Some days there isn’t much that happen, and other days everything happens. But none of these days can man claim as a right, time isn’t anything we can either make or possess, it is something that has been given to us. As of that it is also something that can be taken away, how much time we have isn’t for us to know, therefore use it well!

For many the Easter has become a holiday to spend with friends, to eat good food and just have fun. Nothing wrong with that, after all it is a celebration of Christ opening the way to heaven for everyone! :D
But Easter is also a remembrance of how He opened that way, what sacrifice He had to make on that cross for that we have sinned, how inconceivably deep love He had and still has for us that he gave us this second chance!
So let’s not make Easter only a holiday spent with friends, with food and just having fun, but also remember Him who has put us here and wants an eternity with us!

Happy Eastern! Christ has risen!!

Saturday I didn’t get out of bed to early, after all I’m a guy so I don’t need very much time to get ready… (I really shouldn’t generalize, especially not about this, but it can be quite fun ;) ) We were heading for Tuvattnet, a 140km or 87 miles trip up north, to celebrate Easter and Ingemar’s birthday (again). Two cars stuffed with five people in each, cruising slightly above the speed limit reached the goal at about 11.30am after a journey where the most exciting part was getting pulled over by the police… Since the photo on my driver’s license looks remotely like me and I don’t like to have alcohol in my system there was no problem getting out of their attention. In Tuvattnet we were greeted with barkings from the dog and more ordinary hugs and ”hi”s and ”hello”s from the Eriksson and Wissman family, and later on this delicious lunch (with dessert!) As eating with good friends and family is supposed to, the lunch took its time. To let the food find an optimal degree of compaction we then took a short walk through the village. Sometimes one can get a little jealous of the view some people have from their houses…

A house with some background

Not that I can complain about the view from back home either, but we don’t have these mountaintops.
After the walk Rasmus had some amazing little pyrotechnics to show and blow before we went inside again. :)
Now was the time for presents and here is what he got from us: A changeable basket, a fancy Ph.D. jacket, a party game and a 654 pieces puzzle with no picture on it .=) Hopefully they’ll be of either great use or great joy or perhaps both.

For those of you that are not aware of the Swedish fika tradition I encourage you to come here and explore it yourselves!

At the end of the visit we had a great kakfika, the difference from an ordinary fika is that the kakfika consists of only cookies and cakes… Then, at about 7pm we had to leave and at 9.20pm I once again drove the car into the garage back home.
(If you get the idea that we only ate or walked during the visit I can tell you that we also had lots of great interaction between the meals too ;) )

Today (or yesterday since time has passed midnight with margin) mum I and Nils went skiing on the lake with the dog before Lars and Anna arrived with their respective families. We then went barbecuing with the Ragnarsson family by the wind shield at ”Rännhälla”.As the weather has been wonderful this entire day that wasn’t very unpleasant…
Back home things weren’t happening too fast, fresh air really makes you enjoy calmness and rest. Of course Ellen kept the speed up after a little re-energizing power nap, she really has this super power to be everywhere and smile to anyone =) The dinner was traditional Swedish tortillas… Well, at least the Mexicans wouldn’t recognize much of it :P But it was good!! Then we had cake and did some searching through the old fashioned analogue photo’s archive before some younger elements ran out of energy and had to leave for comfy sleeping-places.

The holiday has been great and I really should go to bed now.

Take care everyone!

Mae råkes

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Monday morning was quite heavy, I got up at about 7.30am packed my bags, said good bye to Ingemar (who has been a great host, even lending me the keys to the apartment!) and walked into town. There I had the opportunity to have a delicious breakfast with Mareike and Britta. I even got to see Britta with curly hair, something most people haven’t so I feel somewhat special ;)
I then went on to the bus station, had some “amazing” :P 10 hours in the bus, got picked up by dad, was greeted by the dog and mum when I finally came home. And before I got to bed I had to check up the meaning of fo’ shizzle, now I know =).

Wonderful week and a half, way too short though. Thank you all my beloved friends, both those of you that I’ve mentioned by name and those that I’ve mentioned between the lines!!!

