Travel Log

On April 14th, I am heading to Europe to assist my friend and pastor, Todd Mullins, while he is teaching pastors from London for EQUIP. While I am there I will have the opportunity to connect with some old friends, meet some new ones, and lead worship a few times. I am going to attempt (based on time and Internet access) to update this post with a daily log of the events for the day. I hope you will join me each day.

DAY FIVE

It is official (as long as the volcano cooperates) I am heading home tomorrow. So that means this will “most likely” be my last post from here in Stockholm. Although I am soooooooo excited to get home to be with My wife and kids and church, there is a part of me that is a little sad to leave this city. Maybe it is because of my friendship with Pastor Andreas or just what God is doing here, but I feel like I will be leaving brothers and sisters from here at Hillsong Stockholm. Well on to the news of the day. It was a pretty relaxed day. Pastor Todd and I took the morning to ourselves. He went running and I slept. I think the timezone thing caught up to me. Or, it could have been the talking to my wife and kids at 1:00 AM local time on skype. Whatever it was, I liked it.

I met up with Pastor Todd at around 11:30 AM and we went wandering through the city. At about 1:00 PM we met up with Pastor Andreas and grabbed sushi for lunch and talked church for a good while. After a little more driving around the city, taking in sites, we came back to the hotel. Pastor Todd went and did some work, and I went after that last minute gift purchase for my wife.

We met back up with Pastor Andreas at 7:00 PM and went to Daniel Petersson’s, a friend of Andreas, home. Daniel is, I think, what we know as the Secret Service in the States, for the Swedish government. He is a fantastic guy and has a huge heart for God. Peder “the Count” and Simon (two of the leaders from Hillsong Stockholm) came over as well and we watched the Swedish Hockey League playoffs. I am not certain, but I think HV71 won the game. If so, it is a good thing seeing that it is Daniel’s favorite team and when praying for the food, I threw in a request for God to have favor on them.

The underlying plot for the day was actually happening back home as some of the finest ladies on the Christ Fellowship Staff (LaDonna Carroll, Lindsey Leslie, and Patricia Hendrix) were working to find a way for Pastor Todd and I to make it home. They succeeded and we are flying home tomorrow. Ironically, we will be flying on Iceland Air with a layover in Iceland.

Seeing that I will be arriving back in West Palm Beach at 12:30 AM local time, this will be my last “Travel Log” post. Thank you for everyone who followed my adventures each day. I hope it was interesting.

DAY FOUR

It is pretty hard to believe that this is only the fourth day of our time in Sweden.  I just received an email from British Airways informing me that our flight is canceled for tomorrow.  Big surprise!  So, we are still stranded in Europe, but at least we have friends in the city.  Now on to my report on the day.

Today was just plain awesome.  Pastor Todd and I had such a good time being with and pouring into the church.  This morning the church hosted a leadership meeting for all of their key leaders.  Pastor Todd taught them for 2 one hour sessions.  He did such a great job, and the people just soaked it in.

After the leadership meeting, I had the privilege of eating lunch with Eric Liljero, the worship pastor for Hillsong Stockholm.  What a great guy and servant.  He treated me to my first actual traditional Swedish meal, meatballs and mash potatoes.  It was delicious.  From there Eric and I and Andreas (oversees the media) went out to the peoples square and filmed “Church News”.  This is a weekly announcement piece that plays during the offering time.  It was very cool.  Eric did everything in Swedish and then I would reply in English as if I knew what he was saying.  At the very end I said 2 sentences in “brilliant” Swedish.  The church all got a good laugh.

From there is was on to worship team rehearsal.  At first, I felt a bit out of my element, but it was all good by the time service started.  The first service started at 4:00 PM and the second at 6:00 PM.  It was so much fun leading with the Hillsong worship team.  They are all great musicians and worship leaders.  Pastor Todd spoke at both services.  He did such an amazing job.  I so  proud of him.  He really connected with the people.  So, the services were really amazing.  They baptized 4 or 5 people during the 6 PM service.  It was very cool!  The church meets in a night club so they brought in a big inflatable swimming pool and put it at the back of the seating.  Pastor Andreas, from the platform, did all the pastoral speaking part of the baptism and then the connect group leaders would actually dunk the individual.  It was like a big party.  After each baptism, the band kicked into a groove and everyone clapped for the individual in rhythm to the band. Here is the link to the Hillsong Stockholm Flicker photstream.  Not sure if they are up yet, but there will be some great photos posted from the services today.

After services, we went for a nice dinner with Pastor Andreas, Eric Liljero and Tobias (one of the great young leaders).  So that was the day.  Not sure when we will be able to leave Stockholm or Europe for that matter.  So I’ll keep updating you of the activities of the day.  Until tomorrow,  Chow.

DAY THREE

Well, it is the end of another day.  This was such a great day.  So much happened that it will be hard to fit it into this short post, so I will give you the highlights.  After a good Swedish breakfast in the hotel restaurant, I was able to go back down to “Old City” and make a few last minute purchases for my wife and kids.  Guys, I don’t know about you, but I am always a bit intimidated buying stuff for my wife.  It is a lot of pressure.  I think I found her the perfect thing.

From there, we went to an area on the coast of Sweden for lunch at a nice little restaurant.  There we met with Pastor Andreas and seven of his key leaders for a time of question and answer.  It was awesome to watch Pastor Todd pour into these young leaders and to see them soak it in as well.  We spent a couple hours just fellowshipping together.  It was a fantastic time.

