Hello from Uppsala

We are finally situated in Uppsala, Sweden. It was a very long flight from Washington to Germany, but the plane was pretty cool. We had our own individual TVs that we could chose our own movie to watch. I watched Marley & Me and part of Bolt. It was an eight hour flight and I only slept about two hours. While we were in the air we experienced the time change, it's six hours later here than in NC, and at 1 am NC time, the sun was shining through the windows. Which leads me to the first big difference between Sweden and the US. The sun rises at about 4:00 AM and sets around 9:00 PM. They have very long days in Uppsala. Luckily, my room faces the west, so we do not get the sun shining in at 4 am. It's also quite a bit cooler here with no humidity. Today's high was about 64, which is perfect if you are in the sun, but if you are in the shade it isn't too warm.

In Sweden, the currency is the kroner and for every one US dollar it's about 8 kroner. So it's really weird going to a restaurant and seeing 65 as the price for a meal, at least it's helping me with my basic math.

Friday was our first day in the city. We went to the nations for lunch. There we met Milan, whose faculty (major) was English. Instead of having a major, the Swedes have a faculty, and that is the only thing they study and that's the only part of campus they are on. They do not have minors or take general ed classes or "free" electives. I hope we can meet back up with Milan this week for Fika.

Fika is a Swedish tradition. If someone agrees to Fika with you they are giving you three to four hours of there day to get coffee/drink and pastries together. These are great for developing friendships with the Swedes and discussing the gospel and other spiritual matters.

After meeting Milan, the STINT team had a scavenger hunt set up for us to get to know our way around the city. The first place my team went to was the Domkyrkan (pronounced Domshirken), which is the largest church in Scandanavia. It is huge and beautiful and sits in the center of the city. It also has two large spires and a rose window. It is so beautiful, but then again everything about this city is beautiful. Uppsala also has a river running through the middle of it and underneath one of the streets, "the walking street". This is the only street in the city that doesn't freeze over in the winter. This street is also where we find H&M, a really fun place to shop for clothes. :D

Yesterday we got moved into our permanent housing. The rooms are pretty tight and there are three of us in here. Two are on cots. Each room has a kitchenette and a shower and a bathroom. In the bathrooms, there is no division in the floor for the shower, there is just a drain and a curtain, so the shower pretty much floods the whole bathroom. Our kitchenette is in the corner and has a small sink and a two top stove piece, which will be good so I can cook some while I'm here.

This morning I had my first Fika. All the girls got up before church and went to Wayne's Coffee (the Americanized coffee house). This was the only coffee shop open at 9:30 am. Everything was so quiet, unlike in the US by 9:30 everyone is out and moving about, especially at coffee shops, but not here. I'm ready to experience real Swedish coffee, I've heard it's amazing!

For church we went to the Korskyrkan. The service was in Swedish, but we had headsets and could listen to service translated in English. It was so cool to see Swedes worshiping God. We sung praises in Swedish and it sounded so beautiful.

Tonight we have our first ministry team meetings. I'm on the community team, or fun team as we are calling it. I'm excited to help plan what we are going to do on our days off.

Tomorrow morning we dive into ministry on the campus, which I'm really excited about. I'm ready to see the Lord at work amongst our team and city of Uppsala, Sweden.

Sorry this has been all over the place, but it's a lot of thoughts.

Prayers:

Team Unity.
Boldness in our conversations with students in Uppsala.
Ministry. Students in Uppsala are very serious about their studies and exams are fixing to start, so many students will be studying a lot.
Continuing to get use to the culture in Uppsala.


Thank you so much for your support and prayers! I am having the time of my life here!