Mae råkes

I must admit that it wasn’t very fun to get out of bed this Sunday morning but somehow we managed to do so. A forty minutes walk into town was reviving and helped me through service, not that it wasn’t a good service but for some reason non sleeping makes me tired… After the customary church coffee we took a walk on the ice around the city. That made us quite hungry and as it was time for a late lunch we went back to EFS for some leftover tomato soup. After a while Abby and Lauren joined and as they were about to leave Sweden for this time it became a good bye lunch :(
For those who wanted the night at EFS continued with a movie and pork pancake but I had already left by then to participate in the play night at Pingstkyrkan.
Imagine my surprise when I was greeted by a “There is no flight” by Abby who, just like Lauren, still hadn’t left for America.
After fika we played Sardines, a kind of inversed hide and seek. As time went by I teamed up with Kristin in a secret FBI operation containing code names and securing rooms and stuff… But not even that could help us find the hiding place of Jörg, well actually no one did when we had the lights turned off and it took quite a while to find him even with the lights on. That is probably the best hide and seek hiding place I have ever seen!!
Then we went on to play Mafia, I died of course… The only one who didn’t die was Kacie, the ballin’ OG, that tricked (and killed) everyone else. Because these are games that take some time to play Sunday became Monday morning and at about 1.15am we had to leave, after all there’s almost always a day tomorrow too.
As the wonderful persons they are, Abby, Lauren and Kacie decided to walk me halfway home (1.15am, 0 F, Lauren and Abby had all their warm stuff packed in bags…). Thank you, I really appreciated it!
This time it was good bye for real :( It sure feels sad to leave people you’ve become very fond of. I do hope that there will come several times when we can say hello, how are you, good to see you again, I’ve sure missed you!

Saturday was a day filled with activities so we’ll see how short I can keep it…

As we were heading to Junkön ( as I mentioned in the Wednesday post) Ingemar and I had to get up at a decent time, 9 o’clock or something like that. We picked up Andre by Pingstkyrkan at 10.05am and then we were off for a new adventure.
The sky was blue, the snow was white, the sea was frozen, the temperature was perfect as were the company so the day looked rather promising. After a long ride across islands and over the frozen Baltic the people went out of the cars into the snow like cows that are let out on green fields after a long winter indoors… ;)
Before barbecue time we played an advanced version of tag, Monster’s Ynk, a “confusing” game were the Monster is supposed to catch the Ynk but they switch roles every now and then (decided by very consistent rules) and the we had an old fashioned snowball fight. Yay!!
As we had lots of snow pretty much everywhere I started to dig a hole for sitting in the sun and fika. Ingemar dug a hole of his own and when we were done I must say that his hole wasn’t much of a hole but very good to sit in, my hole though was a great hole but not very good to sit in… Well, with some help from Lauren and Kacie we later turned it into a great fortress with both entrance and escape tunnels so at least I didn’t dig the hole for nothing ).
As I believe that taking a sauna is highly overrated I didn’t take one, but instead I made flips in the snow, had more snow fights, taught Abby how to pronounce “Gunnar är en artig gosse” at the museum and had an over all great time! (As for the “Gunnar är en artig gosse” phrase I think it’s a great counterweight for the other useful Swedish phrases we taught our English speaking friends, “Kinesiska muren” and “Storsjöodjuret”).
On our way back home after a lovely day Johan got the command over the Volkswagen van so that we would enjoy some good ol’ drifting. I can’t say that he didn’t meet up to the expectations, rather I’d say he did pretty well even with an overloaded van…
The night was reserved for the Birthday party I mentioned last Sunday. As I was early and involved in some strange way I helped preparing by not standing in the way so much and then make pizza sandwiches. You who weren’t there should have seen the tomato soup cauldron or the bowl with cake batter (consisting of 20 eggs, 3 litres of sugar, 1 kg of butter…) Sure it was cooking to remember.
The party had all the parts that a party should have to be called a party, good food, nice people, opening of presents, singing ( Peter Gustav and I performed the song we had written, it went as it went and Lauren later diplomatic told be that it was “amusing”. I don’t know what she meant with that..), games and a trilingual speech from the birthday kids.
This was also the night I was introduced to the vegetable game (I couldn’t be a pig though so I had to settle with cucumber which isn’t as tasty but not too bad…) and the discussion of the existence or non-existence of spoons (that evidently do exist in a souvenir shop at Arlanda airport but not in the EFS church in Luleå).
As people started to drop off, only the hard core party people stayed until way too long. I think we sang hymns until 2am or so…

There isn’t much to mention about Friday but I think that I can manage to write some lines about it anyway… At first I had nothing to do so I ordered a ticket back home, then I still hadn’t anything to do so I went to the grocery store and bought some milk. After that I still hadn’t anything to do so I went out on the ice walking for a couple of hours. After getting my tickets and spending some time at the library I got into a Volvo and went to Mareike together with Ingemar, Gustav, Erik and Elias for dinner. It was delicious by the way.
Later on there was Youth at Pingstkyrkan, a youth meeting for, guess what, young people! You didn’t see that coming did you? Before the meeting started I managed to jump into a lamp in a ”fight” with Kacie, man, does she have killer instinct or what? When I went into the kitchen in my search for something to pick up the shattered glass with, I saw her standing there. Karen! Yet another great reunion with an old pal! The meeting then was really great with lots of songs of praise and an affecting testimony by Ray, it sure is good to hear how God performs miracles in peoples lives!
As usual, the night ended late with fika, talking and penalty uno. Penalty uno may not be the most social game in the universe, but it sure is fun.