This was a sad-glad day.
We first met Munir when asked to teach our English conversation class on Tuesday nights. He was the pastor of the Arabic-speaking church in Luleå with a passion to see people come to know and love Jesus as he did. He shared his faith boldly and many came to Jesus. We had so many good times in our class discussing world events, Jesus, our lives, etc. and learning English at the same time! He had a beautiful smile and a twinkle in his eyes! Munir and his brother, Samir, became dear friends to us!
Listening to his story, we realized that we had mutual friends, George and Martha. As a child in the States, Gwen’s church supported George and Martha. They were the ones who first told Munir about Jesus so many years ago! Who knew that all these years later, we would meet him in Luleå, sharing his contagious faith? God had a plan!!!
Last March/April, Munir shared with us that he had cancer in his stomach. We prayed as he endured chemo, but 2 Sundays ago, Munir changed addresses and started to live in heaven with his Jesus! I guess Jesus decided Munir had had enough of the pain and suffering and wanted Munir to come live with Himself for all eternity. Today was Munir’s funeral. Thus, it is a sad-glad day. He leaves a huge hole in our community and in his family. We miss him and it’s so hard to comprehend that we won’t meet him again on this earth. Such was his earthly life. But now, he continues his life in heaven, which we know is far better!!! The beautiful song, “I Can Only Imagine” was sung today. While listening, I couldn’t help but to think that Munir doesn’t need to ‘only imagine’ any more. He knows!! And I can just see him going around heaven with a huge smile on his face and a twinkle in his wide-open eyes exclaiming, “I never imagined such an amazing God or such an amazing place!!”
Tomorrow morning (Saturday, March 4) our house church will gather in this quaint local café called Hanssons Kitchen. We’ll hang out, talk about Jesus, and hopefully have an opportunity to share our faith with others.
We finally had our first “good” snowstorm! It snowed for two days and our total for this storm alone was about 18″ of the white stuff. Sasha is a mixed breed and two of her breeds are used to hunt moose and bear, so she’s in her glory running and burying herself in the snow.
We had a White Elephant Christmas gift exchange with our house church last week. Nobody except our family had ever taken part in one before, which made it so much more fun. Who said house church is boring? Check out the video 
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