470. Grandson returning from mission in Taichung, Taiwan, and drama on plane ride back from our Senior Mission in Sweden in 1996.

We told some about our couple Senior Mission to Sweden  in blog #51 which I posted on December 27, 2013, early in my blog writing.  You can go back to that entry, and read more about Senior Missions.  I said then we would put more about our Senior mission in later blogs, and I just realized I haven't done that!  So today I'm including part of a letter I just sent to our grandson who will return from his mission in 3 days, -- our last e mail to him on his mission!

Our grandson Ben Lieske, a few years ago.

Elder Ben Lieske, taken when he first got to Taiwan.  He may have changed some when we will see him in just 3 days, returning from his mission in Taiwan.

This is the e mail I sent to him.  It tells the story I want to tell, about our ride home on the airplane from Sweden, in 1996.
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3 days from this moment, will be 3 p.m. on Wednesday, July 22nd, and you will be scheduled to come in to the St. George Airport in less than 3 hours.  I'm sure you will be very tired then, as you will have been on a long flight across the ocean, then 2 stops before getting home.  We also had a long airplane ride when we came home from Sweden.

     Remember the large painting we have of Jesus Christ in our family room?  It was painted by a college art professor we met in Sweden named Kamran Mafi. 

This is the painting, but it now has a beautiful 2 inch wide embossed gold frame.

He had been an art and sculpture professor in a university in Tehran, Iran. He didn't agree with the government, and told his family that if one day he didn't come home from work for them to get out of town as fast as they could. Well one day he was arrested, and was in prison for 3 years.  He told us his story which was fascinating.  Several times during those 3 years they told him they were going to execute him.  He had tremendous faith (He was what we called a Christian-Muslin.  He believed that Jesus was a great prophet, but so was Muhammed.)  and he told them that if God wanted him to live he would live, and if not, they would kill him.  He even once had a black cloth put over his head, but they didn't kill him, and one day they told him he was free to go.

     He went back home, and his family had left, and somehow he found they were in Sweden.  Sweden has been a refuge for people who are political refugees for many years -- and they let people come there from countries that would be dangerous to them if they stayed in their own country.  We met several like that -- that is another long story.  Someone he knew met him at midnight in the dark, and helped him get from one city to another, from his friend, to a friend of a friend of a friend, etc.  One time he was in a cellar and people above him were looking for him, I believe while he was in Turkey.  But he painted paintings to help support himself as he got to Sweden, and then went to the Government, and looked through books of political refugees, and found his family were in Kalmar, Sweden.  That is where we were for 6 months.  

We met him while he was working in an art gallery we visited.  He was restoring old paintings.  We helped teach him English, as he had a son who was a doctor and lived in Canada, and he wanted to be able to go there and live with him.   We are quite sure that is where he is now, but we have lost contact with him.  We did give him a copy of the Book of Mormon in Persian, (about 100 pages -- it was selected passages) and after he read it he said it was a poor copy -- grammar was bad, etc., and if we would get him the plates, he would do a good translation of it! (He was very educated.)  Of course that wasn't possible! 

 Who knows if he will eventually come into the Church.  His main talent was in sculpturing, and he had made several statues that were prominent in parks in that city.  Here are some pictures of him and the painting he made.  He appreciated us teaching him English and wanted to paint a painting for us. We gave him Del Parson's painting in the red robe of Christ to look at, but he painted the face a bit different.  He said he had been in Jerusalem, and that Jews faces were shaped different than that painting, and they had brown eyes mostly, and Del's painting had blue eyes.

    Anyway, he brought the painting to us at the Church, in the picture.  Christmas was on Sunday that year, and he brought the painting to the Church on Christmas day, and we were to be transferred before New Years.  He wanted to give it to the chapel there, but they couldn't accept it -- Church rules -- so we got to keep it.  His dream, after we told him of the beautiful red sandstone rocks around our town of St. George, was to come and carve a statue of Jesus in a place in a mountain of red sandstone!

 I started this story thinking about our flight back to the States from Sweden.  We flew into Seattle -- from Sweden, over the U.S.  We had about a 3 hour layover in Seattle, and after walking around a bit in the airport terminal, it was time to get back on another plane, and we realized we had been carrying the painting, all rolled up, and we had misplaced it!  We raced back to all the places we had been, and found it, still rolled up on the floor behind a chair, barely in time to make our flight.  Truly an answer to prayers we gave at that time!  So that was the drama we had on our plane ride back.

We have many interesting stories of our mission together in Sweden, and I will tell more in days to come -- hopefully soon!