We are writing from Belgrade, Serbia tonight. We fly back to Türkiye in the morning for 3 months. We will make a few trips back to Croatia during those 3 months, but we will mostly be in Antalya, Türkiye. We even have an apartment to move in to; no hotel! We will unpack suitcases for the first time since March 3, or 54 days ago! It's going to feel great! 

In April we spent time in Bosnia, Türkiye, and Serbia. One highlight this month was touring all over Bosnia to see where The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been helping people become self-reliant. It was overwhelming to see all the good they've done. 

In Bosnia the church focuses on 3 projects.  

1. Pregnant heifers. We were overwhelmed by how just giving one cow to a family, changes their life! They now have milk, cheese, and all kinds of dairy products for themselves and to sell. They have a baby calf they can raise or sell. 

We didn't know much about cows, but now we know that the church provides the highest quality cows in all of Bosnia! (That's Kathy's hand petting one.)  They are huge cows!

This is another cow and beneficiary we visited.  This man is so proud of her!  He loves to tell how she was the runt and now she is the biggest and healthiest.  

2. Greenhouses.  Families can grow food for themselves and have extra to sell.  These greenhouses are life-changing for a family to receive, and in some cases they are life-saving! 

3.  Bees. Can you see these beehives at the top of the hill?  Families are given bee hives and equipment for harvesting the honey.  They are able to produce honey for themselves and to sell.  It is a great blessing to them.

These four siblings are one of the families that received beehives.  They started with five beehives from the church, increased that to eight, and now have many.  They love their bees and the bees have been a wonderful financial help!  

Learning about beehives from an expert.  The church provided the beehives, honey extractor machines, and two years of training.

We also got to see the chickens and lambs one of the family's raise.  And wouldn't you know, the person I'm with in this picture, her name is Sister Lamb!

We got a laugh out of this home (the nicest one we saw in Bosnia) with all of these sheep in the front yard!

Every home we visit always brings out food to eat.  They don't eat with you; they watch you eat.  It's a cultural compliment.  They have so little and yet they share what they have.  It's always delicious, and very humbling as they thank us for the church donations.  We explain it is from all members of the church, and others who have contributed to the improvement of their life! 

This is the wife, husband, and his mother who are one of the families who received a greenhouse.  They were so appreciative! They gave us some of the produce they had grown. He told us that he wakes up at sunrise and works for 4 to 5 hours on the greenhouse and he loves it.  He says that since receiving a greenhouse he is now busy, productive, providing for his family, and saving for the future.  All from one greenhouse donation!

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does all of this in collaboration 

with the Muslim Aid Association in Bosnia.  We are so grateful to have such a good partner for the last decade in providing over 3,300 greenhouses across Bosnia! 

We were asked recently how to contribute. 

 If you go to churchofjesuschrist.org you will be led to a way you can donate.  

All donations go straight to needy families all over the world.  The Church of Jesus Christ provides all the overhead and senior couples, like us, volunteer so you can be assured 100% of donated funds help those in need on their way to becoming self-reliant.

The beautiful Bosnian countryside!

They make the most delicious bread in Sarajevo!  They cook it in this wood burning stove and they pull it out with this huge spatula.  

And here's the bread!  

We liked it so much we went back for more! 

 It's heavy and huge!   

A Muslim cemetery in Sarajevo.

These are the hugest croissants we've ever seen!  This picture does not do them justice.  They are bigger than Reid's hand!  They sell these in the Sarajevo airport.  And they're cheap! No, we didn't have one but we were tempted!  

NOW ON TO TÜRKIYE!

We took this picture and then noticed all the white cars and vans.  We have always said almost all the cars in Türkiye are white and this is proof!

This is what you see when you log onto Google in Türkiye.

Our good friend Kadir!  When Reid arrived at his home he found him up in this tree picking us a delicious treat!  See below:

So YUMMY, so fresh, and so generous!

You may have heard about this earthquake that hit on April 23. There were 151 injuries but no fatalities.  Luckily it was centered out in the sea.  Istanbul is over due for a very large earthquake which will be very devastating if/when it happens.

These are our two young Elders, Elder Nelson and Elder Olivera.  They help us so much! They fly in to Türkiye about every other weekend.  When they are not there, they are teaching Turkish friends on line in an office in Frankfurt, Germany. 

In between them is one of the newest members of our branch!  See below!

One of the best days of our mission so far was Easter Sunday!  A day never to be forgotten.

We had two baptisms.  Reid performed one of them in Turkish. 

