Missionary Week 50

Missionary Week 50 – August 26, 2019 – September 1, 2019

The end of August has arrived!  Last year at this time, we had moved out of our house and into our motorhome so that our Son’s family could really “Move-in” to the house.  If they had any questions about where things were or how the back-up lights worked etc., they could ask while we were there.  We were packing for our mission and saying our goodbyes.  It’s really hard to believe it’s been a year! 

Carved Wall outside City Hall - Stockholm 1535

Monday – We were off to work early and got there even before 7am.  Worked hard and left for home at 4pm.  No rain today.  We love hearing from home, Soccer is going in full force.

Tuesday – We caught our train and made it to work exactly at 7am.  We talked with our son the Police officer this morning, his time was 10:40pm.  All of the police forces, County and City, from the White Mountains was on a man hunt for a husband & wife who had been in prison in New York and they were being transported back to a prison in Tucson, Arizona.   They faked a medical emergency and escaped the guards (leaving them in the back of the van-alive).  They escaped in Utah in a truck and came through our town to get to Vernon where they lived.  [I learned all of this from a Facebook account of the incident].  We talked to our son as they were headed out looking for these people.  We finally found out much later tonight that they looked for them for over 2-3 hours.  The couple has not been found yet.

Wednesday – Happy Birthday to Rachel!  Our daughter-in-law. At work, I had 7 files to transfer…. these boxes are not loaded with extra papers, so it is going fast!  I know we probably still do the same amount of images, it’s just when you see a box done it feels like more of an accomplishment!

Thursday - We finally got 2 seats together for our ride to work today.  It rained/sprinkled today and tonight.  Ancestry.com had Yearbooks that you could search for free for the Labor Day weekend!  That was fun.  I didn’t find any real old ones but pretty cool looking through them. 

Friday – We got our shuttles sent off today, went out to eat at the little pizzeria next to the Archive.  We tried their pasta this time and it was pretty good.  Left work at 2:30 today so we could get home for Laundry!   We got to see Jaylen’s family getting ready for their Reunion this weekend. 

Saturday – We had breakfast and then headed out to the City Hall.  We walked from T-Central.  We can see this building from our lunchroom at work, and from the front door of the Archive John got a beautiful sunrise of that building, early this year.

The Wood Box houses the pipe organ in the Blue Room

Granite Floor in the Banquet Room

We were able to get tickets for the guided tour to the City Hall; they took us through the Blue Room – which isn’t blue, but it was suppose to be blue!  The most famous event there is the Nobel Peace Price Banquet.  The building was built between 1911 and 1923. 

City Council Room

Then we went into the City Council Room.  They have several different parties here.  The Moderates, The Left, The Feminist party and the Green Party, Swedish Social Democratic, Democrats, Centre, Christian Democrats, Liberals.  It was a very interesting room, with 200 seats in the balcony for citizens and on the other side of the room in the balcony were seats I think she said 20 for the press.

Seating for the Press

Balcony City members seating for 200

The Ceiling was most awesome 

One of the Council Members seats

Close up of the Gold Room tiles - made
with gold leaf

Then our guide took us to the Gold Room – it was really GOLD – You’ll have to see the pictures.  Lots of different ideas and representations of history in there.  It did not give us a feeling of peace however, which is what they wanted to convey.  The Swedes are a neutral people.  It does not look very Swedish either!

The "Symbolic Queen" with the Western world on her Right
and the Eastern wolrd on her left

 That was the end of the tour in the city hall – where they still have working offices, which you don’t get to see.  They don’t normally work on Saturday, but she said they may be at work anyway.

We then went to our tour of “The Tower” it is 348 feet tall or 106 meters.  There are 365 stairs.  We took the elevator halfway, then walked the stairs and some places you were just walking up the brick walkway and then you get to the real steep stairs.

Heading UPPPPP

One of the stair ways

They give each tour 35 minutes total.  So, 10 minutes to get up to the top and 15 minutes to walk around the outside and 10 minutes back down.  I’m very grateful for the elevator – that held 5 people.  It was so neat to see the city from that high up.  You could walk all the way around it, and we took a ton of pictures. 

Looking down to the gardens

Outside = stairs to the bells

Half way up this landing had a lot of statues - didn't have time
to see them all!

The Bells rang while we were up on Top

Looking toward the Archive - we can see the tower from our
lunchroom.  It's in the middle of picture - pretty small to see

We could see our Archive, and we 
recognized a lot of the churches and other sites we have seen.  We saw the Vasa museum, Gröna Lund amusement park. From Wikipedia “Gröna Lund is also known for its rock and pop music concerts; the capacity record is held by Bob Marley, who attracted 32,000 people in 1980;^[4] it was his third performance at the venue, after stints in 1977 and 1978. The record is unbeatable since new regulations prevent such large audiences at Gröna Lund. American rapper Nas performed with almost 22,000 people in 2010.”  We have a few Bob Marley fans’ in our family!

After the 2 tours we decided to go on one of the train lines to the South West that we had never been on.  We didn’t get off, we just looked at the scenery when we weren’t in the tunnels.  We finished that little trip and found a tram to get us close to home and went out to eat at our favorite Italian place in Alvik.  We ate outside this time; it was really nice and cool.  A little breezy but that help keep the flies away!  Great food.  We had a nice walk home in the cool breeze.

Sunday – The Borg’s left on a little trip to Malmö in the South of Sweden.  They left their shuttles with us on Tuesday and left on their trip Wednesday.  Elder Borg is our Sunday School teacher, so he asked Elder Richardson to be the substitute for this Sunday.  He worked on the lesson every night this week and he did a great job today.  We had to take the train – we forgot how long it took us, so we left about 9:45 and got to the church about 10:30. It has been such fun being in this ward. The people who come in every shape, size, color, and heritage is a microcosm of what our world should be like.  Kind and loving to everyone.  The Swedish people are an honest people.  If they find a glove or hat or coat they leave it up on a fence or bench so it can be seen easily.  We have only seen one man take a coat that was not his, he was not from Sweden.

We are looking forward to this next week!  We have a lot of birthdays in our family this week and we may get our Fridhemsplan train stop back.  We also get to go see David Archuleta on Saturday at the Stake Center!  It is raining now as I type this letter, and the forecast for next week tells us that it will be in the medium to high 60s* with showers almost every day.  We hope you have a wonderful week ahead of you also!  Happy September!

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