PontifiKate

The Girls From France, Part 2

On WEDNESDAY (Feb. 15th) Cristin, Mary Ann, and I went to Göteborg where we were shown around by Jonathan, a church guy that goes to the university there. We ate at a Pink Panther restaurant, saw a couple of churches, walked up a sheet of ice to a big fort-thing, saw an old school, visited the Fish Church (market, really), and talked philosophy & laughed with Jonathan. I really liked Gothenburg. That night back in Tranås we went ice skating (click for photo set), which was fun even though I didn't skate much. Towards the end they got out a little ball and played a sort of soccer on ice skates which made me nervous, as I'm a total mom about such things. :o) Of course, it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt... only someone did get hurt -- thankfully not badly!! There was a banged head, some blood, and later stitches, but it was all handled calmly and all seemed to be well in the end. Good grief! and *whew*



see my Göteborg photo set

Mary Ann and I went to Linköping (again, that's “lin-shuh-ping”) on THURSDAY. We walked the university campus a little, visited a couple of churches, had fika :o), shopped, and grabbed some Burger King (which is sorely lacking in France). We had a fika/game night back at Cristin's apartment as it was our last night in Tranås. We played Tongues (a variation of Spoons) and Psychiatrist, which is one of my favorite games. I like those people!



see my Linköping photo set

On FRIDAY we said goodbye to Tranås. Before leaving we had a quick fika with Christine, her sister Elin, and her son William, which just made me wish we could stay around longer to really get to know all these folks! We had a little trouble paying on the train out as our train cards were expired, we didn't have enough cash, and none of our five credit cards worked in their machine (which was strange, since one had worked just fine a couple of nights before). They generously didn't do any kicking off of the two bungling Americans who were just trying to make their connection to Stockholm. :o) We were met in Stockholm by Daniel, who was our guide and gracious host (who gave up his apartment to a couple of strangers!). He cooked us an excellent meal directly after which people began arriving for the Westminster Society, THE reformed Bible study of Stockholm (there's no reformed church there at this point). The people were great and the talk was good. The topic of the evening was the Sabbath, which is always good to reconsider. It's fascinating because the reformed community is so very small in Sweden that their faith community spans cities more easily (meaning they all know the folks in Tranås). Huh!

SATURDAY was our day in Stockholm. We started it off with the Swedish royalty's summer palace or whatever it is, technically speaking. We got acquainted with the beautiful (but cold!), extensive grounds while waiting for it to open. Inside, we once again experienced payment issues and were thus actually let in for (heh heh) free. We lunched somewhat late which meant that by the time we got going again, around 4:00, it was already starting to get dark (meaning most of my photo set is of stuff in the dark -- but that didn't stop me)! We got to see a lot of sites and decided that Daniel makes an excellent tour guide as he loves history and to laugh. :o) This was the one night in Sweden we really dined out, so we tried to do it "right". I tried reindeer mash (sorry, but that's what it was called), wiener schnitzel (wrong country, I know), and fried camembert with a regional berry sauce for dessert. All interesting and, as always, I liked everything.



see my Stockholm photo set

And then SUNDAY was another travel day: Stockholm to Paris, although it's not really as straight-forward as that. It's more of a "bus from Stockholm to outside Stockholm, fly to ouside Paris, bus to Paris" operation, all of which takes most of a day if you're talking about going from home base to home base. The flight itself was two hours and some.

So, towards the end of the week I complimented one of the pastors in Tranås on the church's multi-city hospitality, as they seem to have it down to a friendly science. He told me that one of the reasons they stress hospitality so much in their church is that it encourages those who are received to pray for the ministry there. It's definitely worked on me! I got to see the ministry, meet the people, and hear some of their future aspirations and I'm just plain excited about what God's doing in and through them! So if I may, I'd like to ask those of you who pray to send up a quick word asking God to bless the efforts of His people in Sweden, specifically those associated with this MTW-affiliated ministry. It's so cool to get a window in on what God's doing throughout the world!

So that was our trip to Sweden. Praise God, again, for safe travels and for a very good trip. It'd be really fun to go back there sometime, but we'll have to just wait and see what happens!

posted by Kate @ 3:34 AM