Our trip through the camera lens

Our first stop was England. We stayed with friends that Lena met in Brussels 15 years ago when she was there working as a nanny. Nigel was in the same cell group and now we also got to meet his beautiful family! We also met another couple from the same cell group that also are back in the London area now. They took us around the city and showed us everything that a turist needs to see :-) And we had a nice "Fish and chips" together. Good meeting you all again!
Unfortunately, I have no good pictures of these friends as well as others we met during the trip but failed to get a picture of (Pleace excuse the bad picture quality on some pictures. I, Lena, has taken most of the pictures but have not quite learned yet to handle light settings, etc.
Below a picture of St. Paul Cathedral and the Salvation Army headquarters, where my father used to work for more than 40 years ago.

When we arrived to Sweden we had a few days of snow
-not much but we did have some snow!
Hans is getting our tree from the forest. Good job Hans!

By Christmas all the snow was gone but we had a nice time anyway.

Dimitri arrived to Sweden
and we where happy to take him to all the sights in Stockholm.

I'm also happy my neice was able to join us for our "Sweden tour". She came with us for about 10 days and must have been very tired when it was time for school again :-) (since all of us where tired after this week)

Met up with Bennit (a sweet lady, a former colleague to Kenneth and a great supporter of our job in Thassos) at a "New Year race" in Vallentuna. Her son did a good job and ended up as 5th runner.

Being so near Brottby we thought we might visit the Schut family. We found them on their way from the airport (thay been in Holland to visit family on the Christmas brake) and still we where invited for a lunch in their house. What a lovely hospitable family!

For the second year running we celebrated the New Year with Ristholm. A nice tradition. Ristholm stayed in Thassos for a few months last winter so it was good to have time together again. And we enjoyed Carina's good cooking and artistic touch on everything during the night.

1 of January we celebrated Sunday service in New Life.
Kenneth was part of the worship team
(every one on stage has been visiting us in Greece,
everyone but Andrea- it's a sign Andrea, you got to come visit us!)

Dimitri was learing the Swedish word fika (coffee and sweet).
In New Life we always have fika before the sermon begins.

And Dimitri was preaching on coming to your braking point,
that is when God realy can break through.

Lenas best time in Sweden was here in Eskilstuna when she got to meet her sweet Louise! (Lena and Louise were sharing a flat for seven years)

From the team that was visiting us in May we got to meet three lovely faces. Josefin was one of them. At first we didn't get the chans to meet but then she came up with this brilliant idea, she came with us in the car as we were going from Stockholm to spend our last days in Örebro. We had a few hours together before she took the train back home.

On our way to Örebro we visited the uncle and aunt of Lena.
Dimitri is shown one big bible.(above).

In Örebro we where staying with friends that has been to Thassos many times and feels like part of our church down in Greece (down). Now we where able to visit thier church.

We also got the chance to meet up with friends from Göteborg that was in town

Preparing for Greek night. We're making some good greek treats mmm sovlaki, tzatsiki, feta...

Our last night before arriving to Greece we where staying in the lovely bed and breakfast, Grange Guest house in Bishop's Stortford, a beautiful British town.

Home sweet home

Home sweet home, they say. But what is home? It's been good to be home in Sweden, eat Swedish food, meet friends and family. But it has also been a bit tiring having to travel around so much, sleeping in new places and meet new people. At three locations we had meetings and talked about our work here on Thassos. Three very different and very pleasant gatherings. It was not always so structured and especially not as it struggled with the technical. But we trust that God did what he wanted to do even when the presentation was stumbling. A big thank you to the technical friends that was helping us along the trip. And it feels good that we got a lot of nice feedback -people that got encouraged by what we do.

Towards the end of our trip we started to feel a bit homesick - longing for Thassos. That's where we have our things, church, friends and our cat. However, it is hard to come back. Partly, because we are tired from the trip, partly because we are back to work with all that entails in terms of responsibility and a spiritual struggle.

Both Thassos and Sweden are our home! but both may look strange at times. When we at the beginning of the week met with "our youth" again after not seeing them for three weeks it felt good to be back. This is where we have our calling for now, we may in a few years again call Sweden our home for real but for now we live in a caravan in northen Greece.