Beautiful sunset near our home looking over the Lule River at 2:30 pm.
Winter Wonderland!
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We’ve been living in a winter wonderland since the beginning of November. It is so beautiful!! These pictures are of Jensina and Jiana playing in the snow piles in the center of town!! Aren’t they huge??? Well, the are also no longer there. No, it hasn’t melted. This snow won’t melt until April, we’re told. Rather, they get so much snow here that they take it away to a snow dump, I’m told! So the big fun piles have now gone to the snow dump! Too bad! 😦
It’s been tooooooo long!
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Busy with dishes!!!
It has been a long time since we’ve blogged here. Life gets busy sometimes!!! We’ve had a couple of little snowfalls and now we have another. It is so beautiful!!! We are much more settled in now. Tony has started his Swedish for Immigrants class and is studying numbers and telling time. Telling time is mostly the same except for the half hours. To say 2:3o in Swedish, you would say half 3 instead of half past 2. They also have 5 before half 3 for 2:25 and 5 after half 3 for 2:35. So that is something new for us to learn!!
The girls are enjoying school for the most part and are just finishing a week off for fall vacation! They’ve also started going to a weekly kids’ club at a local church. Please pray that they begin understanding more Swedish so they feel like they fit in. Thanks.
This weekend, we had 2 special events in Luleå. The Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel of Sweden visited Teknikens Huset, a kids’ science museum at the University of Luleå.
We also attended Luleå Expo, an art and craft exhibit from the Norrbotten area of Northern Sweden. We saw many great arts and crafts, including a fun magic show! I met one young woman who is a glass blower. Hopefully, we can get to that shop sometime to see them make and blow the glass. There was another woman from further north who has about 50 sled dogs and uses them for the tourists in the winter. It was fun to learn about her huskies and see the glass paintings of her dogs that she does during the summer months. There was also lots of knitting, homemade breads, meats (some made of reindeer and moose), candles, and much more!!. They also had a special display of the Norrbotten Medieval times. It’s been a fun-filled weekend!!!
Jiana, John the magician, & Jensina
Next week, Tony goes to the beautiful city of Budapest for a planning conference with United World Mission. Please keep him in prayer as he travels and works on plans for the next year. And for me as I stay home 😦 with the children. Thank you! God bless you all!!! Gwen 🙂
Person Numbers Received!
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After more than 10 weeks of not being able to open a bank account, enroll in the Swedish for Immigrants course, or do other seemingly simple tasks, the call we’ve been waiting for came at last. “Mr. Martin, this is the Skatteveret (Tax Office) and I have issued your person numbers…” Finally, we are now “in the system” and we officially exist!
Here’s Jensina testing her theory about pulleys at a fun playground in Boden. Also, don’t forget to check out the Martin Ministry page on Facebook to find out more about us and our ministry here in Luleå.
A new week now begins. We’ve had a lot of rain the past week so we are beginning to feel the cloudy side of Luleå. Our neighbor tells us that this is the end of sunshine till next spring. Now also begins the cozy inside time in Sweden, lots of small lights and candles.
We are doing well. The girls are enjoying school and we are all enjoying new friends and learning how to be “Swedish”!!!! So what will this week hold? For the kids, Swedish school, a little American school and playing with their Swedish friends. For Tony and Gwen, figuring out how to accomplish their various tasks Swedish style. Tony’s involved with helping set the foundation for a men’s ministry in Luleå and making contacts with some students at the university. Gwen is studying Swedish (& trying to remember to talk in Swedish), going to a Swedish speaking small group, doing American school with the kids, continuing to unpack and set up, meeting with people (of course, over fika!), and keeping the home going! All sorts of new possibilities are out there!!! Stay tuned and we’ll let you know!!!
Some prayer requests:
- that our person numbers (Swedish version of SS#) will come very soon. (We’ve been waiting over two months and in Sweden, you don’t really exist until you get these. It’s beginning to hinder things we need to do, i.e., opening a bank account, starting Swedish language classes for Tony, seeing if we can get on the Swedish health care system for renewing our prescriptions and other things.),
- that an electrician will hook up our washing machine that a friend gave us (this was a special prayer request of Gwen’s) about a month ago (2 electricians have been here, but they didn’t have the proper approval to hook it up!),
- that the problems with Gwen’s computer and our printer will be resolved (ugh!!),
- that the claim on our damaged shipped belongings will be resolved.
Thanks so much for your prayers. We’re counting on them!!!
Blessings, Gwen 🙂
Check out our new page on Facebook called Martin Ministry and click on “Like” to help spread the word!
Storforsen naturreservat
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What an awesome time we had!!! These pictures don’t begin to capture the beauty of these rapids. Every few seconds, I had to stop and take another picture! Are they ever powerful!! Truly amazing! From the 1800’s until 1982, loggers were using the Pite River to bring logs down to the port of Pite. They took a different path from what is there today. Too many logs were getting damaged so the loggers made a floatway to “squeeze” the water to where they wanted it to go. Isn’t it beautiful?? The Dead Falls is where the water used to run. What an amazing creation God has made with man’s ingenuity!! We had such fun watching the falls, having a picnic lunch, visiting the Logging Camp Museum and running around in the Dead Falls!!!! –Gwen 🙂
Relationships
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Today, Tony had the privilege to preach at Korskyrkan – our home church here in Luleå – where he was able to share on the topic of relationships. Included were discussions about the perfect relationship within the Trinity, the relationship between God and humans, and the relationships humans have with each other.