After our lunch meeting, Pastor Todd and I had some free time to walk around the city and just kind of take it in.  It was also at this time that we realized we not only needed to make plans how and if we were going to get out of Sweden back to London for our next assignment, but also how we were going to get back to the United States if the volcano continued to cause issues.  We got a plan.  We will see what happens.  At this point we are going to be here in Sweden a little longer than expected unless things change pretty quickly.

So, one of the funniest things happened.   As we were walking down the street I notice this guy is standing in a glass phone booth relieving himself.  Just out there for the whole world to see.  So, Pastor Todd decides he needs to take a picture of the situation on his iPhone.  Unfortunately for Pastor Todd, the guy sees him taking the picture and kind of doesn’t like it so much.  He comes out of the phone both and approaches Pastor Todd saying something.  I thought for sure Pastor Todd was going to get beat up. God protected him.  I think Pastor Todd used the whole “I don’t speak Swedish” line to get himself out of it.  All I could do is laugh.

Finally we ended the night with a nice dinner with Pastor Andreas.  Okay, all I can say is the Swedes have some really good restaurants.  The place we ate at tonight was called SMAK.  I think it means Taste.  The idea of the restaurant is that you chose your meal based on tastes.  So we each selected 7 courses from the menu.  Each course built on and complimented the previous course.  They were each very small servings.  It was actually very amazing.

So, now I am back at the hotel and getting ready to go to church with my church family via our online campus.  I never get to do this, so I am very excited.  Tomorrow is going to be another great day of serving the people of Hillsongs Stockholm.  I hope you will check out my post.  Until then, blessings!

DAY TWO

Day two is almost over. All that is left is to give you a little glimpse of the day and then I will brush my teeth and go to bed. Although the day started out a little sketchy, it turn out to be a lot of fun. I woke up at 6:30 AM local time (12:30 AM EST) and could not get back to sleep. So, I got up and got ready for the day. When I went outside the hotel, the weather did not cooperate with my wardrobe. It was raining and very cold. I went back up to the room and changed clothes. After a couple hours of milling around the room and practicing worship music for the weekend I decided to head over to the McDonald’s and grab some breakfast. I arrived at a couple minutes before 10:00 AM. The McDonald’s is very modern with cool LCD screens with pictures of all the food selections. Good thing, because the breakfast options are very different and everything is in Swedish. Just as I was about to point to the item I wanted, the screens instantly switched for lunch options. So, I ended up having a quarter pounder and fries for breakfast.

The weather got better throughout the day, but it remained pretty cold.  We had the privilege to tour the city for most of the day.  Stockholm is a very beautiful city.  We went to what is called the “Old City” (it’s the oldest part of the city).  Very cool streets that for the most part only made pedestrian traffic possible.  We also, had the opportunity to take a tour of the Royal Castle.   From there we went to the newer part of Stockholm and did a little shopping.  For those of you who do not know, I love to clothes shop.  Stockholm is a very bad place to have this problem.  Finally, we ate a late dinner at a place called Kungsholmen.  This may have been one of the coolest restaurants that I have had the opportunity to eat at.  It basically was 6 or 7 restaurants all in one building.  Now I am back at our hotel Scandic  Malmen.

Pastor Andreas has a true servant by the name of Erik Jenefeldt who has been looking after us.  He has really inspired me in how he loves his pastor, his church and has shown tremendous care for us.  Well.  That is it for the day.  I added some pictures to from yesterday.  Hope you check back again tomorrow.  Blessings!

DAY ONE

It is 10:26 PM in Stockholm.  That is 4:26 PM back home in much warmer South Florida.  The first day of my trip has been absolutely amazing.  We left Miami International Airport at 5:15 PM.  The flight was pretty good.  I finally had the opportunity to watch Avatar.  I have to say, I really enjoyed it.  I did not sleep very well on the remainder of the flight, so when we arrived in London at 6:30 AM local time (1:30 AM EST), I was whipped.  Very interesting…as we exited the plane, it was surrounded by fire trucks.  We were not sure what was going on.  It was only after walking through the Heathrow Airport (which by the way is very clean and very quiet) did we hear about the big volcano.  We boarded our flight to Stockholm.  Soon after leaving Heathrow, they shut down all flights in and out of the airport because of the volcanic ash.  Funny, we landed in Stockholm and soon after we landed they shut down that airport as well.  There is a little uncertainty as to when any airports in this part of Europe will reopen.   The last time this volcano erupted, it supposedly lasted for a very long time.

While on the flight to Stockholm, I recognized that the worship pastor from Hillsong London, Peter Wilson, was across the aisle from me sleeping like a log.  We connected after the flight landed and I had a great time getting to know him.  Pastor Andreas Nielsen and his assistant Eric “collected” us at the airport and took us to a very nice lunch and then to our hotel.  Their hospitality has been amazing.  Pastor Todd and I decided we probably needed to get some rest before the evening.  I laid down at around 2:30 PM, thinking I could get an hour nap.  Unfortunately for me one of my “beloved” worship community members decided to call me (3 times) at 3:00 PM, so my nap was over.

Pastor Todd and I took a little self-guided tour through the city.  I love Stockholm.  It is beautiful and the people seem very friendly.  We then met up with Pastor Andreas and spent some time talking about the church.  The evening ended with a great night of worship led by Peter Wilson and the Hillsong Stockholm worship team.  God showed up in a big way.  One very nice surprise was being able to see one of my favorite students of all my years in student ministry, Hannah Pettingill.  She is now living here in Sweden.  She came to the worship event to see us.  It was so great.

Well that is it for today.  Hope you will stop by again tomorrow.  Blessings!