Road Trip

This was another exciting month in our mission!  We had miracles and we did lots of traveling,  but not by airplane this time.  This time we did road trips! We love taking road trips together!  We talked, enjoyed the scenery, read scriptures, listened to General Conference talks, made plans for the future, and marveled that we were driving along the beautiful Croatian coast.  

But let's start here first:

1.  Zagreb Zone Conference.  Our mission is so spread out among 5 countries that we meet in halves.  The Zagreb Zone Conference covers all the missionaries serving in Croatia and Slovenia.  The conferences last for 2 days and they are always amazing. We come away filled to the brim with spiritual insights, food, and fun.  We meet in this very nice chapel which is just minutes away from our apartment.

Here we are studying away.  Not sure what we were learning right then, 

but I do know it was probably something spiritually inspiring.  

If I haven't said it enough yet, we love being with the young missionaries!

Elder Bates sharing some wisdom.

2. Dubrovnik!  Time for the road trip! Since we needed to head to the coast for a conference we decided to go a few days early to see what all the fuss was about.  We'd heard about Dubrovnik and it did not disappoint!  

Dubrovnik is a port city with a huge castle.

There are no cars allowed in this part of town where we stayed—just stairs. Lots of stairs! The housing climbs right up the mountain, and the only way to get around is on foot. The paths are narrow, and I honestly don’t know how people manage to get things like couches or refrigerators delivered. Still, our Airbnb was nicely decorated. 

Just look at this beautiful place!

This is part of the old town, which has incredible architecture. (No cars again)

We enjoyed walking the castle walls that line the perimeter of Dubrovnik.  The views are spectacular! We were so glad we did it!

More stairs!

It takes about an hour and a half to walk the entire wall.  The castle is huge!

We had the perfect fall day to do it, too.

This picture and the next one, go together. 

The top picture is a picture of me walking alone,  taken by Reid, while at about the same time, 

I took the bottom picture of him way up in that tower!  

Here's an enlargement so you can see where he is in the above picture.

3.  Senior Conference:  We had fun being on the Senior Conference committee.  It was held in Biograd Na Moru in Croatia, another sea coast town with gorgeous views!

The conference started with Elder James W. McConkie III and his wife, Laurel, speaking to us.  

Elder McConkie serves in the Europe Area Presidency. 

A fun tidbit is that their son serves in our mission!

In the middle of their talk, we all got notification that a special meeting would be held that evening. We all watched together as it was announced that Dallin H. Oaks would be the new President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  

This picture brings us good memories.  Everyone in this picture has influenced us for good.  We can name them all; We can hear each of their distinctive voices;  We love them.  The only one still living is our dear, new President Oaks.  I am very excited to see how the Lord directs things through him.  I'm sure he's had good training from each of these beloved men.

We had 27 Senior couples and 4 Senior single missionaries attend.  We have alot of Senior missionaries in our mission!  We each have different assignments.  Some are Welfare and Self Reliance like us, some are Member/Leader Support (MLS), or Young Single Adult Advisors (YSA).  Some are office workers, or housing.  Some are Seminary and Institute teachers. Some serve in the mission presidency or serve as auditors in the District.  There is something for everyone. It's fun learning what others are doing, even within your own mission. 

We had great food and friendship

We played fun games like this one called Spicks and Specks. 

We also did some square dancing which was so much fun! I didn't get pictures but our "square" was pretty good at do-si-do-ing, and really good at laughing at ourselves!

We got to hear from Miso and Ankara Ostarčevićs.  They were the first couple that joined the church in the former Yugoslavia. They were the true Croatian pioneers. Miso was a teammate of Kresimir Cosic when they played on the club team of Zadar, winning 3 national championships, and a national cup together. They also both played for BYU in Utah. Kresimir taught them about the church and baptized them. Church meetings were held in the home of Miso and Ankica for many years. We were very honored to get a picture with them.  They are celebrities in Croatia and Miso serves as the District Patriarch.

Above is Miso speaking at the conference, and below is Miso with Krešimir Ćosić in about 1975.  They were best friends and both played for BYU.  They also helped translate the first Book of Mormon in Yugoslavia.

They are both true heroes to us!

We had other speakers including my dear cousin, GayLyn White, who shared her very emotional recent battle with cancer.  She did it with humor, class, and uplift. I love her and her husband!

We had lots of great speakers but this guy was my personal favorite! 

We did a presentation on "Retaining the Great Harvest". Our mission is having huge success!  It has gone from just 18 baptisms in 2023, 54 in 2024,140+ baptisms already this year.  Now the challenge is how to help the church with this huge expansion taking place all over Europe.  We met with our District President recently and he said one of his biggest concerns is how to handle the growth! 

We invited all the Senior missionaries to donate socks for a service project.  

The bags we filled contained not only socks, but shampoo, combs, pens, paper, shower gel, toothpaste, lotion, and more. Everyone worked hard and we had 120 bags filled, tied with a festive leaf, and ready for delivery in no time!  Some will go to Senior Centers and some will go to these students who attend the above School for the Disabled in Split, Croatia.

This is our wonderful Mission Leader, President Brian Cordray. He always gives the most inspirational talks! We also wake up to a gospel message from him every day, to start our day in the best way! 

We are all hoping that the Adriatic North District will soon become a Stake!

This is the whole group!  

4.  Split, Croatia:  We had to head South so we stopped in the beautiful city of Split.  We liked it so much, we stopped here again on the way back!  Can you see why we liked it so much?

