Today, we went to a Lutheran church in Uppsala. This is the same church that Pastor Joakim brought us to on our first day. It is a BEAUTIFUL church. Really tall and all. I’m not sure if I shared about the history of this church, but I’ll share it anyhow.
Church
Kings and martyrs are (yes, present tense) buried in this church. Quite creepy when you come to think about it you know, you could be walking around and all these people are buried just under your feet! But these guys are really cool. One of them was the former king of Sweden, and as he was preaching about Jesus in the church, some guys from the occult were waiting outside the church for him to take him away and kill him. The king’s servant tried to get him to flee, but the king refused to do so, insisting on ending the service and walking out the front door because he was not ashamed of following Jesus. In the end, he was captured and beheaded (right in the present carpark outside the church). Also, if you look at the top of the tower, there is a statue of a rooster erected on it. This rooster is a reminder of how Peter denied Jesus three times before the rooster crowed, and is a reminder to us that we should never deny Jesus. Isn’t that amazing?
Rooster!
So, the experience at the Lutheran church was, interesting. It’s very traditional, so they had priests and the choir dressed in robes, ceremonies, communion, the full works. But we were equally blessed with the message about how we should love our neighbours as ourselves. A bit difficult to catch because we had to have Arash translate for us, but other than that, it was good.
We headed into Uppsala town for lunch after service. Lunch was fantastic, this time, we had kebab! The chicken kebab was delicious; it was breakfast, lunch and dinner all served on one plate! One of the teamers, Justin, was amusing us with his imitations of Scottish, Irish and all the English accents (from Liverpool to Newcastle to Manchester). He’s a funny guy. After lunch, we headed into the New Gen office! It’s quite a small office, nonetheless quite cosy. There, we had our highlight of the week: Skyping with Pastors!! We’ve missed Pastors so much over this week (it seemed like eternity!!) and it was so good to meet Pastors over webcam! Oh, what would we do without technology? We met some of the leaders as well, Charleston, Leonard, Ivan, Roy, Daniel, Xinyi, Jieru and Nicholas to name a few. Pastors met Justin and Linn, who is Joanne’s bunk mate. It was really funny to see everyone exchange cyber hugs and handshakes!
Myself, KS and Jonathan from Taiwan!
Streets of Uppsala!
Well, time was running short, so we headed back to the carpark and got ourselves pre paid cards, candy and chocolates along the way. Oh, I must tell you about the culture of car parking here in Sweden. One would take a good 15 minutes to walk to your car because everyone here parks so far away! It’s the equivalent of parking in Park Mall and walking to Far East to shop! Also, it’s really cute how in Singapore, they tell you the spaces you can park in and everywhere else you can’t, while in Sweden, they tell you where you can’t park and everywhere else is free for parking!
The rest of the day was pretty much freed up for us. We started doing our laundry at 5pm, and only ended at 12am because 6 people were doing laundry all at the same time! It was the first time in my life I’m actually doing my own laundry! Mum would be proud. In the meantime, we had dinner, watched a movie and snacked. Linn, Joanne and I were watching ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’, but Joanne was so tired she knocked out halfway through the movie!
Laundy, laundry, laundry. The chore.
The concert team should be coming in tomorrow, so let’s wait up for that!
In the meantime…
Jesus alskar dej. :)
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