Gunnar Brolin and Farbror Folke

"In later years when Tant Almida was getting too old to do the Sunday

Gunnar Brolin, 1940

School, we had a new teacher in Kjettestorp named Gunnar Brolin and his wife was Lisa. They started up a new Sunday School in Kjettestorp School, and then almost all the kids who came to school also came to Sunday School. They came from Misterfall and Vimantorp and all the other little places. Lisa and Gunnar Brolin were very active in church and helped the pastor with the youth group, what we called Luther League. We always enjoyed going to the Luther League activities. Lisa Brolin organized the first Luciafest that we had. I don’t remember who the first Lucia was; maybe it was Margit i Blåsten. I know Sara was Lucia once. I never was Lucia but I was an attendant many times. They had a long row of attendants and star boys.

Aside from church and Sunday School, another big religious influence was  Farbror Folke. He was not married the first time he came home on furlough. My

Kisa Luther League, 1940. Gunnar Brolin is sitting in the chair at the far right. Standing

behind him at the edge of the photo is Margaretha. Behind her is Astor Karlsson and next

to him is Sara. Mom is right in the middle behind Kyrkoherde (Pastor) David Myrgård.

dad always stayed Lutheran, but he supported his brother all he could. When a missionary came home, they needed to raise support again before they could go back out. Dad wanted to have a meeting in Kjettestorp to help with this. The way I remember it, it was Dad and Ragnar who did all the work for this meeting to support Folke as a missionary. I don’t remember Folke helping in any way with the preparations. Dad and Ragnar cut birches and put them up by the front door and the back door and all over up the driveway and up the staircase to the hayloft. Then in the hayloft, they set up benches. People came from near and far. They all wanted to hear this local boy who had been so so far away in the world. He had been to Mongoliet! “My stars that’s so far away.” They had a good meeting there.

I know this is later than the events Mom describes here, but I
just found it and wanted to share. It's a letter Folke wrote from
Peking, the second time he was on his way to Mongolia. He had
taken his fiancee, Anna, with him and she became sick with
dysentery before they reached Mongolia. He's writing to her
parents to tell them he's getting her the best possible medical care.

Then one time, Folke was going to Österbymo. The Pentecostal church in Österbymo was named Bethel, and it had supported him before he went so he was going back to report sort of. We were all going to hear him too -- Mom and Dad and all us kids and Ragnar and Midi and Hildegard, everybody went. When I’ve thought of it afterwards, it was pretty strange that we all left. This pretty much never happened. There was always one person left on the farm. I think maybe the neighbor’s hired man looked after our place. But it was an important meeting because they had chartered a bus and we all went on a bus. I can’t say I remember too much about the meeting really, but I do remember going home. We got a little ways down the road and then it was discovered that Henrik wasn’t in the bus. So the bus had to find a place to turn around and we headed back. On the way, we met him. He came walking. Dad asked, “Did you think you were going to walk all the way home?” and Henrik said, “I thought someone would come pick me up eventually.”

In later years, I thought of how Farbror Folke took the Word literally. When the apostles are commissioned to go out and preach, they’re told that if they’re not received well in a place where they stop, they should shake the dust of that place off their feet and go to another place.

These meetings usually talked a lot about sin. If you do this, it’s a sin and if you do this other thing, that’s a sin. I thought at the time that I didn’t know before that we all sinned so much. I thought we were mostly pretty nice and well behaved."