You can click here to listen.
After church, our friends Claus and Christina hung out at our flat and enjoyed fika with us.
BTW…Happy Labor Day to our friends in the States!
No More Sun Tans!
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Our days are getting progressively shorter…and very rapidly! Check out the chart below from http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/lulea.html. By December 1, we’re only getting a little over 4 hours of daylight!
| Date | Sunrise | Sunset | Length | Change |
| Today | 05:07 | 19:53 | 14:46 | |
| +1 day | 05:11 | 19:50 | 14:39 | 00:07 shorter |
| +1 week | 05:29 | 19:27 | 13:58 | 00:48 shorter |
| +2 weeks | 05:51 | 19:00 | 13:09 | 01:37 shorter |
| +1 month | 06:41 | 18:00 | 11:19 | 03:27 shorter |
| +2 months | 07:19 | 15:09 | 7:50 | 06:56 shorter |
| +3 months | 09:07 | 13:32 | 4:25 | 10:21 shorter |
| +6 months | 06:41 | 16:48 | 10:07 | 04:39 shorter |
Please continue to pray for our ministry as we bring the never-darkening True Light that is brighter than the sun!
Our first month in Luleå
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Here’s a slide show of our first month in Luleå! Hope you enjoy it!!!
The girls are doing well in school. Thanks for all your prayers. They both enjoy going and we’re starting to hear a little bit of Swedish from them. Yesterday, we were goofing around and Jensina said her first Swedish sentence. “Sluta nu!” Stop now! When she came home from school, she was excited to tell us that she told one of her school mates about Jesus. Even though it didn’t go as well as she was hoping, we are so glad that she wanted to do this. Please keep them in prayer as they live their lives in front of their friends. –Gwen 🙂
Surströmming!!!
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It’s surströmming season and we did it!!! We ate surströmming!!! All four of us!!! So what is surströmming and what’s the big deal? It’s a northern Swedish dish of Baltic herring that has been fermented! They catch it in the spring and store it in a brine in barrels for a couple of months to start the fermenting process. Then, it is canned where it continues fermenting until it’s eaten. If you’re smart, you’ll open your can of surströmming outside! It does have an awful smell that permeates everything. We ate it in an open-faced sandwich with very thin crispy bread. Butter the bread, pile on the potatoes, cut the fish into tiny pieces and place it on the potatoes. We also added onion, tomatoes and sour cream. UMMMMM. It mostly tastes like salt, but there is a flavor that grows in your mouth and stomach that I can’t describe! Leftover food is thrown away because the smell and taste infuse it all. It was a very fun evening at our friends’ home, but our tummies were talking to us about it late into the night!
So what else are we doing besides eating sour fish? Our boxes finally arrived last Wed, but badly damaged! We knew they were damaged in the States, but still were shocked at the sight of them. Some things were outside of the boxes, many had been opened, with lots of torn and crushed boxes. Thankfully, not much was damaged but things are missing. Unfortunately, we may not know all that was taken until we are back in the States and see what we left there. So we are now carefully going through everything and compiling a list of the damaged and the missing. We’re also putting together furniture from IKEA and more will arrive later this week to be built! And we have a couple of painting projects we’re working on together as a family. Pray we will also be faithful in our Swedish studies in the midst of everything else.
We took the girls to Leo’s Lekland (Play land) to celebrate the end of summer. They started school yesterday in different classrooms. It just doesn’t yet seem right to be going to school in August. The weather has definitely become colder (highs in the 50’s) so that helps. They are in Välkomsten (the Welcome School) which is the school for kids who are immigrating to Sweden. Here they will learn Swedish, then when the teachers feel they are ready (probably between 3 months and a year) they will go to the regular public school. Everything is in Swedish so it is a challenge. Please pray they will catch on quickly. For Jensina, pray that she will stand strong in the Lord and have a Godly influence and leadership on her classmates rather than vice versa. She is the youngest in the class. Also pray that she does her homework and English and math that Gwen will be teaching in the afternoon with a good attitude – this is often a struggle for her. For Jiana, pray that as she stands strong in the Lord and makes the effort to become friends with the other children and thus be a Godly influence.
Kiruna Road Trip
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Pastor Richard and leaders of the church in Kiruna
Last Friday and Saturday, Tony traveled with our pastor (Richard) to Kiruna – 90 miles above the Arctic Circle. Three local pastors have been going there to help a church in this mining town of 18,000 get back on its feet. It was great to listen to these people who love God so much as they prayed for wisdom and discernment regarding the future of the church. The temperature is already dropping in Kiruna, but the hearts of the people in this church continue to be on fire for the Lord. This land is being reclaimed by God as His own and we are privileged to be part of His work!
The four-hour drive each way allowed Tony and Richard to really get to know each other and to share some of our visions and dreams for this region. We saw several reindeer lazily walking onto and across the highway we were on with obviously no fear of cars. Richard stated that most of these animals belonged to herders and were allowed to freely roam. And of course, there was also the obligatory stop at the sign marking the exact line of the Arctic Circle.
The Martins can’t wait to come back to see the spectacular beauty of this region in the winter! In the meantime, we’ll pray for the church there. Will you join us?
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