What’s Up with the Whites in Croatia?
Mission updates: October 25 - November 18, 2025

November has been a very full month. So this blog goes until Nov. 18. Love to you all, we are so grateful for each of you in our lives. They don't celebrate a Thanksgiving here in our mission but we will do our best to make some kind of holiday meal for our missionaries. More to come on that. 

We found a place that was Kresimir Cosic's boyhood basketball hoop. Russell tries to block a shot. 

This is a gold pendant I have worn my whole mission. Each time I do something I don't want to forget it, I rub the necklace and think "this moment may never happen again" It helps me be more grateful and mindful. I rub it often! Below is what it is all about. 

Kairos: God of The "fleeting moment!"

We have started doing service one time a week walking dogs and helping at the Zadar shelter. Kathy Bates my cousin here over humanitarian found this for us. 

This project helps them, but makes us happy also. 

The puppies are very lively! 

A beautiful sailing Regatta in Zadar! We love living near all of this! 

This is right by where the Sister missionaries live. 

President Cordray is friends with Jenny Oaks-Baker (Pres. Oaks daughter and musician) so we got to have a question and answer devotional with her to learn about her life with her dad and our new prophet

This was too funny not to share. Jake our son sent a picture of our little grandson, Tommy (the hair is not real) 

It's the sisters turn to see Plitvice Lakes (our car can't take all 4 of them at a time) So here are some more pictures of this beautiful place. Such a great day! Love seeing this place at all seasons! 

Sister Ellie Kay and Sister Jessika Hunter

We can hardly wait to take family here when they come!

We love the fall colors! Feels a lot like being home in our Utah mountains. 

They do not celebrate Halloween here, but the next day, Nov. 1 is All Saints Day or Day of the Dead. The cemeteries are all lighted up and beautiful in the daytime also. Full of people remembering their ancestors. I love this! 

Love how much food these Elders can put down, and this is just the first serving! We have great times talking through meals and game time. 

Nov. 3  we fly off on a little prop plane from Zadar to Frankfurt, Germany to go with our district to our temple week. We have a new member going to do baptisms for her first time. 

The view of the coast and islands as we fly over the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic is amazing. 

We stopped early morning before driving to the temple for 5 days at a beautiful old town called "Rommerberg". I can't get enough of these historic old towns! The pictures say enough! 

St. Bartholomew's cathedral. 

See what I mean??? I could spend days walking around. But we only had 2 hours! I did get to buy some of my favorite German Christmas items. I love their beautiful items! 

Ok, back to the mission!! 

This is Orijana a great member in our branch who lives out on an island, and Milenka a new member first time at the temple. We loved this experience with her. This is the visitors center at the Frankfurt, Germany LDS temple. 

Had some special experiences with Russell helping with baptisms for Milenka's parents. She felt so happy and said it was one of the best feelings of her life. 

We spent 4 days helping all the new members, and experiencing the temple ourselves. The temple was full of people from the 5 countries of our district. We were sitting in a session with Croatian language spoken, Slovenian language on the subtitles, and two other small screens on the side with Serbian Cyrillic. What a heavenly feeling to be with everyone united with love for each other. 

This was most of the group, (we missed the photo!)

This is a new member from Zagreb Croatia (Sven) we just love him, he has only been a member for a week, and wanted to be at the temple. He just soaked it all in. He is talking with the new temple president who we just love. His name is: Karl Günter Borcherding. 

This is our grandson (Elder White) Teige getting to do a 5K around Lake Bled in Slovenia, we hope so much to get to go there sometime! 

Teige also just signed for track (Decathalon) with Utah Tech University in St. George when he finishes his mission next fall. We are excited for him. He had a great scholarship at Utah State with the Huntsman scholarship but wanted to do track too! 

We flew home for just 4 days. Went for our early morning walk in our Zadar coastline and it is so nice that most of the tourists are gone and it is quiet again. 

Several of our family members sent pictures of seeing the Northern Lights in Northern Utah. We remember seeing these once in Tremonton and it is so beautiful! 

Then 4 days later we flew back to Frankfurt, Germany for our other mission assignment, our Service Mission Advisor Seminar. We flew out of Split Croatia and visited a cathedral in Trogir one of my favorite towns on the way. 

These are our leaders over so much of Europe. The Buysse's from Brussels. They are amazing and spend so much time while still having older children at home. We have advisors from Spain, Germany, Italy, France, Albania, (we are are representing 5 countries from our mission: Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia & Montenegro), Bulgaria, and the Czech republic. So we had 8 different languages and translators going all the time. Lucky for us the go to language was English!  

They are so fun, they dressed up as Fishers and hunters and quoted Jeremiah 16:16 "I will send for many fishers...and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks." Our calling is to help anyone within the age parameter who wants to serve a mission to serve. There are so many ways to serve! 

The Buysse's and a new couple just called to Bulgaria that we became good friends with, The Davies from Pleasant Grove, UT. We all have such unique missions. 

The entire Europe Central Service Mission Advisors. We were able go to a session at the Frankfurt temple. (8 languages!!!)

All of us on the bus ride to the temple

This is Elder Hengst (the Area 70) over the Service missions. He is wonderful in helping us achieve all of our needs for each service missionary. This is a mission of the "one" each is unique in needs and requirements. 

I thought this was an interesting thing to see at the Frankfurt Germany airport, when you consider what was going on during WWII in Germany just 70 years ago!

One last p-day excursion with our 4 missionaries. Big transfers about to come, as we are getting 24 new missionaries and everyone is moving around. We hope to keep two of the 4 here in Zadar. This is another amazing place just 1 hour from us, Krka National park. 

We couldn't love these missionaries more, they bring such energy and joy into our lives! They love the prep day places we get to take them. They work so hard all week. 

We send our love! 

We are trying to pull our own weight! How do you think we are doing??

Honestly, Croatia is beautiful!!

Goodbye from Croatia

Last photo (we have had too much this month so I have to stop) This was last night visiting or member Milenka. Recently baptized. She is wonderful and wanted to show us photos of her parents. So many live in very small apartments in the old towns. We are so lucky to know them! 

Our nephew Dane Carter and his wife Aubrey had a major fire in their home in (Layton) last week. Our prayers are with them and would appreciate yours also. Such a difficult time!