greeted with a view of the Julian Alps that still never ceases to amaze us.  Our apartment is a little IKEA nest, much cuter than we imagined it would be.  We sit in the confluence of two rivers, the Sava and the Kokra which merge right at our apartment complex and then flow to the Danube, picking up some smaller rivers on the way.  I took this picture of our town from a cliff on the other side of the rivers from us.


We met the two nice elders right away and they informed us that due to the May Day weekend there were no stores open and none would be open for 2 days.  No problem - if you had sheets, pillows, food, toilet paper - you get my drift.  So for the weekend we slept carefully on a mattress cover and a sheet the elders had and were pretty sure were clean, and managed just fine with some food from the other missionaries which we combined for a Sunday dinner of spaghetti and French toast!  The branch was just wonderful to welcome us and we settled in for our first week of being totally clueless about absolutely everything happening around us!  But went for a walk up about 80 stairs to Center - the word for the old part of all the towns in the mission- and this made us think that we'd be just fine.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

April 13th - APRIL 27

MTC EXPERIENCE

The original date for our Missionary Training Center entry was May 11.  In February, our mission president asked if we could come earlier so we could attend two conferences that would help us immensely. After looking at our schedule, we made the necessary arrangements with the church travel department and the MTC. After some scrambling with visa rules and decisions about moving, we moved our household furniture and stuff into storage and entered the MTC on April 13.




Our first week at the MTC consisted of intensive instruction on the Preach My Gospel handbook. We elected to stay in our friend’s home and commute to Provo each day, arriving at 8:00 am (or close to that). We were placed in a district that included couples going to mission offices, humanitarian services, seminaries and institutes, and young single adult program. We became good friends with the Mitchells who went to Ball State University to run the institute program there, and at a few surrounding academic institutions.  It was a sweet and interesting time, and we learned about many ways to serve missions.

We had morning classes, a lunch break, and then afternoon classes, which meant a lot of sitting for people if a certain age, who needed to stretch and move a little every now and then The classes are help in a building reserved for senior missionaries, patterned after the young missionary classes, including role playing which was called TRC.  This was something e had heard about from our missionary children and it was as nerve wracking as they claimed! Our trainers were young returned missionaries who work every week with seniors. We approached our role-playing with trepidation, but decided that whatever happened we would be together. It turned out not to be that scary, especially for Greg’s companion missionary who served a mission a few years ago. (That is a lie.)

Some former missionary couples had mentioned to us that the food at the MTC was really good, but our experience was that it was still cafeteria food and some was good and some not. But it was fun to mingle with our couples as well as the young missionaries. The best thing was the ice cream served on Wednesdays and the beautiful spring flowers and weather.  The days were long but the first week flew by and we entered the weekend.

Due to scheduling problems our ward needed to fit our farewell on April 19, which was smack in the middle of our MTC training. We decided that we would talk about our missionary experiences thus far, including the MTC. We invited friends and family to attend and to our surprise many did actually attend, giving us a great boost of love and well wishes. We spoke about our week at the training center and our experiences of faith and friendship. Our ward was wonderful to us and we felt their love.

We entered into the second week of three days training which was focused on the CES, or Church Education System, programs. So our group narrowed down to those couples going to institute or seminary programs or to YSA program like us. It was interesting and more lecture-oriented, so more sitting. The third day included an introduction about security which included all the bad stuff happening around the world, or that could happen.

Our flight wasn’t until the following Monday so we had four full days to rest up, do final packing and weighing of bags and seeing grandchildren one last time. We also had time then to have lunch with a colleague of Greg’s to talk about a project he and Greg had jointly worked on years ago, that was in many ways a career highlight. It was fun and exciting. 

Then it was off to Logan where we stayed Sunday night with Jayne’s mother Maurine, laughing and doing final packing until early in the morning. She  encouraged us through several small meltdowns and drove us to the airport and away we flew to Denver, then Frankfurt and Zagreb!  Our first plane was a prop jet - our first in many years.  They should really attach those propellers better.


