We’re Here!!

We thought it would never happen, but we are finally in Sweden!  On Monday, June 7, Mission Travel called to tell us they had our visas and on Wednesday, June 9, we were on our way.  What a hectic day and 1/2 that was.  Packing 2 years worth of stuff, waiting for Fed-Ex to deliver our passports, trying to finish up all those things we hadn’t quite gotten done.  We left Genola about 5pm Tuesday afternoon to spend the night in Salt Lake as we had to be to the airport by 6:30am Wednesday.  We had a great dinner with the local family members before retiring and hardly slept a wink trying to remember if we had packed this and why did we pack that and are we bringing too much or should we have brought more.

A shuttle took us to the airport, we whizzed through security and waited 2 hours for the plane to New York.  We landed at JFK International in a rain storm a little after 3 New York time  and waited 4 hours for our flight to Sweden. At least that was the plan.  At 8pm the plane arrived, we boarded about 8:30 and sat for 2 hours in the plane waiting our turn to take off.  Because of the storm, one of the runways had been closed and everyone was crowding onto the remaining runways.  It wasn’t a huge jet, just a normal fly across the country one, and was totally full, with its requisite crying baby and rambunctious children.  Try as we might we couldn’t sleep much.  How does one sleep in an airplane, anyway?  We landed in Sweden (!!!) about 11:30 am and stood in the check your passport line for over an hour.

President and Sister Anderson were there to greet us and bring us to the mission home, with a short stop at the mission office to sign some papers.  We took a short (2 hour) nap then walked to the nearby Vik (pronounced veek) for a picnic supper.  A vik is an inlet from the sea that looks very much like a lake.  The mission home is in an upscale neighborhood where the homes are larger with beautiful large yards and narrow roads for cars, walkers and bikers. (we’ll post some pictures soon.)  Everyone’s yard is “natural” — grass with flowers growing in it that they mow around (even the dandylions!) and if you are lucky enough to have a rock in your yard you leave it alone!  It’s about 9pm now and we’ve been told it won’t get dark until 11 and then will be light again about 2.  I’m not staying up to see if its true.  We’re here!  We’re here!