A Smooth Road to Snowy Sweden

Here’s the breakdown of travel:

Kona airport delay – 3 hours
Kona to San Francisco – 6 Hours
San Francisco to Frankfurt, Germany – 10 hours
Frankfurt Germany to Stockholm, Sweden – 2 hours
Stockholm to Linkoping by train – 2:30 hours

Time change between Kona and Sweden – 12 hours

Somehow our flight was canceled to Chicago! They said they didn’t have any room on the plane. We were praying for some sort of resolution and Jeff came and talked to them and we were bumped up to Economy Plus which gave us 6 more inches of leg room. On the long 10 hour flight, we were bumped to Business class! Seats that fully recline! It made the trip so much more enjoyable.

Frankfurt gave us our first blast of freezing as we walked off the plane. Rex’s skateboard couldn’t come through security for some reason so he had to go check it. We were praying for sure! He barely made it to the gate in time for the flight.

We made it to Stockholm in picture perfect weather for this Christmas season-a light fluffy snow. We sat down and ate at 7-11. I wish we had 7-11’s like here in Sweden! Fresh grilled panini sandwiches instead of stale sandwiches or hotdogs like in the USA! We missed our train to Linkoping due to our first flight being delayed so we had to buy some new tickets. We barely got on the train with our pile of luggage before it departed! Then we realized we were sitting in the wrong seats! Oh well, the train wasn’t to full so only one passenger came up to us about it and he took a different seat.

We finally arrived in Linkoping! The photo above is just outside the chilly train station. We were picked up by Stina Hagström, a past Community Transformations YWAM student, staffing at the Linkoping YWAM base. We really felt the Lord’s favor in the smoothness of our trip. For as much travel as we did, it went amazingly smooth.

We are loving the culture, language, people and food here—the weather is another story haha, but we are getting adjusted to it and learning how to dress for it. This time has really been amazing to learn about the culture and people how to serve them and befriend them and when the opportunity arises to tell them about Jesus. We’ve been eating many favorite foods that our community back home enjoys like Risgrynsgröt (Finnish word is Riisipuuro) and glögg (traditionally mulled wine but we have it non-alcoholic). A new favorite drink of mine served around Christmas is Julmust (it tastes sort of like spicy coke). Also, I’m going to really try to implement FIKA (read more on that..) when I return home. It’s like a break time with thin gingersnaps, cookies, desserts, and coffee/tea.

YWAM Linkoping - www.ywam.se/linkoping.htm

Author: Calvin Hanson

My wife and I have finished staffing a Discipleship Training School (DTS) through Youth with a Mission (YWAM). We both love God and are committed to following his will. I enjoys taking photographs of my travels as well as blogging about awesome things God does. To see more photos, visit our gallery. More about Calvin and Camille

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