At the Salt Lake airport we had one last fountain drink and chat on our phones, then turned them off for the next 18 months!





Sunday, May 17, 2015

Moving and Preparation

April 2015


Missionary couples make all kinds of choices for what to do with their homes for the 18 months or so of a mission.  We love our ward and neighborhood, but think we may prefer a house when we return. So, we spent the month of March moving out of our condo, which meant massive sorting – trash, DI, long term storage and pack for the mission.  Amazing what we still (or again) had accumulated since our last clear out! We rented a storage unit close by for the furniture and household items we would pack for 20 months or so, until we found a new home and there were only a few days when we didn’t take something to our storage. Gradually we had fewer pieces of furniture to use until we moved into a lovely place provided by a dear friend for us to use until we left for the mission.



It was a blur then and it is even more so now. Near the end of March we were out of the condo and then had some professional help in cleaning it and preparing it for a lovely woman who hopes it's her last move.

We also spent time in March and then into April acquiring the last few things we needed to bring with us to the mission. We packed our two big suitcases with clothes, personal items and electronics like our laptops. To avoid extra fees we were urged to pack no more than 50 pounds each, plus a carry-on bag weighing no more than 40 pounds. So we weighed repacked and reweighed, and did it again until the last moment. We made it with 1 pound over on a suitcase of Jayne's and a wink from the nice ticket agent.

Before we left we wanted to visit as many of our children and grandchild as possible. So we planned a trip to New Orleans to visit the Clifford family living there. With help from Greg’s Frontier nephew we were able to fly to New Orleans to visit two cute little boys (and their cute parents).
We saw some local sights like the French Quarter and swamps and ate some tasty local food. On the way back to Salt Lake we stopped in Denver and spent an afternoon visiting Greg’s 91-year-old father.  The goodbyes began.

We also visited three cute grand boys in St. George and got to watch a baseball practice of the near 6 year old, and the antics of the 5 and 3 year olds. 

Between our MTC weeks we had a family party for one of our Salt Lake toddlers and our Farewell gathering the next day, so all the SLC Cliffords were there. One long lovely afternoon passed at Farmington Station with the two Johnson babies, playing on the square and eating. So we were able to visit all ten grandchildren in a short time. It was a fun and amazing experience. These little ones will grow so much in the next 18 months, but we can visit them through Skype and Facetime. For senior missionaries there is not a limit - except for the constraints of time differences- on the amount of communication with our family. And in the grand scheme of things 18 months is not that long. (One of us wrote this claim and the other disagrees!) Only the very oldest ones understood that we were going far away for a long time, so the parting was mostly painful for the grandparents.  But part we did, and it was off to the MTC!


Monday, March 16, 2015

It's a Small World (After All)


It seems to us and to our friends and family that we are going very far away.  Far from them, far from everything familiar.  The language(s) is a bear for us to learn, Slovenia is very European - but  Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro less so, and everything from communication, to what we'll need, to how we'll be received is a puzzle.  Sometimes a bit of a scary puzzle!  We are so happy and excited about going but reality does occasionally settle in and we know there will be lots of adjustments for these senior-ish missionaries.  On Jayne's first mission she learned about the gospel, herself, the church, other cultures and people - but there were nights when a view from the cold dark street in Belgium of families at dinner in a warm lighted home made her feel very homesick.

An obvious plus for us is that we each have a fabulous companion! We have some things to miss, 17 very dear children and 10 little ones, but decades after the France and Belgium experience we have technology that will let us see and talk to them all.  And as our mission process has unfolded we've made some sweet connections with the Adriatic North Mission that make us feel we are going someplace we belong.  It began when we got a call from the missionary medical department.  A nice RN in the office called about Jayne's blood pressure.  White coat syndrome often means her pressure is high at the start of a visit, then calms.  The doctor had inadvertently written the higher one.

