Brother Axel Richardson, short in stature but a spiritual giant, relates: “In 1936 my thin-limbed little wife, Asta, and I were assigned to serve in the vast mountainous western part of the province of Jämtland. The only earthly things we owned at that time were two bikes, a tent, a mattress case, and a suitcase. But we were absolutely determined to cover our territory, not leaving any isolated Lapp camp or mountain farm unvisited. Often we hiked in boots, our feet swollen and painful, with daily provisions and literature on our backs and in our arms, for tens of kilometers a day across the rugged and relentless mountains. Axel recalls an experience on an occasion when his wife did not go with him: “A kind man, a stranger, gave me a lift in his motorboat across a lake. After he left me on the shore, I watched him return to the other side. I looked around. There I was all by myself with my bicycle and a heavy book bag in a totally isolated place. I felt so forlorn. There were only three homes in this entire territory. After visiting them, I was impelled to move on. But how? I had the lake on one side and the steep mountain on the other. There was no choice. With the bike on one shoulder and the book bag on the other, I began to climb the mountain. After several exhausting hours of hiking a toilsome ascent, with a sigh of relief I began the descent on the other side. A man who lived lower down on the slope asked, ‘Where in the world did you come from?’ He stared in amazement as I pointed toward that high mountain. ‘You are the first one to come that way,’ he said, ‘and that on a bicycle!’ I felt happy to have made that effort for the sake of the good news.”

[Picture on page 145]

Asta and Axel Richardson served in the province of Jämtland during 1936