MTC - Reunions and Sort-of-Reunions

After our first devotional on Tuesday evening, we were happy to meet Craig’s mission leaders from when he was younger. Paul and Bonnie Oscarson were called to lead the new Sweden Göteborg mission in 1977, while Paul’s older brother and sister-in-law, Richard and Linda oversaw the Sweden Stockholm mission. Paul was called to serve at the age of 29, so they had a very young family. There were some missionaries who were older than the Oscarsons. 

I lived in the Sweden Göteborg mission when they served there, so this was a happy reunion for me as well. Last time we saw them was at a missionary reunion many years ago. We had heard they were serving as branch leaders at the MTC, but did not think we would run into them. There are A LOT of people there! 

After the Tuesday evening devotional finished and all the missionaries started scattering Bonnie and Paul came over to say hello. It was SO good to see them! They are fantastic and humble people and we love them very much. Paul was amazed at seeing one of his young missionaries now serving as a senior and wondered how may mission presidents get to experience that. I don’t know, but it cannot be many as they are usually much older than the Oscarsons were when they served in Sweden around fifty years ago. 

Bonnie and Paul Oscarson

The MTC teaches many languages and we ran into a couple of young women learning Norwegian. It was exciting for both of us, as Norwegian is very close to Swedish, so we were able to speak Swedish to them. We asked if they knew any missionaries going to Sweden, and they said there were a few, so we started looking for them. 

The young missionaries going to Norway

While eating lunch in the cafeteria one day a couple of young women came and introduced themselves. They were going to Sweden to serve. Their Swedish was not very good yet as they had not been learning very long, but it was fun to speak with them. I looked at their name tags, and one said her name was Sister Bergsman. That was a name I recognized. She is the grand niece of a friend in Sweden! This young woman’s grandmother is the sister of Monica Wrang, who is the wife of the man who was the branch president in Malmö, Sweden, when I was baptized! She grew up in the UK, so she does not know much Swedish, but she is learning now!

Young Sister Bergsman. I had unfortunately smudged the lens on my camera, so the picture is not great.

A couple of days after running into young Sister Bergsman we ran into her cousin! This young man is going to serve in the Balkans. He grew up in Sweden, so I was able to speak Swedish with him. That always makes me excited.

Young Elder Olsson

This young woman is the granddaughter of a friend in Twin Falls, Idaho! 

She teaches at the MTC, but was not our teacher. Had to hunt her down 😄 

She teaches in the same building we were in, so it was not difficult to find her. 

I love meeting people who know, or are related to people I know 💖