Good morning, welcome to the Word for Life broadcast brought to you by Brookside Baptist Church. My name is Ken Kelter, I'm the pastor. I'm filling in for Pastor Greg, who he and his wife Ruth have been celebrating their 50th anniversary with their family in Georgia, and we look forward to them being back with us, and I know Pastor Greg's been a blessing to many of you through the broadcast here with the Word for Life. Today in our studio, we're thankful to have Melissa Carlson. Melissa is one of our missionaries to the country of Sweden. She's been in Sweden seven years. And so, Melissa, thank you for joining us. Good to have you. All right. Well, Melissa, why don't you share with us a little bit about, you know, your upbringing, where you grew up, and just tell us a little bit about yourself. I grew up in northwestern Illinois out in the middle of cornfields, basically. My dad was a pastor of a small church there, a very Swedish area. A lot of people who had come from Sweden and settled there. My great-grandpa came from Sweden and had settled there, and all of his kids lived in the area and had farms and such and different various things. And so I grew up there and hearing a lot about the stories from their homeland and from just those kinds of things. What was the name of the town? The town was Altona, Illinois. Okay, Altona, yeah. Exactly whereabouts in Illinois is it? It's kind of in the northwest part, kind of towards the Quad Cities area. Okay, towards the Quad Cities, all right. And is your dad still pastoring there? He pastored a number of years, but now he is working at Maranatha Baptist University. Okay, so when you're back here in this area, then you're able to be with your family. I'm sure that's exciting for you. Yes, that is really nice. So you're growing up in the community there, which is predominantly Swedish. That's right. And was there any stories that just really stood out to you about the homeland of Sweden that just really caught your attention? I don't know if there's any specific story. Just hearing my grandpa talk about – he would use a few Swedish words, but they didn't know a lot as the kids. I never got the privilege to meet my great-grandpa. He had passed away shortly before I was born. But I did meet my great-grandma. She didn't pass away until I was older at that point. just hearing about the farm that they had in the place and how there wasn't as much room and so they, that's why he had, my great-grandpa had decided he was going to move back over to the United States and he had done his term in the military in Sweden and then he came over and settled and got married and had a lot of kids and just did his farm. Did you go to college then? I did, I went to Maranatha. Okay, you went to Maranatha and you graduated. So it was early on with Sweden, you picked up the real need for the gospel there. When did you really sense, hey, this thing is building momentum here from a kid growing up, being associated with my grandfather and my great-grandmother that I had an opportunity to spend some time with, with the need and the burden of Sweden. When did you sense, wow, this is really starting to move closer in my life to that being a reality? When I was a sophomore in high school, we moved up to Watertown, Wisconsin, and I went to the academy there at Maranatha, and we would have missionaries come through at our home church as well as through the chapels time when I was in high school. And it was really then when I started to actually think about missions in Sweden, and we would have missionaries come in, and I had never heard of any missionaries going to Sweden. So I had tried to figure out, are there any missionaries in Sweden? And so I decided that I would pray that God would send missionaries to Sweden. I was not convinced that that was something for me. I was afraid of the idea of being a missionary and didn't think that God would call me in that way. But I wanted to pray that He would call someone to go to Sweden. And He just really used that and worked in my heart. So by the time I was in college, a sophomore in college, I knew the Lord was leading me along that lines, that I should go to Sweden as a missionary. You're just joining us for the Word for Life broadcast today. We have Melissa Karlsson in studio, and Melissa has been in Sweden as a missionary for seven years, and getting her background there in Illinois, in a Swedish community, and then coming up to Watertown and hearing a lot of missionary speakers, and not hearing anybody from Sweden. You know what? I gotta be honest with you, I haven't known a lot of missionaries in Sweden. You've been over there in Sweden seven years. Have you met a lot of missionaries over there? There aren't a lot. Actually, there are a few. It's become harder, I think, for missionaries, and some have had a hard time staying. It's a difficult field to work in. It's difficult spiritually. It's difficult even with the darkness and the this physical darkness and everything. Some people have left for various reasons. So it's definitely a country that has a great need for more missions and more missionaries to go to Sweden. Is it difficult to get into the country as a missionary? Sweden changed their laws a number of years ago, which at that time you could get missionary visas, you could renew them every year. And I have friends in Stockholm area that had done that and gone that route. And they made a law saying if you have a missionary visa, after three years you have to leave the country. And so it actually resulted in one of the families that I know actually had to leave Sweden. and they weren't allowed to stay. Another had to really fight hard to try to figure out a way that they could stay in the country in a different kind of visa. I went in on a more work visa, working through a church over in Sweden, and that allowed me to be able to stay. It didn't affect me in that way. So now in order to get missionaries into Sweden, you have to be more creative and you have to do more of a sponsoring them in type of way to get them in. There's one family that is coming to join us and I'm looking forward to working with and they're getting ready to do the visa process. And so we have to have it all set up so we can invite them in so that they can more willing get into the country. When you were talking about Sweden being the darkness, more of a coldness, what is the spiritual background of Sweden? Is it a religious background that they have, or is it pretty much they're atheists and don't even believe in God? changed over the years. And even in recent years, they have kind of