Week of October 11th

Happy Birthday to Kenley and Kaipo!
The spirit in the temple has been incredible this week as the saints from the Norway mission (this is all of Norway that is not within a stake boundary) have been here. Again it was good to see old friends again and we are in hopes of seeing them one more time before we head for home in April. They are such good examples of love of the temple ordinances and they bring so many family cards to do the temple work for. We could all learn a lot from their dedication.
Our good friends Kent and Kay Söderquist left on Wednesday to return home to Logan, Utah.

We have developed such an awesome friendship and made so many memories together here in Sweden. We will truly miss them.
After a short lesson on ‘ett’ or ‘en’ nouns in our Swedish class, we had another farewell party for another set of missionaries. LeGrande and Carla Merritt returned home to Far West from their mission here in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway.

They were Family History missionaries and we became very close to them also. She is the one who taught us to index and we went with them to Örebro to help at the genealogy convention. We will miss them too.
We have watched the TV a lot and prayed a lot that they would be successful in rescuing the 33 miners in Chile. What a blessing to have them all safe. The one miner who quickly kneeled and said a prayer really touched my heart.
The Evensen’s took me to the hospital in Handen to have an ultrasound on my ugly finger. The doctor there said it had all the criteria of a gangling cyst except it had some blood in it and that is not common. All he could say is that he would send the report to my doctor and maybe a biopsy would have to be taken.
I am now on volume 9 of The Work and the Glory and I really cried at the end of 8!!
We have had two wonderful flower missionaries here from Salt Lake. A Sister Taylor and Sister Kimball came and replaced all the flowers in the temple. Wow, what a lift they gave the temple and what spiritual missionaries they are. They are so talented and really have a spirit about them as they perform their service. The Evensen’s and we invited them for dinner the night before they flew home and it was a delightful evening. We had great food and it was fun to get to know them.
We went to see the Vasa Museum. This is a museum housing a restored war ship built in 1626-28.

This ship was to be the best of the best. But, it did not even get out of the Harbor in Stockholm before it sunk. (10 Aug 1628) It lay at the bottom of the harbor for 333 years until it was brought out of the water. Because of the conditions of the water in this part of the Baltic Sea, it was remarkably well preserved. They have now treated all of the wood and restored this magnificent ship. Ninety-five percent of the ship is the original wood. The building they built to display the ship is temperature and humidity controlled. It was absolutely amazing and huge.

This week we enjoyed our Skype time with the Pratt family and they are so excited to have family coming for Thanksgiving and to be there for the blessing of Mia. We pray the weather will be good for all modes of travel.
That is it for another week and we are so close to our one year mark. It is going so fast and we already hate to leave our friends here in Sweden.
Thanks for the emails, letters, skype time, faith and prayers for this week. God bless you all.