Days of Worry

If you have read my last post, you know that my aunt Carin sent me a few letters she found when she was looking through her things. The letters are from China, written by my great grandfather Robert and a colleague of his, who was also a missionary. One of the letters – or perhaps...

Letters Standing the Test of Time

It is truly amazing what value handwritten letters hold. Letters can, like nothing else, stand the test of time. I have always loved writing letters and when I was young I saved all the letters I recieved. I thought that someday, I would like to read them again. So I keep a couple of small,...

Focus On the Journey, Not the Destination

My grandmother Edna was born in China in 1913. One of her first memories was from the journey she made with her family when she was three years old. She used to tell me about it. Discovering how my great grandparents spent their time out of China is quite interesting. Travelling took so long back...

Home Away From Home

After my visit this summer to Strömsborgs Vilohem at Rådmansö, north of Stockholm, I’ve felt curious about the time my relatives spent out of China as well. In some ways, these years and months are not as well documented. Yes, they did write letters to their missionary colleagues in and out of China - but...

Revealing Past Summers

They had spent a couple of lovely summers at “Strömsborgs Vilohem*” when time came for Dagny and Robert to once again set out to China to fulfill their obligation as missionaries in the year of 1912. This time was to be quite different in one deciding way. Four of their children were too old to...

Icons forever

Painting icons is an art in itself. You need to have a lot of patience and the technique is quite elaborate. Icons are painted with egg tempera - a combination of color pigment, egg yoke, water and a drop of vinegar - and they are, as you can imagine, full of symbolic meaning. Icons are...

Collecting time capsules

Sweden and Finland have a truly interwoven history. I have thought a lot about this lately, as the Finnish decision to join Nato speeded up Sweden's application to do the same. Many Finnish and Finnish-Swedish as well as Swedish-Finnish people live in Sweden and just like me, there are many of us who have relatives...

A Laughter Extended Through Time

What traces will we leave behind, once we're gone? I don't know if my missionary relatives asked themselves that question in respect to anything but their ultimate goal - heaven. To them,  the salvation of souls within their mission in China was number one. They didn't try to reach fame or become uplifted members of...

Walking on water

The Yellow River or Huang He is the second longest river i China after the Yangtze River. It's an impressive flow of water, vital to the transport of goods and people in a country where it's not always been easy to travel by land. Huang He was of course very important for the missionaries as...

Moving on, moving in

With the pandemic still blocking what used to be our lives, people are looking to dig where they stand. In Sweden, house prices are soaring as we move out of the city centres to do our distance work from a more pleasant environment. People now mainly look for that extra room where you can put...