come a long way. But traditionally, they have been more in the Lutheran. They have the State Lutheran Church, and that still, the church still exists. Membership is about 60 percent right now. That's down from even 85 percent in 2000. And so most of those people that were born into it, they were baptized as babies into the church. A lot of people will still get their babies baptized into the church as a traditional thing, and that's just what you do. But unfortunately, at this point, this country is at least 80% atheist. And so there's really not an interest. I talk to people and they talk about churches closing and only a few people that actually go to those churches. So they're really just – they have their church and their traditions, but there really isn't any real interest in the things of the Lord or the things of the Bible or religion in general. In fact, the second largest religion in Sweden right now is actually Islam. at over 8% of the country. So did I hear you, did you say 80% would claim to be more atheist? Yes. Wow. That's really heartbreaking. Melissa, we have been studying Romans on Sunday mornings here at Brookside. And when we were in chapter one, towards the end of chapter one, one comment I made, and I had no idea we had an atheist actually in the service, but one comment I made was that an atheist is not born an atheist. An atheist is educated to become an atheist because God put the internal evidence there of himself within man that we would refer to as a God-consciousness, and then he also gave us an external testimony of creation to his working and to his being. And so, for someone to refuse the internal and the external evidence of, hey, you know what, God made that, he made the sun, he made the moon, I would assume probably the education there in Sweden is very heavy on there is no God, and that whole atheistic approach. So that's sad to hear. So how have you been able to deal with that? When you come in contact with those folks, are they open to talk to you? Are they open to find out why you're here? Are they receptive to you as an American being there with them? I mean, what are some of the thoughts there? Well, generally, in my experience, they have been pretty kind and gracious in many ways. There are some that won't. They just don't want to talk about it. They don't want to think about it. So you really, it's kind of a wall. I have one lady I've been witnessing to some in a nursing home. She has been very closed to the gospel. Every time I bring up something, she'll usually try to change the subject right away or become very skeptical. Others that I've talked to, I have very good relationships with, but it's hard to help them understand and to see. Sometimes they'll talk every now and then, and usually they just don't want to talk. I have one neighbor who's atheist, and her daughter comes to our Bible clubs. And she herself has said she's atheist, but she's more open. She said, if you can prove God exists, then I will consider it. How old is she? She is 12, just turned 13. Wow. So she's actually been surprisingly open this past year, especially has asked a lot of really good questions. And I've just spent a lot of time with her. And there's a couple other girls as well that we've met every week. And they ask great questions and they're searching. And it's all new to them. They ask everything from what is sin to what is heaven, what is hell, and everything in between. And they're definitely interested, and they're listening. Many Americans over in Sweden? There are. I don't know a great deal myself personally, but there are Americans that work for various companies over there and such. With you, have you run into any resistance because you're an American over there wanting to talk to them about God? I don't think it's been so much resistance in that regard. Me being an American hasn't seemed to bother too many people, at least not that they've said that's the reason. A lot of people don't necessarily know when I'm talking to them that I'm from America if they don't know who I am. I've had people guess other countries where they think I'm from. They know by my accent that I'm not from Sweden. So I think in that regard, now anytime there's political stuff going on in the States, then people always want to talk about that and I try to avoid political discussion in Sweden. So you can speak fluent in Swedish? I can, yes. Obviously there's probably some English over there too, or is it mainly just Swedish? Most people can speak English. I've always had the thought process that when I go to talk to people, I'm going to talk to them in Swedish. So that's kind of how I've chosen to go, and I've learned a lot that way. When I went to church, everything was in Swedish, so it helped. I went to language school and talked to people. So, a lot of people can speak English, but the children are just starting to learn, and some of the older people never were taught at that point when they were in school. So, and I spend a lot of time with older people and children, so it's very vital to be able to do the language. How long did it take you to learn the language? I was in language school full-time for the first year, just over a year, and then I just spent a lot of time visiting with my neighbors. I got a dog and went out with him and talked to people, talked to the kids at church, and just sort of got there. What's your dog's name? Riley. Riley, yeah. And so Riley's opened some opportunities for you, hasn't he? Yeah, about all the contacts in my neighborhood are because of him. Because of Riley. People love animals, that's for sure. Well, Melissa, we'd like to come back for another broadcast here with you. And so if you're just joining us, I hope you'll tune in to our next broadcast with Melissa Carlson. This is the Word for Life broadcast brought to you by Brookside Baptist Church. I'd love to let you know that our services on Sunday morning are at 9 a.m. and 1015. We do have Bible study classes that are meeting at those same times. And then our evening service is at 6 p.m. Currently, we're in the Book of Romans. on Sunday mornings and in the book of Matthew on Sunday evenings. We'd love to have you. We have opportunities for our kids and our teens and our college. We have a singles group that meets on Tuesday night. And so anything that we could do to be a help to you, please give us a call here at Brookside Baptist Church. Melissa, thank you for being with us, and we'll look forward to picking up in the next broadcast some of what God's been doing in your life there in Sweden. May the Lord bless you. Have a great day.