This Week's Events

Our lives have been busy with preparations for our training appointments in June. We also attended Neighbor Day with Per and Eva Akebrand, Key City Director and his wife. We are trying to use this concept to create a project using "Mormon Helping Hands". This is still in the planning stages.

Those of you who have seen "The Ultimate Gift" will appreciate the park bench pictures as we couldn't resist these. Here in Sweden, everyone sits on the park benches in the summer to soak up the sunshine. It is difficult to even find one available. Early one morning we found this bench for our pictures.

Skansen is a lovely, huge open air museum and park with 150 old buildings dating back to 1831. We had a few hours and went to see everything. It is on top of a hill that overlooks Sweden so requires a bit of climbing. There are a few pictures from the Skansen.

Condelezza Rice was here today for an Iraqi conference in downtown Stockholm, and there is supposed to be a demonstration tomorrow. The high school students have their graduation tomorrow and as tradition, they ride around in the back of trucks or on floats singing, playing loud music, drinking, and just celebrating in general. It should create quite a stir for the next few days with these events happening at the same time. Rex laughingly said he should go downtown with an "I love George Bush and USA" sign. I'm certain he would create quite a stir.

King's Palace - Changing of the Guard

We took the opportunity today to visit the King's Palace and see the changing of the guard. It is quite a ritual each day from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Unfortunately it started raining and turned off very cold. Included are a few pictures of the King's Palace and the changing of the guard. It is quite an event.

U.N. Family Day

One of the main purposes of our mission is to serve as missionaries to the Key City Council in Stockholm. Additionally, we are working with and training National Directors of Public Affairs in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. Our big event this year was the U.N. Family Day held on Saturday, May 17, 2008. Despite the cold weather and some rain, we had a wonderful turn out of people. The event was 4 hours long with booths, children's park, little three wheelers, pony rides, hot dog booths, 4 hours of continuous singing and dancing on stage and our booth decorated like a family room with handout about Family Home Evening. We took free family photos and had a bowl of candy. I can't believe the candy eaten. People would come by and take hands full of candy. We felt it was a success and enjoyed being a part of such a wonderful event. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints originally started this Family Day about 7 years ago, and now we are sponsors both financially and with physical labor to help the event come off. We are loving our calling as Public Affairs missionaries and feel deeply blessed serving here in Sweden.

Gotland and Parliament

We had a fabulous vacation on Gotland Island on the southeast coast of Sweden. It is Sweden's Hawaii. The ancient sites are beautiful and the weather was heavenly. Another senior couple enjoyed the 4 days with us.

Our work is moving forward here in Sweden. I am working on getting a member of the Swedish Parliament to travel to the U.S. where he will visit Salt Lake and then go to Provo to speak on families. He is a strong advocate of families here in Sweden. The Key City Council gave him an award in 2007 for his work on helping strengthen families here in Sweden. We are also working on presentations to each of the four Nordic Countries in regard to the BYU Young Ambassadors coming to the Nordic Countries in May 2009. They haven't been here since 1989 so this is a big deal.

Today we attended a conference at the Swedish Parliament regarding strengthening families and what they feel Sweden needs to do to support families more. Tonight we are attending a concert and lecture on families at the Concert Hall. Then all day Saturday, May 17 we have U.N. Famly Day in downtown Sweden where about 15,000 people come. We will have a tent set up with information on how to hold a Family Home Evening and handouts that say "Don't Disturb -- Family Home Evening in Progress." There will also be an area in the tent to take family photos that will be sent to the family or delivered at a later date. We are excited to be here serving the Lord and for the work we are privileged to do here.

The man who spoke today shared three great ideas:

1- Investing in marriage is like investing in the stock exchange. You have to invest often and quite alot to receive a return.

2 - The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence because you don't water enough on your side of the fence.

3 - We look and look to find the one to love, but really need to work to love the one we find.

Great counsel regarding marriage.

It is only 45 degrees today and this California girl is missing the warmer weather we are used to. The mornings are overcast but by afternoon the sunshine is usually out for a while.

Yesterday we attended a Missionary Zone Conference about an hour away. Pres. Karlsson asked us to bear our testimonies to the elders and sisters. It was such a spiritual, uplifting day. We have been asked to make a presentation at the next Zone Conference to teach the elders and sisters how to approach the press and introduce themselves for a photo and brief article in the local papers. Many of the small towns around Stockholm are willing and eager to do this. It is most always very positive.

Sweden in beautiful and we are loving the people here.

Pictures

Beautiful sites in Stockholm

We celebrated Rex's birthday on April 30th standing in the rain, watching a bonfire and fireworks to celebrate the end of winter and the beginning of summer. We are learning how to use the tunnelbana and the busses to get around. Most people speak English, which is helpful in the grocery store, and when we are lost. I was looking for light bulbs a week ago and asked the clerk where to find one, trying to imitate screwing in a light bulb. She noded her head yes and said come with me. She took me to the boxes of apple juice. I just smiled and said "thank you." When she left, I proceeded to look for light bulbs. Our major assignment has been a big power point for the National Directors of Public Affairs to teach them how to prepare for the BYU Young Ambassadors tour coming next year. We will be traveling to the other Nordic Countries in June to make our presentation and to meet the people with whom we will be working. I am including some beautiful sites in Stockholm that we took during our walk yesterday morning. Today we went to the Stockholm Temple and had such a spiritual feast. Life is good and there is nowhere we would rather be than serving the Lord here in Sweden right here.