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CABC Scandinavia Choir Tour

Day 10:  Sunday in Stockholm

Cozy home viewed from the ferry

My plan was to go straight to breakfast after QT, but the scenery outside was just too gorgeous—very reminiscent of the San Juan Islands, someone said. Ornithologically the stars of the show were the Mute Swans—even the non-birders in the crowd showed an interest in that and asked me all sorts of questions about them! The other highlight was a positive ID on a nice Lesser Black-backed Gull with feet as golden as a Yellow-footed’s! Also new were several Canada Geese, but also had old standbys such as Common Mergansers and Great Crested Grebes. Oh, also had both Barnacle and what I’m assuming were Greylag Geese (unless migration is underway already, which would have made Lesser White-fronted and Bean Geese possibilities, I suppose).

Scenes coming into Stockholm...

       Mute Swans     

Breakfast was great, then got dressed at the last minute (it was hard to pull yourself away from that scenery), disembarked, and headed for the busses. We went straight to Norrmalms Church where we had a pleasant surprise: some good friends from San Diego, Gunnar and Ellie Ostrand, had shown up! That was a happy reunion for sure! There was another one after the service: Vigdas, Susie‘s old friend from exchange-student days, had flown in from Norway and spent the whole day with us! Boy, I wish I had the camera when they met up!

Anyway, the church was an interesting little storefront place (literally) where we provided much of the music, and both the present and former pastors preached the sermon (in English and Swedish)! He talked about allowing your life to be an overflow of the Spirit’s work in you, and to refrain from trying to impress men (and that leadership should not be encouraging people into a performance mentality). They had a very moving prayer time wherein people were encouraged to light candles in honor of their prayer, and a couple of our people went up, which was neat.

The outside and inside of the Norrmalms Church (inside picture taken with Susie's camera)

They invited us to tea afterwards, which was quite elaborate, and a lady named Irene came and talked with me; like me, she was single and never married, but she’s traveled to the US before, so we had a good little chat. I think we came back to the hotel after that, but it wasn’t long before we took off again for Uppsala. We stopped at an overlook first, which gave us a wonderful view of the town and the spire, so of course lots of pictures were taken (and when I saw the one of the three of us I thought, "Gads—I hope I brushed my hair before the concert!"). We then headed to the cathedral and just kind of wandered around the grand building, oooing and ahhhing, before settling down; they also had several tombs there, one of which belonged to the botanist Lynea, for whom they had a short memorial service before our concert. It was really a worship experience to sing there; I focused on the painting of Jesus on the throne, and that really got me into the right frame of mind, nearly to tears! We sat through the memorial to Lynea which was just organ music and a sermon (couldn’t find the preacher, and he wasn’t preaching from the elaborate, curvy pulpit sitting directly over the audience), then when we sang it sounded glorious; I was really moved to tears after our finale piece Revelation 19 (I couldn’t even sing the encore)! We had dinner after that, which was slow in coming but very good, then drove home.

        Me with the Uppsala Cathedral                         Ornate pulpit inside                                Our gang in concert

                in the background