The baptism was followed by a wonderful Easter meeting with our highest attendance to date!  35 in person, 6 on Zoom for a total of 41, most of them friends of the church!  We love our branch and seeing it grow with theses strong new members is more joy than I can describe!  

Yusef, Recep, Ömer, and President Bates

April 20, 2025

We were so happy to welcome Matthew to our branch on Easter, too.  He was visiting from Serbia, where he was recently baptized.  What a wonderful man!

The next day, we were happy to help Sister Shauna Little, Europe Central Area SA Representative, and Elder Bernhard Cziesla, an Area Seventy, visit with some of our members and hold a meeting with some of them in the evening.  You can see Reid giving a spiritual thought in this picture, with Sister Little and Elder Cziesla to his right  side.

Some of the 18 attendees.  It was a spiritual evening as we each went around and talked about the Savior.  It was enjoyed by all so much that they are asking to have another evening together soon.  

THEN WE HEADED BACK TO SERBIA!

         This is us just this afternoon!  Walking through the streets of Belgrade.  

Here are some things we have really liked about the countries in our mission: 

 1. Warm towels. They have warming pipes that you can hang your towel on in the bathrooms. Very cozy after a shower. Sorry to all you using room-temperature towels! 😀

 2. In parking garages they have red and green lights on the ceiling of every space, so you can see from a distance where there is an open place to park your car. It's very convenient. 

 3. They have car washes at all of the malls. You drop your car off while you shop and come out to a shiny clean car! 

 4. At some intersections in Zagreb, when you stop for a red light they have jugglers who run into the street and entertain you while you wait for the light to turn green! 

5. In Croatia, if you let a car in, or other nice gesture while driving, the driver will thank you by turning on their emergency flashers for two blinks. It's really a nice thing! It's the opposite of road rage.  😁

6. People dress nice when they are out in public. Even younger people. 

7. Nearly everyone has been very nice and helpful. They may look stern and unapproachable, but once you start talking, they are so warm; they smile and laugh.

8. We have enjoyed seeing all of the children outside playing with their father, mother, or grandparents. There is a good family generational love that shows. There is a general great love of children. They don't seem to bother people like we sometimes think people are feeling in the U.S. Kids are enjoyed and appreciated.  You are lucky if a baby or young child is sitting by you in a restaurant or on a plane. 

Our mission has truly been a grand adventure! We have been in and out of so many countries and met so many amazing people and seen the most beautiful things. We've seen beautiful rivers and bridges and sunsets and foliage. We cannot take it all in sometimes, and pictures do not do justice to it. 

But it's not easy.  We have hard hours and hard days.  Occasionally even a hard week.  We are not here to sight see or "just for fun." We are here to serve Jesus Christ. We work. We try to appreciate every day.  We love being together with our "third" companion, Jesus Christ!  

                            

                                    He is reaching for you to let Him be your companion, too.  

With love and appreciation,

Elder and Sister Bates

Marching on!

Something miraculous is happening in our mission! More and more wonderful people are embracing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and being baptized into His restored Church. Through the month of March, our missionaries have already welcomed more new members through baptism in 2025 than the entire year in 2023, and we have more than doubled the number of new converts year-to-date over the same period in 2024! It is all so very exciting! Here we are first at Zone Conference in Beograd, Serbia, with half of our mission, and then some pictures of other parts of Zone Conference:

We were in charge of the devotional for our Europe Central area WSRS group in early March. One of the things we talked about was the parable below. If you haven't studied it recently, please take a minute to read it in Matthew chapter 20. As with all parables, it has multiple meanings.

As mentioned, we are now living in Beograd, Serbia. Here is our first of (so far) 4 Air BnB's we've lived in. It is nicer inside!

Serbian Name Tag

Serbia is quite lovely. A mix of old and modern. The last picture is of a single family home! It belongs to the richest man in Belgrade.

Two good things that started in March were the opening of the Zagreb Community Center, and we started teaching English to Turkish speakers! Below is the flyer Elder Bates made for the Community Center, and a picture of Sister Bates zooming with our English students who live in Türkiye:

Inbetween all of this, we made a couple of weekend trips back to Antalya, Türkiye. We went to lunch with some members of our branch and another Senior Couple. See menu below: We had good food but none of us ordered the Tongue soup, Cheek Soup, or Brain Soup! The bottom picture is of us communicating through google translate! All 4 of us have our phones out "talking" to one another!

We were invited to a BBQ at one of our friend's homes and he made us such a feast! They served us a full plate, then brought more. To be polite we took some. Then they offered more, and repeat, repeat! You won't go hungry when you are with Turkish friends!

