No Hope for Witches, Here

 It was another great week and busy weekend. We got to greet the new missionaries and help with feeding and sending them off to their new areas. Without exception, they all got great trainers. We know all the trainers. Several of them are on their last transfer period, so they are training just before they return home. These are missionaries who will take the responsibility of training seriously, so they will not be spending more time dreaming of home than doing the Lord's work.

The end of the week was spent at CREATE, a young single adult conference in the Lund area. Lund is in Skåne; the area making up the southern end of the country. We spent most of our time preparing food, running errands, cleaning and greeting the participants.

Before going to the conference we loaded the Ford van with boxes of copies of the Book of Mormon in Swedish, English, Persian, Arabic, and one or two other languages. These were all to go to the various districts and areas in the Malmö zone. Stopping in Lund, before going to the conference, we picked up two bicycles from the sisters. We had to take out many of the boxes and our luggage to put the bikes into the van and then pile those on top of and around the bikes. It was a typical trip for us, it seems. We usually think we will travel with an empty vehicle and end up hardly able to see out the back window. Still, we like it like that. It is good to stay busy and involved.

Sisters Demordant and Johnson from Lund. We took their bikes and gave them
to the Landskrona elders. I will explain the fire and wet hair below.

We then traveled back a few kilometers to Landskrona where we delivered the bikes to the elders there. They were most grateful. Lund has a robust public transportation system, so the sisters didn't need the bikes; Landskrona's public transportation is not so robust and these elders "doubled in" to their area (both are new to the area), so they are anxious to visit everyone in the ward and in the past missionaries' area book. The bikes will be a boon to them.

Elders Cragun and Berlin with their bikes. They will need larger
helmets than the sisters sent with us.

When we got to the conference, I immediately went with Elder Mitchell (Lund YSA couple) apartment where we picked up two more bikes (after unloading and then re-loading). We hauled these to the Saturday evening activity so we could deliver them to the missionaries who were coming in from Halmstad, a town 1 1/2 hours north. We eventually got those to the train station where the missionaries carried them on the train to their area. Apparently, that is fairly common; they even have a separate car for the bicycles.

The CREATE conference was not as big a conference as the others with which we have assisted. They did get about 70 young people registered and all who signed up actually came, plus another 5 walk-ins. This is finals time for university students, so many who would liked to have come just couldn't give up study time.

They had workshops for learning self reliance identifying and applying for summer jobs and choosing a career; family history and the use of several different online sites that have become available; a room filled with all kinds of items to create scrap art; a baking contest; a dance both nights; and lots of other activities.

The beginning meeting on Saturday featured a husband and wife who are serving in a branch of the church where they don't live, so they travel 2 hours to their meetings. She sang a beautiful song that was written by a woman from here. He spoke about walking on a particular path that is almost always obscured by fog. There are cairns along the path, which are rock formations left and added to by other hikers. He invited his listeners to be markers for others who otherwise could become lost. I spoke to them afterward and discovered that they had just come back from a visit in Utah to the missionary who taught and baptized the husband. It turns out that he is the son of the stake president who ordained me a bishop in Oregon. Small world.

Some participants at the bake off.

More baking

These guys made excellent kanel bular
(cinnamon rolls)

Members of the planning committee

Family history instructors

The hallway non-participants until Olivia
encouraged them to find a workshop

Some of the guys who helped with the service
project. They made grow boxes for the school
where the event was held. The boxes will hold
some beautiful flowers

Saturday afternoon/evening they all traveled a few kilometers to the Ahlström's home who are Church members. This place is very unusual for this country. It is a home on several acres. Most people live in apartments or very small homes on very small lots. This couple bought the property when they were first married and very poor, as they explained, and have just improved it over the 23 years since. It is a beautiful place with a large park-like area, a pond, some trees and some picnic tables as well as soccer goals.

The reason for the visit to this place is that May 1 is when they celebrate Walpurgis or as they call it in most places here Valborg (vahl-borry'). We have discovered that in Sweden all holidays are celebrated on the prior evening. Christmas they have the visit from Santa or the tomte on Christmas Eve, the Easter meal and celebration is the Saturday before Easter, etc. This family did not want to celebrate on Sunday, so they celebrated on Saturday.

