Missionary Week 46

Missionary Week 46           July 29 – August 4, 2019

Some of the beautiful flowers at the Stockholm Temple

Hello everyone!  We have had another great week, that just seemed to fly by!  We are grateful to be here in Sweden and to take in the beautiful sights and learn of their culture.  We hope that you have had a wonderful week also.  Our grand-kids are getting ready to head back to school and some have already started their new year! How crazy is that!?  When we were growing up, we didn’t go back to school until after the Labor Day Holiday in September!  Summer seemed to move so much slower back then also. 

Monday – Happy Birthday to our grandson J.T. who turned 15 years old today!  We were able to catch up with him via Marco Polo.  He is one busy kid!  He is a freshman this year and he will be in football.  He had just started 2-a-days – morning and afternoon practices.  His Dad is one of the coaches and he sent us a Marco Polo of the team running “Hurl Hill” – it’s right by the school, they have to run up and down this hill…they all looked great and we were able to pick out #2 as they passed Coach.  We sure miss our football.  We hope that those that are close by SJ will take in some of their games, they need your support.  We are small in number, but we bleed Red & White! 

Last week I didn’t have room on my computer to capture any images, but by 10:30 this morning I got an email that gave me a file to delete enough files that I started back with 40% of my space.  John never ran out of room on his computer, but he was close and also got to delete some files, so we are both back in business. 

It was a cooler day today!  The clouds come over and it’s amazing the change.  It got up to 86* which isn’t that bad…. but here, with the humidity it is warmer! 

Tuesday – It was hot last night, we had windows open and fans on.  It was raining when we woke up!  We walked to the train with our umbrella.  It wasn’t raining at work but there were a few puddles.  It was a nice cool walk to work this morning.  We had a good day of work.  We left at 4pm, and almost made it on the train that was there….and they closed the door on us as we got to it.  So, we had to wait 12 minutes for the next one!  When we caught the next one, we had only gone a couple of stations and we were stopped for a longer time than usual.  Of course, there was an announcement….in Swedish….and all we caught was something about Polis (Police) action, Storra Mossen (Our stop) and 5 minutes.  Turns out we stopped at every station and waited until they were given the go-ahead and as we got close to our stop John saw a group of Polis on the street below us.  We never heard what went on, but we were finally home at 5pm! 

Wednesday – Nice and cool outside today.  The trains are packed – we think because there are fewer trains for summer.  We don’t always get to sit together but there are a few stops where a lot of people get off, so we usually end up sitting together.  This morning on the train we got a call from our son, Jaylen and we told him we’d call back as soon as we got to work.  It was late night at home, but they had gotten some good news on the house they are looking at getting and wanted to let us know about it.

Tonight, we read on Facebook that a bike thief had been arrested by Officer Richardson, so he had a busy day today! 

Thursday - No rain today but cool and some clouds and we’ve noticed it’s getting darker earlier.  In our last letter I gave you the sunrise, sunset times and it is very noticeable.  We have to turn lights on now!  We got the Marco Polo of JT running Hurl Hill today and got to chat back and forth a bit.

We also got a Marco Polo of Justin's baby Tatum, driving off to her first day of school as a Senior in High School!

Friday – Went to work, had lunch at 11:15 – a bit early, because we were leaving at 2:30.  We got a call from Jaylen and believe it or not, he arrested another bike thief!  Two different guys, who were not from our town, didn’t know the power of neighbors helping neighbors and keeping an eye on everybody. We also got to talk to Jennifer and hear how excited her kids are to be going back to school! 

It rained tonight for a short time and quit but it sure smelled great! 

Saturday – John got the laundry done; however, we lost our spot for next week so we will be doing laundry on Friday night again! 

Stockholm Temple

We went to the Temple today with our Ward.  When we got there the door was locked!  We saw one of the members from our ward sitting on a bench and he called another man from our ward who was inside and told him we needed to get in!  That was not a good feeling to be locked out!  Afterward we walked around the grounds, it is in full bloom and beautiful!  Took a lot of Marco Polo’s and pictures to share.

Temple grounds

This is in the back dinning room
 and you can sit outside too. 

It was a great day and we got back home and changed and walked to Alvik to go to dinner at the Italian Restaurant.  We liked the food, but we tried something different and even though it was good, we want to go back and get the original dishes we had before!

Rigatoni with mushroom and beef

This is the common salad served at
every restaurant before your meal
It's a cabbage salad - like coleslaw but
not really.  It's really good.

See the 2 Ice cubes in the water?
They won't be there long!  For some reason
most restaurants don't serve ice at all.
AND WE MISS IT! 

Tonight, we got to talk to Jody & Jay and catch up with them, we are thankful for the technology that we have so we can stay in touch, even if it gets a little choppy, or sometimes freezes, it is so worth it!

Sunday – The Borg’s picked us up and more people are coming home from their vacations…. they call them Semesters.  We had a family visiting Sweden from the U.S., it was a grandmother, a couple of her children and their families who had come over to see Sweden and commemorate the Grandmother’s Grandmother – who had joined the church in 1919 – this coming Wednesday would be the 100^th anniversary of her baptism.  

She was able to share her story in Sunday School, it was amazing.  In Swedish you can’t just say grandmother – they need to know if it’s your mother’s mother or your father’s mother – in this case it was her Mother’s Mother and so the title in Swedish is Mor Mor – or Mother’s Mother!  (In my case, my grandmother from Sweden is my Father’s Mother so she is my Far Mor).  There is no question, you know exactly who you are talking about, I Love It!

As we started our English-Speaking Sunday School class, the teacher asked them to introduce themselves and then we all introduced ourselves to them.  Turns out “Grandmother” (Sister Ashcroft) is currently living in Snowflake!  That’s 45 minutes away from our hometown!  There were connections with every person in the room, except for one Swedish girl who is investigating the church!  

See if you can find 2 Bees

We told them there was a young Missionary from Snowflake, Elder Björn and she said he was in their ward at home! 

Then later she asked us “Do you know Leslie…. what was her name?”  and we said, “Welker now Wendhardt?”  and she said “YES! That’s her” and we said, “Our son married one of her daughters!”   Then her son-in-law asked us if we knew Sam LeBaron who worked at the power plant and we didn’t know him, but we knew of his wife.  We love “Small World” stories.

We think of you often and miss you!  Love hearing from you!  Love, John & Linda, Mom & Dad, Gramma & Grampa