These are just a few pictures of members and missionaries when we served in Skellefteå.  This picture is of Rosita and Bengt Karlman.  We visited with them many times and encouraged them to come to church.  When we left Rosita had accepted a position as a teacher in Sunday School/Relief Society and was attending regularly.  We still hope that Bengt will start coming.

These were elders in our district.  Top:  Elder Hinkson and Elder Day.  Middle:  Elder Saldutti.  Bottom:  Elder Ross

 

Left:  Elder Ricker.  Elder Ricker crocheted a nice hat and gave to me when he left.  I thought it was so thoughtful and nice of him.  I sent the hat to Oksana for Christmas.  I thought she would look cute in it.                        Right:  Elder Hinkson

 

Here is a picture of l to r Birgit Carlsson and Fern Girldlestone.  We have many fond memories of the time spent with these faithful sister. 

 This is a pretty scene from one of the places that we would walk in Byske.  This is when spring finally arrived--June.

 

These are scenes from the center of town.  You see beautiful flowers all through the town.  They are so happy when summer finally comes and they LOVE flowers, just like I do.

 On May 3, 2012, we were invited by President Newell to fly down to Stockholm to attend a Zone Leaders Council.  After the meeting, we were able to see a few sights before being taken to an apartment to spend the night.  We happened on this restaurant and thought we would take a picture of it since we have a daughter, Tiffany.



This is the mission office.  The building is shared with a pizza place.



These are views from the apartment we stayed in.  It was on the 8th floor.

This is the front of the mission home, office, and chapel known by all as Svartensgatan 3 when Dick was on his first mission.  It is no longer owned by the church.  It is on the historical register for Sweden.

 Pat, Melanie, Dick, and I took a walk to the little resort located on the Gulf of Bothnia.
This view is looking one direction down the beach and the picture below is looking the other direction.

Dick and I first walked to here in the spring when there was still snow on the ground.

You can't see but they have a water slide here and a place to camp.  There are a couple of cafes and a little "snack shack! and a miniature golf place.

A sad postcript to my post of yesterday.  We received today a note from Sten Boström's brother, Allan, that Sten passed away on December 7.  He was taking a walk and fell after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage and passed away after a few minutes.  I am sure he is thrilled to be reunited with his Greta that he missed so much.  We will have to see about getting their temple work done in a year.

Else Bränstrom (on the right) invited us out to her summer stuga (home) on the shores of the Gulf of Bothnia.  Else is a widow who lived below us and was always so friendly and helpful with the language.  Many times we were in her apartment to visit and sometimes have fika (refreshments).  She showed us pictures of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.  Often we would talk to her about different aspects of the gospel and we gave her a Mormons Bok with our testimony in.  We invited her, along with Eva Pettersson, to our apartment for dinner one evening.  We had a very enjoyable time.  We took Else an orchid plant the night before we left Byske.  She was teary eyed and made us promise to see her the next day before we drove off.  When we stopped in, she had prepared us lunch.  We had planned on stopping on the way, but this was a pleasant surprise.  As we drove off, she stood on her patio and waved goodbye to us with tears streaming down her cheeks.  It was very hard to say goodbye.

Below is a picture of Eva Petterson (on the left).  She invited us and Else over one afternoon for middag (lunch).  She is a cousin to Else's husband. 

Also shown in both pictures is Sten Boström.  He will soon be 88.  He was the one who drove us to the stuga.  He lost his wife about the same time as Dick's mother passed away and he missed her very much.  We talked to him about the plan of salvation and read to him from Alma Chapter 40.  Before we left we gave him a Mormons bok with our testimony in and we underlined the verses in Alma that we had read to him.  He was unhappy we were leaving and wondered why the mission president couldn't leave us there and send somebody else to Växjö.  Now that there are elders in Skellefteå, we will contact them and have them try to teach him.   

This is Melanie and I as we stand next to Storforsen (the great rushing water cascading).  This path we are on is right along the edge of the falls and goes all the way down to a hotel at the bottom.  These falls are one of the longest (not highest) but longest falls in the world.  After eating some snacks at a picnic table nearby, we took the path from near the top all the way down to near the bottom.  They were really rushing, but we understand that it is nothing like in the spring with the runoff.  This was in July.  We spent a wonderful afternoon there.  As we traveled there it was raining, but when we arrived, the sun came out and it was beautiful--cool, but beautiful.

Dick and I had talked about maybe spending our 50th wedding anniversary at the hotel here, but it's a good thing we didn't make reservations since now we are in the south many hundreds of miles away.

This is a model of the Vasa, a ship that was painstakingly built to be the biggest, most elaborate war ship among the european nations.  However, on its first voyage as it was going in the habor, it sunk in front of everybody.  Hundreds died.  It laid in the bottom of the harbor until 1962 when they raised it.  After many years it has been restored as shown below and is housed in a museum under strict temperature control.

The carved figures on the boat, of which there were many, were all painted with colors and goldleafing as the examples show on the left.

This is the St. Clara Church in Stockholm and below are views of the inside.  I hope you can see all of the carving and gold leaf.  It is very elaborate.

Solveig Nyström accompanied us on our excursion in Stockholm.  Dick taught her the gospel 52 years ago

L to R  Äldste Astin and Äldste Ingalls (yes he is related to the Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie.  They were our zone leaders.  We are here inspecting their apartment.  We inspected the apartments of the elders in Luleå, Skellefteå and Umeå every three months.  This apartment is in Umeå.