In the conversation it came up that the missionary/nurse was a former Relief Society president of Jayne's and a friend.  Joan Turner was so helpful and kind and the kicker was - she noticed that we had asked for the Slovenia assignment and she had been in the same mission just 2
years before!  As the mission nurse she was based in Croatia, but travelled thoroughout the mission and was a delightful guide and cheerleader.  Jayne later met her for lunch and learned a great deal about people and the countries.  Her love was contagious.


Our friend Lois told us of new friends from her ward who are natives of Croatia and who hoped to meet us to talk about what we might expect.  We met for lunch and found Ankica and Misho Ostarcevic aren't just from Croatia, they are the first two baptized there (by Kresimir Cosic of BYU basketball fame, in the middle of the Yugoslavian night to avoid arrest).  Misho is also a well known basketball player and the two of them have continued to carry Kresimir's legacy for decades in both the country and the church.  They live in Utah now, but spend months each year in their home in Croatia. They were delightful and interesting and we will certainly see them in this beautiful country they described to us. 




Months after our call we attended the big Family History event called RootsCon (actually Rootstech, but it's like a big Comicon event for family research nerds like us).  Outside one presentation Jayne struck up a conversation with a young woman and when our impending mission came up and she became incredibly animated. 



She - Tiffany Mix Smith - had been a missionary in Slovenia 20 years ago when it was part of the Austria South mission and she thought that it, well, she thought it was the land of unicorns and rainbows. She was delightful and talked about that very tumultuous time as a missionary after the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1990 as well as her love for the Slovene people and their country.  

Slovenia was already advocating a democratic form of government so when she arrived in the 90s missionaries were allowed.  Her mission ended there and she couldn't have been more enthusiastic.
These are three highlights for us, of the connectedness there can be in the world.  There have been more - Greg is counselor to a man who was a business partner with our mission president, President David Grant. A former co-worker is Sister Grant's cousin.

Most of the people we meet don't quite know where Slovenia is (although most know the larger countries), yet we have met several who know and love this little place we will call home for a time.  For us it also feels like little messages from God, letting us know that we will be ok and there will be wonderful blessings - and maybe a few trials - for us there.

Monday, March 9, 2015

Of Unicorns and Rainbows

As we researched all things Slovenian one thing came through loud and clear – Slovenia is a beautiful place, almost unreal in its lush vegetation, clear blue lakes, gorgeous mountain vistas, castles everywhere and a beautiful coastline. To people born and raised in the American West such imagery is almost magical.

Jayne and I had a lot of questions about the weather, the food, and a host of other topics, including what do people do about cell phones, clothes, what to bring along. We like to research topics as we review what is going on in the world, so it was no surprise that we looked into what other missionaries, both senior couples and young missionaries, have said about Slovenia. We found individual blogs and a clearing house for missionary blogs run by private third parties. So naturally we checked out what senior couples were saying about their missions in the Adriatic North Mission. We heard about missionary apartments near ice cream stores and outdoor seating by the river flowing thorough the downtown with cobblestone streets.  

We read one couple’s blog from start to finish when the couple came home last year. They served in another part of the mission and talked about the general conditions in that country and how they enjoyed working with the people there. They visited Slovenia for a special occasion and noted its particular beauty. They mentioned that the young missionaries called it the land of unicorns and rainbows because it was such an idyllic place. We were struck with that imagery and so a title for our mission blog was born.


As we have talked about our mission in all sorts of settings, it is amazing the people we have found who have been to Slovenia and they all agree that the Unicorn and Rainbow imagery really applies. It, and all the countries in our mission seem to be a special part of God’s creation. We know that missions are not vacations and that work, even hard work will be necessary. We've learned a lot from Skyping with couples who are there now and from talking to our mission president.We are sure that we will be stretched spiritually, physically and mentally. We welcome the challenge and look forward to serving the Lord. It will just be in the Land of Unicorns and Rainbows.

There might even be fireflies.

