“We need thousands of more couples serving in the missions of the Church. Every mission president pleads for them. They…can leave the grandchildren. Those little darlings will be just fine, and I promise you will do things for them in the service of the Lord that, worlds without end, you could never do if you stayed home to hover over them. What greater gift could grandparents give their posterity than to say by deed as well as word, “In this family we serve missions!”

-Jeffrey R. Holland


Friday, July 27, 2012

District Meeting...adventures in Macedonia

We had a great  district meeting on Wednesday. The elders from Macedonia,who are the district leaders came up on a bus, as the couple humanitarian missionaries  who drive them, had to fly to Chicago, where there is an embassy to do paper work to establish temporary residency. (A two day trip!!!).
       These Elders are so amazing...such strength and testimony to be alone most of the time and not be able to proselyte!!!  We drove them back to Skopje as their trip on the bus was long and hard.
    The district Leader, Elder Adams, is from Canada, BC, he has duel citizenship, so he can stay in the country of Macedonia for 90 days on his American passport and then he switches to his Canadian passport for 90 days then back again. The other elders get transferred around after 90 days.
Elder Adams was called to the Croatia/Slovenia mission and learned Croatian in the MTC. After a week in Croatia they transferred him to Serbia..where he learned Serbian.  He was there for about 7 months and said pretty much got yelled at everyday for being an American...( The Americans were helping Kosovo during the war and did much bombing to Serbia.)  When they divided the mission this last February, to the Adriatic North and Adriatic South Mission, they asked him to switch to the Adriatic South  and serve in Macedonia, because he knew languages so well. ....they speak Macedonian there. Albanian is spoken in Albania and Kosovo, only a very small number in Macedonia and Montenegro speak Albanian.
  This Elder seems to be a genius in languages..he is amazing.....he has been incredible with the government officials and Embassies in Macedonia as they are still striving to get proselyting rights.
   The drive there and back was very beautiful; mountains, tunnels etc....the city of Skopje is about 600,000 and had an earth quake in 1969 and was leveled  so when they rebuilt it  they built wide roads and the city is very modern and beautiful.  It is the  most modern of all the countries in our mission. The borders are harder to cross....we had to show our passports and all the car info, insurance  etc at the border going out of Kosovo and going into Macedonia and the same on our way back.
       We did get lost for 40 minutes trying to find our way to the border, after we dropped the elders off.  When we got back. to Prishtina,.just in time for Institute, our  Elders had a wager that we got lost.....pretty funny!!  ( There were no signs in Albanian or English and ...we had 2 maps!!!!! ) It is about a 2 hour trip one way to Skopje, Macedonia. 
   We are taking our Elders to  Skopje next week for District meeting..they are excited about that  They pretty much don't get out of this city unless we drive them.  
  Interesting....when we first entered the country of Macedonia  we received messages on our cell phones welcoming us to the country.  We do not call country to country it is WAY expensive !!!  The Elders told us that to Park in Skopje..you just turn into a parking place text in your license plate number and they charge your cell phone for parking !!!
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