The Ahlstöm family invited all the neighbors, the missionaries from the Malmö Zone and the participants from the CREATE conference. We had a very interesting conversation with a man who was curious whether Mormons were allowed to read science fiction. I told him that we read about global warming all the time. When Olivia reads this she will make me take it out, because it didn't happen. We just told him that of course we do. The conversation eventually centered on the Book of Mormon which ended in our telling him of the clarity it gives to the mission of Christ and the Atonement.

They celebrate by torching a huge pile of dead wood, and other winter waste making a bonfire. There is singing and lots of food. In other places there is also plenty of alcohol and everything that goes along with that. The day celebrates Saint Walpurga, a nun who lived from 710 to 779 and was an abbess in England. She was from a highly religious family who were involved in pilgrimages to the holy land and evangelizing the pagan Germans. She is accredited with at least two miracles and even though her canonization is somewhat in dispute, most historians agree that it occurred on May 1, 870. In keeping with the Christianization of pagan celebrations, her day marks the beginning of Spring. The pagan used bonfires to scare away witches (again) and evil spirits. It is also to encourage the ground to be fruitful. So there is a Christian name and a pagan celebration.

Sister Watson with Sister Ahlström who owns
the property where the bonfire blazed.

Amazing what 18 liters of
diesel can do to wet wood

No sooner did they light the fire
than it started to hail and rain
buckets full.

Despite the rain we had fun

Singing along to words I didn't understand.

The senior missionaries who helped. Elder and Sister Mitchell, us, Sister
and Elder Pettit and Sister and Elder Watson

Some wet missionaries from the Malmö Zone singing.
They did know what they were singing.

All the missionaries who came. I was surprised that we knew almost all of them. The elder in the shorts and the one on the
far left are the ones who took the bikes on the train.

The last activity of the day was a dance back at the school. In keeping with the CREATE theme, it was a movie-themed dance. The committee encouraged everyone to dress as characters from movies, actors, directors, etc. They also had a talent show to start the dance off. I had to take a phone call during the talent show, so I didn't get many pictures.

Twilight meets costume ball

A group from Germany who made the trip

Swedish Chef, of course!

Cruella DeVil, and her entourage 

The event ended with a sacrament and testimony meeting Sunday morning. A member of the High Council presided for the first part. He was a former stake president, Brother Gilhammar (pronounce the g as if it were a y), with whom I had some very nice conversations. I think I almost convinced him and his wife to apply to serve a mission. The stake president came part way through and ended the meeting with an excellent talk. He brought his 11-year old daughter with him. He is the former Swedish ambassador to China. While in China they adopted this little girl who was 4 at the time and living in an orphanage. She was considered unplaceable (if that is a word) because she is female and suffered grand mal seizures. She has since outgrown the epilepsy and is studying at an English school in Lund. She was obviously bright and very personable. No pictures, sorry.

These last pictures show other things we experienced along the way there and back.

The south has few hills and just small
forests. It is very agricultural with grain
truck farms, cattle and dairy.

Lots of freshly harrowed land.

Lots of  rapeseed grows here. In the US
the oil is canola; here it is called rapsoila.

We passed by this pond and noticed that the swan
was nesting with her head under her wing. As I approached some ducks
quacked a warning and she became very concerned. I tried to enlarge
the picture, because it couldn't get closer,so it is less clear than
 I had hoped.

A new town built in Medieval style was
just behind the school where the event
was held. We didn't tour the whole village,
but did walk on the cobblestone and looked
at the shops.

We finally saw beef cattle. Lots of fast food places
advertise that their meat is from Sweden, but we
had a hard time believing it until now. With Spring
the cattle get to come out of the barn.

Another adventure in a beautiful land with people who continue to amaze. We hope your adventures are happy and filled with family, friends and people who make your lives blessed. We appreciate your prayers and kind thoughts. You are in our prayers, as well.