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

The Adventure Begins

January 2015

Just about a year ago we were taking about about what 2014 would bring.  Greg would reach his magic number for retirement years in the public administration world, as well as a pretty high number of years on earth,  Jayne would have replaced enough body parts to make up one pretty healthy woman ten years older than her actual age, and we had been talking about a mission in the distant future for several years.  A European river cruise was looking really great for a retirement splash, or maybe a big circle drive around the country or even a romantic trip back to Machu Picchu where we met.

One day, prompted by something we heard at church, we began to keep watch on the LDS church list of opportunities for senior missionaries,
https://www.lds.org/bc/content/ldsorg/callings/missionary/senior-missionary/senior-missionary-opportunities.pdf?lang=eng

Then we watched some of these,  https://www.lds.org/callings/missionary/senior?lang=eng#elder-and-sister-fugal---europe-area.  These people were having fun together and doing good things!  Pretty soon we had concluded - after thinking, praying, considering, wondering how we could leave our family, wondering about energy and age - that we really wanted to serve our faith and our world in some significant way as early as we could, then see what else might await us in the next 30 years. We especially liked the idea of a humanitarian mission, there are so many things from installing water systems, to providing wheelchairs, to teaching.  We read the list almost daily for a while, and then one day at the same time we each mentioned noticing a request for a couple to work with young single adults, in Slovenia! The list didn't even mention the mission name - Adriatic North Mission - just Slovenia.  But we love young adults, (we have 12 after all) and Greg's second generation grandfather emigrated from Slovenia in the 19th century.  We knew (because of the www) that it was in the Alps between Italy and Austria and also bordered by Hungary and Croatia, we learned that it is an EU country and very safe and stable.  But that's it!  Still, over the summer of 2014 we became very attached to the idea of this call and began to plan to make ourselves ready and available for the spring of 2015.

The process is long!  We told our bishop we wanted to do go on a mission and he opened a portal for us on the church website (lots of privacy issues with medical and financial info) and we began to apply.  We gathered documents, got new passports, made doctor appointments, did lots of financial planning, and especially important, started buying make-up and goodies that we could never live without.  It was about 2 months from our talk with the bishop to hitting the submit key.  One little hitch along the way was when a very dear friend and cousin was called to be a mission president in South Carolina, and we REALLY thought it would be the coolest thing ever to work with them.  We mentioned it in our application as well as our Slovenia choice and let the heavenly chips fall where they may. A question here, a concern there and 6 weeks later we received the big white envelope so well known in the LDS community.

At this point our children pretty much knew we were planning on a mission.  We do have 3 sets of offspring from San Fransisco to Southern Utah to New Orleans, and they have 5 of our 10 grandchildren.  But the other 9 children and 5 babies are all nearby and we see them often.  And since we have politely requested that they provide us with one grandchild a year among the 12, we knew we could miss the birth of 1 or 2.  Everyone has grandchildren they love.  But we have really the most brilliant, adorable and sweet 10 grands in existence.  Don't worry, you'll see photos.  And we enjoy our adult children as companions and friends so much that leaving them sometimes feels overwhelming.  But.  They have full, busy, interesting lives and while they love us and even sometimes need us, we are not quite the center of their lives that they are of ours.  As it should be.

So Jayne took the big white envelope to Greg's office in Farmington, we closed the door and opened the letter that would change our lives.   While seniors (a distinction we do not love) can ask for a specific mission and usually they get it - there is an oft repeated warning from everyone - "you might not get what you asked for!"  But behind Greg's office door we opened the envelope to read, "You have been called to the serve a mission in the Adriatic North Mission, Slovenia region, as young single adult leaders."  Slovenia!  We then learned that the mission included Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro and Slovenia, but we will be living for 18 months in Slovenia.  We were so excited! The next thing was to tell all our children at something near the same time.  After some figuring and a few failed ideas we spent an evening in our hotel in Denver while visiting Greg's family and made this.



We texted it to all of them.  As it turns out, there are already changes in these first plans, but one thing is sure - We are going to Slovenia!