They had orange trees in their yard. They picked the oranges right then and had Elder Bates juice them. Wow! Talk about fresh orange juice!

While in Türkiye, we saw this license plate during March Madness!

We received this kind note from a couple in our branch after they had us over to their home.

Back in Serbia, we enjoyed their beautiful waterfront,architecture and these swans in the Danube! They were a good reminder of the peace needed as there is also protests going on there.

Last week we drove from Serbia to Bosnia, but not without some adventures! We sometimes have to share the road with carts and tractors.

GPS sometimes takes us down dirt roads.

But we also have these beautiful vistas, just like life!

We stopped at this Mausoleum where Serbian royalty are buried. Every wall is decorated with these very small tiles. Nothing is painted. Each tile is about 1/4 square inch. There are millions and millions of them, making these breathtaking ceilings and walls.

We arrived in Bosnia and our first stop was seeing this famous bridge built 300 years ago.

On our way to Sarajevo, we went through 58 Tunnels! Bosnia is very mountainous! The architecture when we arrived in Sarajevo is beautiful.

This hotel is the famous hotel all the reporters stayed in during the 1992-1995 war.

We were in Bosnia for a Senior Missionary Conference in which we were well taught, and enriched our already dear friendships.

We had some fun,too!

They had some games and Reid and I were the grand prize winners! We won this huge tub of Nutella! I can hardly lift it!

We ended the conference with a group dinner out at a Turkish restaurant, even though we were in Bosnia. (We eat Turkish food pretty regularly, so not as exciting for us!) As you can see, Turkish food is lots of meat!

While in Sarajevo, we went to a museum about the war which was very humbling. We also visited and walked in the Tunnel they built underneath the airport to get supplies. Elder Bates could not stand up straight inside the tunnel. The pictures below of the men are some of the brave men who buit the tunnel. Sarajevo is like a bowl with the city in the middle and surrounded on all sides by hills and mountains. Snipers were in the hills and it was very unsafe for the people to go to work, school, or even stay home as snipers shot through windows. 15,000 people were killed just in Sarajevo, almost all unarmed civilians. 1,601 of them were children, some who were playing at what they thought were safe parks when shot. There are many reminders of the war, but they have also rebuit and we found Sarajevo to be a nice city, and the people extremely kind.

After the conference, we drove from Sarajevo to Mostar, Bosnia. We saw the most amazing mountains!

We are in an Air BnB in Mostar, Bosnia right now. Here is the street our place is on. It also is very nice inside.

We walked what is called the Crooked Bridge, which was built in 1558!

We also walked the Old Bridge, which was built before 1558. Both of these bridges have a long history, including being bombed during multiple wars, and this one also collapsed at one time.

Yes, the water really is that color! They hold World wide diving competitions here and we hear it's a right of passage for teenage boys to dive from this bridge. The water is very cold we are told!

We have enjoyed Mostar very much. Here's pictures of how it looks.

There was much destruction here during the war. Here is Elder Bates standing between two buildings. One has not been restored and the other has.

We have taken some time to relax. Elder Bates likes to relax by enjoying a good view. I like to relax by shopping the outdoor markets!

Here are some driving signs just for fun. Your guess is as good as ours as to what they mean!

There are not nearly as many homeless here, but we do see beggars. You can see the lady's hand out in one picture, and in the one with the child talking to me, that child walked beside me for a long time and kept asking me for money. It was heartbreaking. In english, "Please! Food! Please!" We do give some of the time.

Here's just some cute people. We love seeing so many parents with young children out and about laughing and talking with each other. Inter-generational fun! People are so kind to us, too!

We like to find humor and joy in our day so I'll include a few fun things, too. When we saw the name of this restaurant, we knew we had to eat there! It was overpriced and not too tasty though.

Letters from home and written in Croatian!

Since it's been Ramadan, the Istanbul airport had this man pouring drinks by tipping over!

We have no idea what "Face Glue" is, or why this ad was in English!

It has been a strange month not being able to travel to Croatia where our projects are, AND we haven't been able to get back to Türkiye since they are having some civil unrest. We have been handling things via zoom, email, and What'sApp, so the work hasn't slowed down too much, but we miss being in person. We have enjoyed seeing 2 new countries though and we continue to be blessed with miracles! We love this quote that we believe in with all our hearts! "Jesus Christ, who created the seas, can calm them; He who gave sight to the blind can lift our sights to heaven; He who cleansed the lepers can mend our infirmities." We look forward to April General Conference and Easter! Keep Marching forward!