Pula, Bucharest S&I Mtg, & Baptism in Beograd

Our visit to Pula gave us an opportunity to visit with The Tolemans and Harris' from Camarillo. They were on a 24 day trip through Eastern Europe.

We spent a week in Bucharest, Romania for a S&I Faculty Meeting. While there we met some Romanian friends of Tom & Judy Everton. They met Serban and his wife in Arizona while on their mission there a few years ago. He had his granddaughters with him who were visiting from Germany.

We saw a beautiful double rainbow while they were visiting. It was the first any of us had seen. This is also the Peoples Palace, 2nd largest bldg. in the world.

On our final day in Bucharest Marin and his wife took us to the Heritage Museum where we saw homes from the 17th century. Very beautiful day.

Our British Faculty joined us for this faculty meeting. It was great to be taught by them. Our Europe S&I Coordinator was sustained as an area seventy, Christian Fingerle during Conference.

Sister Dumner, YSA center couple in Bucharest; Sister Heywood S&I Coordinator in Czech Republic, Sister Iachimov, wife of our East Europe Coordinator and myself at the conference.

We left Ljubljana early Monday morning. Arrived in Bucharest and had our first meeting with Bro. Jensen where we were taught about opening and closing seminary & institute classes, how to help and support our teachers.

A view of the beautiful country we live in. Spring has arrived and it is just beautiful.

We were invited to meet with Elder & Sister Wondra, President & Sister Hill, Elder & Sister Schmoe, (humanitarian missionaries), Elder & Sister Thompson and our District Presidents. We had an opportunity to discuss the rising generation we work with.

March 27 we were in Beograd for the bapatism of Velimir. He had great support from the YSAs in Beograd. He spent some time with us at the New Year's party we had in Ljubljana.

Nothing better than a baptism to feel the Spirit of the Lord.

Elder & Sister Lewis with Velimir

Ljubljana Institute and activity. They were having a wonderful time together which is what we hope for.

Davor and Stanka were in charge of the refreshments. Davor's speciality is Palacinkas (Norwegian Pancakes. They went fast. Davor and Stanka will soon we are newly weds. They are being sealed in the Frankfurt Temple on April 27th.

St. Patrick's Day, Baptisms in Rijeka & Celje, Super Saturday Lj., Volleyball, Celje Hike, Varazdin Institute

Radford, Lewis & Meier Clan

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Thursday we attended Institute in Varazdin with Sister Lukacek and class. It was good to see everyone. Sister Lukacek is so faithful, she comes in on the train 1 1/2 hrs. away.

Elders Pasche and Brown serve in Varazdin. We always go to our favorite

restaurant Dominikos with them

For P-Day I took the Sisters from Ljubljana to Celje to climb the mountain to the castle. Sister Knudsen only has two p-days left so we were making the most of it. The Celje Sisters joined us. The Elders were helping close out an apartment because Elder Moxley was headed back to the MTC for his foot to heal. He broke a bone in his foot from too much walking.

Sisters Kelly, Peacock, DeMill, Lewis,& Knudsen

What a great group of Sister Missionaries. One on each end goes home on the 1st of April.

A picture of our parking lot. Gage wanted to know where our garage was. We are the silver opel fourth from the left (beside the red car.) You can see why we are so happy to have the snow gone, parking was really a mess then.

Sunday we had our Assistants to the President over for lunch. Elder Jones and Elder Dixon. You can see that Elder Jones has truly worn out his shoes. Elder Jones is from Slovenia and Elder Dixon from Croatia.

We ended Saturday night by stopping by Kamnik to see Emillie's volleyball game against Maribor. It was a great game. We were hoping to win in three games, they won the first and second in a timely fashion. The third went into triple overtime and they lost the last two. As it turns out they are still in 1st place because of the points earned during the overtime.

Earlier in the day we went to Maribor with Sister Justus for Vanessa Draskovic's baptism. We missed our granddaughterMallorie's so it was fun to be to this one. A great family.

Even earlier than that we had a Super Saturday for our YM/YW out in Kranj. We started at 8:30 to pick up Emillie from the bus station (she took the bus in from Kamnik a 45 min. ride). Then we picked up Maja (YW President), Pres. Haglund (Branch President), and Dasa a non member. We met the other youth out at the Kranj bldg. where we had some scripture mastery

testimonies, a lesson from Emillie (Seminary teacher), video of the theme for 2010 and Mormon Feud, which the girls won and lots of pizza.