 This is a castle we stayed in!  They have turned some of the rooms into an Airbnb.  It was complete with a big wood headboard and red velvet chair to sit in. We felt like royalty. (The castle was really, really old; but we assumed it was up to building code!) 

Here is Sister Bates out on the balcony dreaming of her handsome prince (who was down below taking her picture!)  

Can you find Sister Bates?  This shows how narrow some of the pathways are around the Old Town.  All walking, no cars.

Love us some Gelato!

We were on our way out of town when we saw this amazing fortress on a mountain overlooking the city.  We got curious and took the next exit which took us on this crazy narrow road up to see it.  We loved walking around and learning about this fortress.  The rule back in the day was, "Whoever had control of the fortress, was king for as far as the eye could see." It has multiple levels so not only did you have to breech one level, but there were more to go, each more difficult. It is called Klis Fortress.  

This fortress was built in the 2nd or 3rd Century BC! The fortress seemed impenetrable to us, but it did exchange hands several times, starting with the Illyrian tribe, the Romans, the Ottoman Empire, and back to the Croats.

The Croatian flag flies at the top

This was the latrine!  

We made it to the top which makes Elder Bates momentarily King over all he can see!

After the fortress, we went to an "Olive Museum".  Croatia has more than 6 million olive trees in the country.  This one we haven't seen in person, but we learned about it at the olive museum. It's 1,500 years old!

5.  Montenegro:  On our drive to Podgorica, Montenegro we stopped at a "Pirate Cove" called Bay of Kotor.  We loved walking around its old town, as it was night time and it had both a magical and mystical feeling. It was one of the highlights of our trip!

Between Kotor and Podgorica there is an island with a 5 star hotel on it.  You can't get near it without a reservation.  It's called Sveti Stefan and a one night stay will cost between 1,000 - 4,000 euros! It's owned by a Russian businessman.

We made it to Podgorica in time for this amazing baptism!  The couple on the far left is from Azerbaijan, and the rest are from Türkiye!

The font is ready!

All of the baptism attendees. We were a happy group!  

The next day was Elder Bates birthday.   Our friends in Montenegro surprised him with this delicious charcuterie box and some birthday cake.  It was the perfect snack for our road trip back to Split!

Once in Split, he did get to do some relaxing on the balcony. 

 Poor guy had to enjoy this view on his birthday :)

We also went back to a favorite restaurant we had enjoyed our first time in Split. 

It was so quaint and had just delicious food!  Most meals are served outside which we have really grown to love.

6. ECTPS Mission Zone Conference: We serve in the Adriatic North Mission half of the time.  The other half we serve with the Europe Central Turkic and Persian Speaking Mission (ECTPS) in Antalya, Türkiye.  

This is the Senior missionary couples zooming into Zone Conference

This is a Senior couple from our mission (the Crandall's) and a set of elders, in the airport on their way to Baku, Azerbaijan to start missionary work up again!  It is very exciting!

7. Visit from our big bosses: We were thrilled to have our Welfare and Self Reliance Manager, Davide Lotito from Milan, Italy, and his boss, the Europe Central Area Director of Welfare and Self Reliance, Christian Ottiker from Switzerland, currently stationed in Frankfurt, come spend two jam-packed days with us in Zagreb.  We visited multiple NGO's, had other meetings, and enjoyed learning from them.  We greatly admire them both and appreciate their hard work and the astounding work they accomplish!  If church members only knew all that these men do for them!  We are usually unaware of all the behind-the-scenes work of so many.

I can’t believe this is the only photo we got with them! This was taken at the Jesuit Refugee Services (JRS) office — a place we visit often. From left to right: Davide Lotito, Christian Ottiker, Ana, Stanko (both with JRS), Sister and Elder Bates. (And yes, Stanko really is that tall!). We love working with the people at JRS in assisting refugees in Croatia.

        

8.  Miscellaneous pictures:  I have been told this is everyone's favorite part of the blog so here we go with some random pictures we've taken!

Cows in the middle of the road.  You've got to be on your toes driving here!

Traditional men's Croatian clothing

Watch for wild boar - next 2 kilometers!

We found SpongeBob's Croatian cousin!

When you stop at a red light, sometimes jugglers and unicycle riders come out and entertain you while you wait for the light to turn!  We actually love it!  (Sorry about poor picture quality.  We hope you can see him balancing the pins on his face in the first picture, and juggling them in the second.)

We appreciate the details they add to the outside of buildings

A normal menu....but note the 3rd one down.....

"A Jar of Leaves"

6 Euro!

I'm hopeful someone will recognize Sister Schmidt!  She and I have a mutual friend but we can't figure out who it is!!  Please, if you know both of us, let us know!

We saw this old and a bit battered picture hanging in our Split, Croatia church building.  And this is a good place to bring this month's blog to a close with some thoughts:

Today in our church meetings we had members and friends from Turkey, USA, Russia, Germany, Iran, and Argentina worshiping together and taking the Sacrament together.  We utilized 5 different translators in the meetings.  Everyone stayed for Sunday school in the second hour and there were wonderful, diverse comments that added to the study of the day.  The gospel of Jesus Christ can certainly be compared to a tapestry with varying threads that all come together in a beautiful way.  We are grateful for everyone we have met so far on our mission.  We are knit together in love for our Savior, Jesus Christ.

"And he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembered the heathen; and all are alike unto God."

2 Nephi 26:33

Welcome November! 

May our gratitude lead us to humility, and a closer relationship with all, 

especially our Savior, Jesus Christ.