Traveling Ministers

While this photo is much later than the stories Mom tells here, it is a gathering of the Boberg
family in salen. The back row is Sara, Ingemar, Lennart's girlfriend, Lennart, Astor, Henrik,
and Brita. On the couch, are Mom, Elin holding Christina, Thor holding AnnCathrine,
 and Margaretha. On the floor are Birgitta, Gunilla, Thorbjörn and Ingalena.

"When people couldn’t come to church, the church came to the people.

They had preachers who came out in the country to the villages. Farfar belonged to something called Evangelilska Fosterlandstiftelsen. It was an offshoot of the Lutheran church. In fact they worked together with the Lutheran church. At times preachers from this group would stay at our house, and they would stay and have a service on Sunday. When the preacher was coming, there were preparations to be made. They put in benches. They made them out of low sawhorses and boards that were kept just for that use. Those boards were all sanded down and finished off. They were all shiny, so they probably varnished them. There were two benches in front of the kitchen door in salen and then there more benches over on the other side of the room where the sofa was. When we knew a preacher was coming, the word went out all around Kjettestorp. Sometimes people even came from Grönede and Vimantorp, even though Vimantorp used to have preachers who came from something called Alliansmissionen, the Allied Mission. They had preachers too, and we sometimes went to Vimantorp. But back to the meetings in salen.

When a preacher was coming, Dad had to go to the train station in the morning and pick him up, and he stayed in hörnkammaren, the guest room. Then when evening came, they didn’t take us kids in until the last minute just before the meeting started. We came in from the kitchen, us kids, we sat on the front bench and then there was Midi and Hildegard and Mama and Papa. We had several preachers that I remember. There was one named Karlsson who just loved to sing. He played the pump organ and sang. When Karlsson came, there were a lot of people, standing up even, so other people must have liked him too. Us kids could stay awake when he was there preaching. Then there was one named Marcusson. He was the son of a family named Marcusson from Kisa. They were all such good singers. He had a younger brother named Sigge who used to sing in church quite often.

In later years, the last one that I remember was named Friklund. We had so many funny stories about him. He had lived in Norrland a long time. I remember one time he came in the springtime. The nettles had just come up.

There was a certain kind of nettle that when it was about three, four, five inches long, you would cut them off and Mama would cook them like spinach. Then she chopped them up and made a white sauce and mixed it all together. I thought it was so good. Well, this pastor Friklund was talking about how wonderful Mama’s cooking was. We were having a dinner in salen and us kids were, for once, allowed to eat with the grown-ups there in salen. The preacher was talking about, “Oh I have never tasted such good spinach! In Vimmerby, where I live now, they say they cook spinach out of nettles! I sure would never have anything to do with that.” To be a little kid who had picked the nettles, it was pretty hard to keep from laughing. In those days, kids didn’t laugh at adults, especially not ministers. We would have been sent from the room, so we really didn’t want to laugh out loud, but we all laughed when we talked about it later.

Another one of these times, I begged Mama to let me taste real coffee. They used to put hot water in a cup and they’d put cream in it and they called it silver tea. That’s what us kids drank when the adults drank coffee. Well, I wanted to taste real coffee so bad. Mama said it was ok, but I had to finish whatever she gave me. How I wished I hadn’t asked for it. The pastor Friklund had worked up north with the Lapplanders, and he taught us how to sing "Old Man Noah" in Lapplander language. If it’s really correct, I don’t know but what he taught us was," (to hear Mom sing it, click on the video below :)