Dearest Family and friends – there isn’t much to tell about this past week in Göteborg. Dad and I just keep plugging along and the days just keep on passing. We have had a lot of rain during the last week, either during the day light hours or in the night, and of course the sea breeze always picks up when it rains. The rest of this week is scheduled for rain as well. That’s what keeps the place green, so we put up with it without too much complaining. Nothing special happened during the week. The missionaries continue to give discussions here but no one is even close to being baptized. The mission is shooting for 100 baptisms by July 1, and we are only at 53. That’s 47 more in just 5 weeks, just over 1 per companionship. President Anderson goes home July 1 and it is some sort of gift for him from his missionaries. The ones in our zone are doing everything they can think of but nothing is happening the way they want. Our chill nights are becoming a bit unorganized and many who normally come are getting fed up and not coming. Our YSA president is backpacking through China and the girls (his counselors) are overwhelmed with work and finals and are having a very difficult time keeping up with things. Saturday was a big race here in Göteborg. It is an annual ½ marathon held every year on the third Saturday of May. There were nearly 50,000 runners!! They started in waves at 1:30pm and continued every 10 minutes until nearly 4pm. They ran right past the center, at milepost 18K, out of 21K. the street was closed at 1:45pm and the trams weren’t allowed downtown either. We had to be down here at 3pm so drove down about 1pm to park the car in our little courtyard. We walked around on Avenyn for a while then came back to the center about 1:45. The lead runners came past the center at 2:20! The first 20 or so runners were all Ethiopians or Kenyans. The winning time was 1 hour 42 seconds, I think. About 2:45 the road became packed with runners non stop. We had to cross the street to go to Marzio’s for dinner. About 3:15 we decided to try. It took us 10 minutes standing by the side to find a space wide enough to dare to cross, then we had to run for it. The runners just kept on coming until after 6. When we left to go home about 8:30, the road blocks were down and everyone had vanished. Several of the YSA ran. One that I spoke with ( a young man who returned from his mission in England last summer) said that 43,000 plus finished. He ran it in 1 hour 43 minutes. He said the course was so full of people he couldn’t pass and had to slow way down until an opportunity opened up for him to get around the slower runners in front of him! The dinner was another candlelight supper without the candlelight. (It doesn’t get dark enough for candles until about 10pm these days!)  I wasn’t as nervous as the first time and it was really quite enjoyable. I can’t believe the spirits they can down during a meal, however: white wine with the fish course (this time it was fish soup, a Swedish staple), red wine with the meat course, brandy with the cheese and fruit course, then after dessert and coffee, a flute of champagne. And it was never just one glass, but as many as they had wine to fill them. One of the guests was a man named Peter who is a professional guitar player. (Well, he was once but now he is a school principal because he says you can’t make a living playing classical guitar!) but he still plays a lot and he played for us between courses and afterward. It was absolutely amazing. He played Bach on the guitar and it sounded like 2 or 3 guitars playing at once. I watched him closely and he never even looked at his right hand, yet every finger was playing, plucking the strings with amazing speed and agility. I later asked him about it and he said that to look at his hand only confuses him! And he played a piece by Schubert that was fantastic. It was like he was inside the music or something. I wish you could all have seen him and heard him play. Not a sheet of music to be seen. He said the first thing he does is memorize the notes of the song, then he just forgets about them and listens to the song in his head and plays what he hears. It makes no sense to me, and that is probably why I can’t play the piano.
We went to Väne Åsaka on Sunday to visit with the people at the farm. Dad had tried Saturday and Sunday morning to get them on the phone but no one answered. We went anyway and when dad got out of the car to take a few photos, Johan’s father was there. He said they had gone on holiday. But that Grandpa (who is 98, not 91 like we thought they said) was in the hospital. He is getting out today and the father invited us to come back again soon. We left and got to Trollhetten in time for church. After the meetings we put home in the GPS and followed it home. It took us a different way than ever before, we got lost in a spaghetti bowl of roads right outside of Göteborg, ended up downtown and had to wend our way through the traffic of downtown to get home. We were only home for about an hour and had to turn around and get back to the center for a missionary fireside at 6pm. The fireside was well attended and well received but it was raining and no one wanted to go out in the rain to catch their trams when it finished so they hanged around visiting until 9:30!! Dad and I got dinner when we got home, about 9:45, then had to stay up until 11 for it to digest. And this morning was laundry day at 8am.
So, that is all the excitement for around here. We have only 2 more institute classes until the summer break. The girls are trying to get a summer schedule fixed but they aren’t getting very far. Our trip to Stockholm for this coming weekend has been canceled. We were going to go to the temple as well as the missionary meeting. Now we’ll have to wait for some other time.
Anyway, we love all of you tons and tons. May Heavenly Father continue to watch over you and keep you from harm.  Love, Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, Robert and Nikki