 

I played a special number for the Distrikt Konferens Saturday evening meeting and accompanied the congregation in the Sunday Session

 

Inside Central Station (train) in Stockholm.  This is on our way back from a zone conference where Elder Kearon spoke.

 

 

A fall view on our way to visit Viola Johansen out in the forest about a 50 min drive

 

This is the little car we drove around some and below are the garages where we parked the car.

This is Åsa cutting my hair

L to R  Birgit Carlsson, Ulla Ehnmark, Me

Here we are picking blueberries out in the forest

Gunvor Söderholm

Update to Ivar Nilsson
In July when our daughter, Melanie, and her husband, Pat, were here visiting in Sweden, we were able to fly down to Stockholm.  There we met Ivar at the temple in Västerhaninge and were able to help him do some of the names for his family.  I did the endowment for Ivar's mother, Ivar did the endowment for his father, Dick did the endowment for his grandfather.  Melanie and Pat did the endowments for other members of his family.  The next day we attended a sealing session where Ivar's parents were sealed together (I was proxy for his mother and Ivar proxy for his dad).  Then Dick took the place of Ivar's father as Ivar was sealed to his parents.  We then proceeded to do other sealings for members of Ivar's family.  It was a very special time for all of us.  This was truly a highlight of our mission.

We are greatly indebted to Ivar for providing a taxi to and from the airport and also two wonderful meals together while we were there.



Here we are with Ivar (in the wheel chair) and his assistant at the temple after the sealings

Look at where I come on Äldste Monson (yes, he is related to President Monson)
Other elders are 2nd row:  Äldste Youd, Äldste Ross,  Äldste Saldutti
top row:  Äldste Davis, Äldste Mikola

June 2012


A man in the branch that we helped to get names of his parents, grandparents, and aunts and uncles prepared to take to the temple was in the temple when he suffered a seizure.  We were notified that he was in a hospital in Stockholm.  We had been wishing that we could go down to Stockholm to visit him in the hospital and for Dick to give him a blessing, but it seemed impossible.  When ''out of the blue'' we got a call from the mission president saying he wanted us to come to Stockholm to a zone leader's council and would be flying us down on the 3rd of May (our 49th wedding anniversary).  We asked him if we could go to visit Ivar while we were down there and he agreed.  The Lord had opened a way for us.  So, after the meeting, we went to the hospital and Dick and another senior elder administered to him.  This was on Thursday.  He didn't know how long he might be in the hospital.  On Sunday, we were sitting in Sunday School just before Sacrament Meeting was to start, and the door opened and in wheeled Ivar.  We were so surprised.  Come to find out, on Friday they were able to fly him to Skelefteå in an ambulance plane.  He has since been back in the hospital for more tests and for medication.  They are trying to adjust the medication for the seizures and they are still giving him antibiotics for the blood infection.  However,  weekend of May 12 and 13 he attended the district conference down in Umeå both days.  We questioned him about the temple.  He only remembers turning in the papers we had prepared and getting the pink and blue cards.  So, I guess he didn't get the work done.  When he goes on line, it just says, ''In progress'' by the names.  So, now his goal is to get well enough that he can go back and do the work.  We would like to be able to go down to the temple at the same time so we could help him do the work and act as proxies for him to be sealed to his parents.

See the Update

 

Äldste Jeffs standing near the Byske Älv where we liked to walk--this is summer time

As we move to a city called Växjö in southern middle Sweden, we have been thinking about the wonderful people in Skellefteå and the eleven months we spent there and thought we would just post some of the treasured memories we have.




This is how they build their fences

Here I am standing at the same place where I was in front of a huge pile of snow in a previous posting.  Notice the little bit of dirty snow left from the pile still in the background.  This picture was taken the last part of April.

Zone Conference April 24, 2012

Me with Distrikt President Stegeby

Äldste Dunn (l) and Äldste Ross (r) at Zone Conference in Sundsvall

On Monday evening, April 23, Dick and I took the bus down to Skellefteå to pick up the car from the elders, so they wouldn't have to go north to pick us up in the morning in order to go south to the zone conference.  Dick and I got up at 3:00 a.m. the next morning and left at 4:00 a.m. and drove down to Skellefteå to pick up the elders.  They then took over the driving duty.  They each drove half way to Sundsvall.  We arrived at 10:15 a.m.  They had fruit, nuts, and sweet rolls for us when we arrived.  The meeting started at 11:00 a.m.  Around 1:00 p.m. we had a break for lunch and then continued our meetings and interviews.  It was a very good conference and we were well fed spiritually.  About 7:00 p.m. we headed back to Skellefteå.  We dropped off the elders and drove up to our apartment in Byske, arriving at about 1:30 a.m.  By the time we got to bed, it was 2:00 a.m.--23 hours after we got up.  Needless to say, we slept in a little.  It was a marathon trip but it was worth it.

Pictures taken Sunday, April 29, 2012

This is a shot looking into the town center (centrum) in Skelleftea

Here I am with Ulla Ehnmark (left) and Fern Girdlestone (right), two stalwart members

This is President and Syster Solbakk (and their dog)

This is the chapel

This is one of the double decker buses we ride on

This is the state church in Skellefteå located not too far from our chapel