MY MOM CAME TO SWEDEN!

By Kim.

My mother came for a visit! It was the BEST!

I hope all of you take every opportunity to visit with your mothers where ever they are.  I never seem to get enough time with mine!

Me and my mom at Visby’s Southern gate.

With President Beckstrands permission we were able to pick up mom in Copenhagen! (The Southern Stake of Sweden is in the Copenhagen Temple district). My mother’s great, great grandmother ~Louise Kirstine Bischoff ~ was born in Skive, Viborg, Denmark. We were not able to go to Skive (about a four-hour drive) because that IS outside the mission boundaries but we were able to see a few sights of Denmark:

We love visiting Hans Christian Andersen’s, Little Mermaid statue. Created by Edvard Eriksen using his wife as the model, we were able to take several sets of Elders out to see it and were surprised that none of them knew who Hans Christian Andersen was! Mom knew! While there we ate lunch on a shady bench that we shared with a young man from China. This was the first of many times that mom taught me again how to be a good missionary. She talks to everybody! She is open and welcoming, she is interested in where they come from and where they are going, she asks about their family and if they are happy and everyone responds to her. We joked that she should have brought her missionary tag along.

We finally found the ‘Kristina’ Statue. Phillip has been looking for this since we arrived in Sweden. 

Designed by Dennis Smith in 2000 it represents all the Danish LDS immigrants that departed from the Copenhagen harbors for America. My mother’s family were among these immigrants. When Louise Kirstine was 18 she and her mother joined the church. It was then that Louise, age 18, left her mother and two sisters in Denmark and came to America with other converts on the packet ship Monarch of the Sea. From, “Church Chronology”, page 65, by Andrew Jensen, we find the following: “Thursday, May 16, 1861, the packet ship Monarch of the Sea sailed from Liverpool, with 955 saints of various nationalities…” 

The Church of Our Lady, Copenhagen’s Cathedral, has been rebuilt four times over the centuries due to fires and bombardment. It was originally constructed in 1209 out of limestone. It now houses Thorvaldse’s Kristus as well as sculptures of twelve of the apostles. These were carved in Rome and then presented to the  Church of Our Lady in 1838.

It was here that President Kimball, as reported by both Rex D. Pinegar and Boyd K. Packer, declared that the Keys of the kingdom held by Petrus (Peter) were now held by himself as the current President of the restored church.

Elder Hurlbut found his favorite apostle.

We drove by the Copenhagen Denmark Temple, but mom was much too tired for a session – she had just completed that trans-Atlantic flight! – so we took some pictures, picked up a bite to eat from the bakery down the street (Danish danishes ....from Denmark of course) and headed back to Sweden.

No one had replaced us in Lund yet as the YSA Senior couple so we were able to use that apartment. I might have a little shower envy!!!! The Lund shower is larger than the one we have now, the water turns on away from you, unlimited hot water, heated floors….. oh well- the work is true despite the shower you are given :). It was nice to spend a few days in a familiar place while mom shook off the jet lag. We reconnected with some old (4 months ago) friends, went to church in the Lund Ward, showed mom around our 1^st area, got the apartment ready for a new couple and had a lovely time.

As we headed north through Skåne towards Gotland we visited the Kalmar Castle built in the twelfth century. 

We had been here once before and wanted mom to have a chance to visit a Castle that had been restored. It of course contained much of the original construction. We saw magnificent wood work in the guest hall created from over 50 types of wood, the queens original bed with some of the gold leafing still in place, the free-hanging ceiling in the ballroom, original portraits of royalty, as well as reconstructions of ballgowns and coronation robes. Who doesn’t love a Scandinavian / European castle?

The Banquet room is always a big hit.

It looks like the King has a new taster.

We stayed the night in another empty Seniors apartment in Väjxö and then left early in the morning for our ferry from Oscarshamn. I’m sure everyone recalls that we live on an Island off the Southeastern coast of Sweden called Gotland. It is a 3 ½ hour ferry ride. There isn’t usually anything very interesting about the ferry trip …this one was no exception.

Let me say something here about game playing …my husband LOVES to play games! Card games, board games, 2 players, 6 players, group, doesn’t matter – he loves it. My mother is the same! We played a game almost every night she was here. Mille Bornes, Canasta, Phase 10, Bohnanza, Rummikub, Ticket to Ride, etc. not only did we play a game each night but we were hard pressed to keep up with mom, especially with Canasta, Rummikub and Mille Bornes! She just kept beating us! This shouldn’t have surprised me so much, she used to play bridge a lot (I’ve never played bridge). But I usually win Canasta but playing against her, it was as though I was a child… I could not win a hand to save my life!

We had the opportunity to introduce Nana Dee to some of the Swedish cuisine, although we were hard pressed to keep her out of McDonalds.  The most exotic dish she tried was this Shrimp Sandwich. 

Gotland is a vacation spot of Sweden. And a tourist hot spot of Europe. The tourist bureau puts out a guide of the “100 things to see /do on Gotland”.  Mom did about 27 of them. I have only done about 10 more than that.

We combined the sight-seeing with our responsibilities to the branch members and the game playing. Kerstin and Ragna  are single members that live about 45 minutes south of us in Stånga. We visit them on Fridays. Kerstin doesn’t speak any English but was very sweet with mom and enjoyed meeting her. Ragna is from Germany and a retired Elementary School teacher. She has an interesting history and mom loved hearing her stories.

Following our visits we were in the area to see Lojsta Palace, more of a fortress than a palac. The remains of the old Viking fortress date from long before the Danish King, conquered Gotland in 1361. It has now been reconstructed and is used as a lodge for this camping site.

 We then continued as far south as possible. We drove along the Kettelvik road where in the spring you can see a rare flower, “Spring Pheasant’s Eye”, we were too late in the year for this but did see lots of bunnies. I always love driving along the coast but our actual destination was “Hoburgsgubben” probably the most famous “rauk” on Gotland. From a certain spot the contour of the rauk looks like the profile of a man, therefore the name “the Hoburg old man”. We don’t know why his nose is painted… we are told it is a different color every year.

Below is a shot of the southern point of Gotland.

A few days later we traveled to the northern portion of Gotland with Nana Dee, but that will have to wait for another post.  

Missionary work calls!