Week 40; August 11, 2014 – Finding my Swedish Roots
Hey guys it’s been another
great week! I always find that writing my first paragraph is hard, so I'll
just jump into it!
We had an awesome
Wednesday. We went out to visit a new convert in an outlying town called
Finspång. He was doing great! Afterward we thought we'd schedule a lesson
with an investigator we'd been teaching for a while named Adrian. We'd never
been out to his house because he usually meets us in Norrköping, so it looked
like a good opportunity. We only had about half an hour to meet though. He
lived out in the country and the trip took us out to a really cool lake. We
weren't sure how or what to teach, so we talked with him for a little bit.
While we were there, a little kid jumped off the high dive into the lake, so
Adrian had to try and jump off the huge diving board too.
Unfortunately, we had to start
walking back to the bus stop, but he brought up the question of baptism. We
explained it to him the best we could and he seemed excited about it. But, our bus came at that moment and we didn't get to discuss
it any more. We are hoping to ask him to be baptized on Wednesday though!
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| A Unique Water Tower in Nykoping |
After that we took a long
bus ride to have dinner with the Bishop. We talked a lot about how the Ward was
doing and about some of the less active members we had met recently. After
dinner he took us to an incredible ice cream place and we walked along the
largest canal in Sweden in a beautiful town called Söderköping.
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| The Beautiful Town of Soderkoping, Sweden |
The best part of the
week was on Sunday. A church member helped me do some family
history research about a week ago, so I could find my Great, Great, Grandfather, Hjalmar Lundin.
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| Hjalmar Lundin (1870-1941) |
Editor’s note: At the turn of the century, Lundin was known as Sweden’s Giant of
Strength and considered the strongest man on earth. He single-handedly moved
an over-sized grand piano in to the ballroom of the Swedish royal palace of King Oscar
II on his back. King Oscar was so impressed with his strength that he tipped
him 50 Kroners, which paid for his passage to the United States where he later became
the strong man for Ringling Brothers Circus in 1894 and a professional wrestler
in the years that followed. He was known to have supported the weight of 22 men
standing on a board across his chest in in a “wrestler’s bridge,” with an
aggregate weight of 3,752 pounds.
We couldn't find the
information we needed after hours of research and I got a little frustrated. On
Sunday he told me that he finally found him and he gave me a document that had
all of his genealogy on it! We would never have been able to find that
information without access to a specific Swedish database that he used! It
was a huge blessing that he was able to find information about my relatives. Now we can finally move
forward with the rest of our family history in Sweden. I know this discovery
was a miracle and it was a huge part of why I was sent to Sweden. It was so awesome to
find him this week!
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| Elder Hernandez in the Legaspi, Philippines Mission |
Well that's about all
from here. But there’s one last thing, my best friend Ryan is serving his mission in
the Philippines. They recently had a bad Typhoon that caused a lot of
damage on his island. Please keep Ryan and the people in that area of the Philippines
in your prayers as they work to rebuild. Thanks!
I hope everyone has a
great week!
Love you guys!
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