About Me

Hi!  My name is Rosilind and I am the author of A Little R & R.  First and foremost I am a Christian.  My faith and the foundation of my faith (God's Word and the principles found in it) permeate everything I say and do.  This is who I am. It is my identity and it shapes me from the very core of my being.

I am also the wife of a wonderful, godly man and mother to two of the sweetest, cutest, and most wonderful boys in the whole wide world!

Therefore, you will read a lot about these subjects: My faith, family, marriage, parenting.  These topics appear a lot on R & R.

Also on R & R you will find recipes for food and for my non-chemical cleaning products and posts about healthy living.  And because my husband works shifts, I have done a series on shift-work, to encourage other shift families.

I also am a huge lover of holidays - so I really get into them.  I love to blog about that, too.

In short, R & R is not a niche blog.  It's a lot like me - a bit random and rambling.  But useful and fun.

You can subscribe to R & R by receiving my blog posts in your email.  You'll find the tool for that in the right-hand side-bar.

Also, you can join me on Google Friend Connect (also in my side-bar down toward the bottom) or follow me on:

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+.

You'll want to visit this page first to get a glimpse at what my readers have enjoyed most at R & R.  You'll also find some of my personal favorites there as well as a glimpse at past and on-going series.

What is the mission of A Little R & R?

My greatest desire for A Little R & R is that it be an encouragement to women - particularly mothers.  Moms face unbelievable pressure to live up to an image that is often unattainable - or at the very least is difficult to attain.  Women face fierce competition and fall into deep comparison traps.  My desire is to gather as many women and moms as I can to join me on a journey of learning to be content with who we are and who God created us to be.  I pray that women everywhere will find A Little R & R to be just that - a place to rest and relax.  A place of encouragement and laughter.  A place of joy and peace - where the love of Jesus is felt on every page.

How did A Little R & R begin?

A Little R & R began as a simple way to help my family keep up with our first son Robi and his development as a baby.  But my love for writing and research took over and within a few short months posts about my experiments with non-chemical cleaning, healthy living, and recipes took over.  I have always loved research.  As a child I would read encyclopedias by the hours - gazing at the old photos of Queen Elizabeth and survivors of the Oregon Trail.  Writing became an obsession several years ago as I sought an outlet for the thoughts and emotions building up inside.  I first began to write songs (not very good ones, mind you) but quickly turned to articles and even writing books.

I find blogging a wonderful outlet to effectively share my thoughts with a great number of people within the time constraints I have, being a working mother of 2.

My Testimony:

I was raised in a pastor's home (yes, I am a PK) and so I have heard the gospel story since I was in the womb.  Yet, like every individual, I had to come to the place where I had to decide for myself the path I would follow.

I was 8 years old, sitting the back of my dad's church in Tumwater, WA at a wedding he was conducting.  The thought came to me, "If I were to die tonight I would not go to heaven".  To be sure, I had "received Christ" probably hundreds of times - if not thousands - in Sunday School, at altar calls (I haunted the altar as a kid!), and when guest speakers and missionaries came.  Yet, on this day, for the first time in my life, I had come to that realization all on my own. 

Since that day I have rededicated my life to Him several times - as we all must.  Out feet have a tendency to stray and our hearts to grow cold.  Just as married folk must rekindle the flame from time to time, so must we with our Savior. 

It was the summer of 1999 when I was first called to the mission field. Fear gripped my heart. I had never wanted to be a missionary, and I suppose deep in my heart I hoped that if I proclaimed enough times that I felt I wasn’t called that God would let me stay in America.

Unfortunately, I decided not to pursue that call and what followed was the darkest time of my Christian life. I learned first hand what I had heard my dad say on a number of occasions:

Sin will take you further than you want to go

Keep you longer than you want to stay

And make you pay more than you can afford to pay

The summer of 2000 marked the beginning of my journey back to the Lord and by August of 2004 I had joined my sister in Zagreb, Croatia, assisting her and her husband in the church they pastor.

Shortly thereafter I became acquainted with my husband.  I don't say "met" because apparently we met in 2001 when I first visited Zagreb, when my sister married.  However, I do not remember this - nor do I remember even seeing him after I moved to Zagreb in 2004.  You can read our story here.

On January 18, 2010 little Robert (Robi) Jukic was born.  I call him our "miracle baby" because he has two siblings in heaven with Jesus: Angel Baby #1 (Mila) 4/08 and Angel Baby #2 (Z Junior) 10/08.  We cried out for a child and God healed me, with the help and wisdom of a godly specialist.  Then on October 11, 2011 we had our 2nd miracle baby - Andrej.

What I Do:

I am a graduate of Advanced Training Institute of America, where I studied Youth and Family Counseling.  I worked with juvenile delinquents, by home schooling them after they were expelled from school.

I am also a graduate of Christ for the Nations Institute where I majored in theology, minored in music (first instrument: voice, second instrument: piano), and attended the School of Worship and the Arts.

While living in the States I owned Small Beginnings Music Studio, offering private lessons in piano, voice, music theory, and ear training (playing by ear).

Here in Croatia I coordinate our children's ministry and lead teach in children's church every other month.  I also handle all English administration for the church, translate texts from Croatian into English, do ghost and creative writing, and privately teach piano, voice and English.