51. Our Swedish Senior Mission, and Need for Senior Missionaries
When I was about 18 years old, I received a lovely comforting blessing from the 88 year old Patriarch, for whom I typed blessings. He said the day would come when I would serve a mission. At that time (1953) a girl had to be 23 years old to serve a mission. I didn't expect to be able to go then, and I did get married about 2 weeks before I turned 21. We began to have a family, and after having 9 children over 18 years, our lives were quite busy. But we still had a desire to go on a couple mission when we could. Finally, in 1993, after our last child, a daughter Pam, got married, we put in our papers. Wayne had gone on a mission to Sweden when he was young, in the early 1950's. He had kept up on the language, so we were thrilled when we received a call in December 1993 to go to Sweden. But we had 5 months before we were to go early in May, 1994. In a trip up north during that time, we went to the Mission Home in Provo and asked if we could get a Swedish Langu