September 2024 it had been 40 years since I got into my little SAAB 96 and drove from Härnösand to a small town 300 kilometers away.
I was 19 years old and was going to start working as a parish assistant in a parish in the Church of Sweden. The job interview was done over the phone, because the vicar was far too busy to find a day when I could come and visit, so I had never been to the place where I would be working.
We had agreed that the parish would arrange housing for me and the vicar would meet me and show me around when I arrived.
I turned into the parking lot at the rectory, where the pastor’s office was also located, just before the appointed time. It was closed. No one was there and when I rang the doorbell at the rectory, no one answered. This was before mobile phones and the internet, so I didn’t have many options other than to sit down on the bench outside and wait – someone was bound to show up soon, wheren’t they?
After about an hour, a car arrived and a woman in her thirties, who turned out to be the secretary, got out. She looked at me in surprise as I walked towards her – a stranger, clearly not from the village. When I had walked a few steps, I saw a light come on and she said something like “Are you the one who’s going to start working here?”
I was.
We went into the parish office and she did what she could to get hold of the vicar and the chairman of the church council. It turned out that the vicar, in addition to forgetting to tell her what day I was coming, had apparently also forgotten all about me. The chairman of the church council was just as clueless as the secretary, but at least he came to see me for a short while.
There was no accommodation, the vicar had not kept that promise (it turned out later that he hadn’t looked for accommodation for me at all).
The room in the parish building that was intended as my study, had been unused for ten years and hadn’t been cleaned in about the same amount of time. Thankfully, there was an old, dusty sofa bed there, so I wouldn’t have to sleep outside.
So without further ado, I started by cleaning up what would become both my “home” and my study for three months. Everything had to be cleaned from the ground up, and when I went to take down the curtains in order to clean the windows, they were so old and sun-damaged that the fabric fell apart in my hands. I scrubbed and scrubbed the rest of the day until it was clean enough to breathe in there, then I cried myself to sleep on my sofa bed, ready to pack up and leave the next day.
The next morning I thought I would at least try to get a chance to talk to the vicar; he should be there by now. He was. Without making any excuses or explanations as to why he had not been there to receive me, he explained that my job was to build up some sort of children’s and youth ministry in the parish. When I asked what had been done up until now, the answer was short: “Nothing”.
That was my entire job description: “Build a good children’s and youth ministry from nothing”.
He quickly dismissed me and from that moment on I had to figure out for myself what I should do. It was of course an almost impossible task, but it taught me a lot in spite of the fact that I did not receive any guidance at all.
I learned a lot about what not to do and more about how I wanted it to be and what I should have done.
After three months, I found a small house to rent and the small community became my home. I slowly began to look for ways to carry out my mission. Along the way, I met with a lot of fantastic people, but also obstacles, prejudices and loneliness. It was a difficult period in my life, I was often on the verge of giving up, but I was still sure that I was where I was supposed to be at that moment in my life, so I stayed.
The responsibility I was given was far beyond my ability, I knew that I would never be able to handle it on my own. The result could not depend on me, on what I knew, but had to come from what I dared to receive and share, from how much I dared to trust in God’s help. There was no one else to ask, so I had to go directly to the source, so to speak.
I have never forgotten that principle and the experiences I had there have helped me a lot later in life.
When I left the congregation three years later, there were children’s groups, “mother child group” (it’s called “Open preschool” in Sweden these days), confirmation groups, adult confirmation candidates, youth group, a children’s choir and a youth choir, all led by me.
But that evening, September 17, 1984, there was just a little 19-year-old girl, lying on a dusty sofa bed, wanting to go home…
