We woke up in Croatia and drove through Bosnia to get to Montenegro.
Montenegro is mountainous and lovely.
We were heading to church in Montenegro
and trying to figure out exactly where it was when we saw these guys!
What a familiar sight.
All five of us are returned missionaries so we were once these people.
Both of the missionaries were from Minnesota and the guy in the door,
Sasha, is a recent Montenegrin convert.
They were thrilled to see us there as we greatly increased the number of people there.
I know how that feels.
It is Easter Sunday in Montenegro because of the Serbian Orthodox church.
(My boss is Greek Orthodox and I would have celebrated Easter with his family had it not been for this trip, so it was kind of cool to be able to celebrate with an Orthodox country!)
It was fast Sunday and just so awesome being with these people.
This is a picture of all of us.
The church has only had a presence in Montenegro here for four years.
Up until this last year the only members in the area were the missionaries.
They almost closed the area, but this past year they had three converts, a family with five kids moved in (the dad works for the U.S. State Department) and a Russian family of three moved in.
The guy front and center in the red tie, Nenad, is a recent convert as of August.
He had the amazing ability to translate everything you said no matter how long you spoke before turning to him to translate. He is in medical school and was one of those people who is obviously very, very smart. His family has been in the Montenegro area for 400 years. We liked him. His first question to us - eyes all lit up - was whether or not any of us had poison ivy.
They don't have poison ivy in Montenegro. In case you were wondering.
They don't have poison ivy in Montenegro. In case you were wondering.
The Russian family was charming. The mom bore her testimony in Russian, her son translated into English, and Nenad (who did mostly all of the translation) translated into Serbian.
That was a cool multilingual experience.
The Russian family immigrated over from Russia and are starting their own company. You will need to choose the google option to translate the page into English, but support their business and click here and be amazed at the amazing pictures. And if you visit, I'm sure he would love your support!
Two of the gentlemen there spoke only Serbian.
We sadly dropped Andrea off at a bus station.
From there, we drove to the border of Albania and literally walked across the border (much the dismay of the line of cars since we got preference).
You cannot take pictures at the border crossing, otherwise we would have documented.
The Albanian border crossing people were smoking while checking our passports.
Ginette, Curtis, and Steven in Albania.
I just think this picture of them is so cute.
And aren't those mountains amazing?
Our Albanian faces.
Albanian lady.
We were chased by dogs as we left the border crossing area.
The good news is we were in our cars by then.
And drove for a little bit.
We were back in Montenegro.
We randomly decided to stop at a town called Budva.
It was unexpectedly charming.
I'll add more pictures later.
When we got to our Airbnb our hostess gave us a bowl of dyed red eggs.
Last year when I went to Easter dinner with my boss's family they taught me about the Greek Orthodox tradition of the dyed-red egg game at Easter.
It turns out this tradition is also honored by the Serbian Orthodox tradition, too!
Ginette won.
We have a video that I'll post eventually.
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