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Emillie teaching a parable about flying a kite and if you let the string go it will crash to the ground which is what happens when we let go of the commandments of God. They are there to protect us and help us to be happy.

Friday night found us in Rijeka for the baptism of Ante Durakovica. Emma, Julie and Sister Manley prepared a wonderful buffet for us after the baptism.

President and Sister Hill were able to be at the baptism along with Ante's wife.

We went down early to take a new pump to warm the water. It didn't work well either and the water was pretty cold. Elder Manley said we just needed to throw in some salt and it would be like being in the Adriatic Sea.

Tuesday I joined the Ljubljana RS for an activity. We decorated easter eggs to hang on the tree. It's great to be with such wonderful, faithful women.

As we travel to the Mission Home we noticed a log cabin home going up. It is amazing. They brought these logs in from British Columbia. It has been something to see it fit together. They have a big crane to lift each log in place. They are now working on the roof, today.

This is one corner of our YSA Center. We have been working on making it a fun place to be.

For Sister Knudsen's birthday we went to Anton's restaurant for dinner. She turned 23 and is going home on the 1st of April.

Another view of the log house.

Zagreb Baptism, YSA room, Ljubljana, Zone Conference with Elder Causse, Bled, Slovenia, Shumway visit, Monika's dance festival

The time has slipped away and I have gotten a little behind.

We have been busy however and many wonderful things are happening here in the mission. Robert Perloga was baptized in Zagreb. His brother, Tony, was baptized last December. What a great day for their family. We were downtown visiting Daniel Asler who was in the hospital waiting for surgery on his knee. They wouldn't let us stay for more than 2 minutes. We left and headed back to the tram where we ran into Robert on his way to his baptism. We had a nice visit on the tram. We looked out the window and there was Marko and Tihana on their way to the baptism also. They are two of our YSA's.

Mar Jean, Robert and Sister Thompson

Sister Justus has been helping me prepare the YSA room at the Church. We are making sheers for the windows. She also helped pick out a rug and wall hangings. It is really starting to look inviting. We hope our YSA will enjoy each other in this room.

Sister Justus is from Alpine and serving a mission here with us. She is a woman of many talents.

Davor and Edita have announced their engagement. We are so excited for them. Looks like they will have a June or July wedding.

Elder Matson and Robert

Sunday is Maribor. We drove up for Church and took Sister Justus with us so she could train the new Elders on being a financial clerk. The swans were out in great numbers and the sun was even shining this day.

A picture from our balcony. We still have a little snow here but it is just about gone as we speak. Actually it was pretty much melted but last Wednesday on zone conference day it snowed all day long. Today Sunday the sun is out and it is warming up and the snow is just about gone. I saw some crocuses ready to pop out so we know spring is on the way.

Walking down town one day we came across this hand carved bicycle.

March 10 was Zone Conference. Anton came and cooked lunch for us. He is great. We all love his food. After lunch we all sang to him "Called to Serve".

That evening Elder Causse had a fireside for us. He is one of the Seventy from France but living in Germany and a counselor in the Area Presidency.

Elder Causse and the Lewises

Sister Justus needed to make another trip to Maribor so we took her to the train station for her 3 hr trip.

Mar Jean & Sister Justus at the train station

On P-Day I took Sisters DeMill and Knudson to Bled. We had a fun afternoon. We tried the famous cream cake and had lunch at a little restaurant in a near by town.

The island in the middle of Bled lake.

Elder & Sister Shumway serving in Germany and working with YSA OutReach initiative came for a visit. We had some great training from them and took a few minutes to show them center in Ljubljana. The Thompsons came over from Zagreb and spent the night with us.

We prepared a dinner for the YSA and the Shumways. Sister Justus came and saved the day by getting all the food cooked and on the table when we came out of our meeting.

Elder & Sister Shumway from Moscow, Idaho

Saturday was a busy afternoon. We took Sister Justus and Allan, a student here from Utah State, to Emillie's volleyball game and then to Monika's folk dancing program. We all really enjoyed it. Emillie's team won in four games.

Lewises, Monika, Jure, Sister Justus, Allan and Monika's mother. Emillie is taking the picture.

Emillie, Monika's mother, Monika and Jure

Paul and I at the volleyball game after the win.