Texans ford the fjords on Sweden mission trip

Vikings welcomed cowboys to their home turf recently—but not for a gridiron challenge.

A five-person team from Cowboy Church of Mineral Wells and Cowboy Gatherin’ in Bunger, a small community south of Graham, participated in a nine-day mission trip to Sweden, where they rode, roped and wrangled, all in the name of God’s kingdom.

This trip has been several years in the making for Ralph Hull, a horse trainer who has sold horses to people throughout Europe.

“My clients in Sweden come occasionally to stay with me,” he said. “Every time they come, my wife Maureen and I take them to cowboy church with us.”

Hull’s Swedish clients had asked him many times to visit and teach a cowhorse clinic. He always turned them down until one client suggested he lead a cowboy church service at a major horse show sponsored by the Swedish Reined Cowhorse Association .

“When she said that, I got more excited,” Hull said. “I’ve been asked for several years to come, but I always had shows or horses to take care of and didn’t want to take the time to go. But since I saw the opportunity to spread the gospel along with training horses, I saw the Lord was opening a door. Going to teach about horses didn’t really enthuse me; going to share the gospel did.”

Pastor Jamey Burrus Cowboy Gatherin’ in Bunger plays cowboy gospel music while Victor Tollemark of Sweden looks on during a barbecue by the sea. (PHOTOS/Courtesy of Maureen Hull)

Studies show that while almost eight in 10 Swedes are members of the Church of Sweden, only one in 10 thinks religion is important in daily life.

“The biggest need right now is just knowledge,” said Maureen Hull, secretary of Cowboy Church. “They don’t know anything about God. You can’t ask them, ‘Are you saved?’ because they don’t know what that means.

Church dues are collected by the government along with taxes whether people attend services or not, Hull said, giving many Swedes the impression the state church only cares about their money.

The Texas team set out to shatter these impressions and connect with an unreached demographic—members of the Swedish horse culture.

Texas Baptists helped fund the trip in part through a grant from the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions , said Steve Seaberry, director of Texas partnerships for the Baptist General Convention of Texas. The team also received private donations and held two fundraising events. Their contacts in Sweden provided room and board.

On the first part of the trip, Hull taught a reined cowhorse clinic with 11 participants in Halmstad, about five-and-a-half hours southwest of Stockholm. In the second part, members of the team competed, preached and evangelized at the annual horse show at High Chaparral, an Old West-themed park in Hillerstorp, about four hours southwest of Stockholm.

Ralph Hull (right) and a Swedish rancher discuss horses and cattle. (PHOTOS/Courtesy of Maureen Hull)

High Chaparral features an Indian expo, a Mexican village, gift shops, a museum, train rides and other themed attractions.

“It’s nothing you’ve ever seen,” Maureen Hull said. “Everything is authentic. It’s all memorabilia and nostalgia items from our country’s history. The train that goes around—they actually shoveled coal in it. You can smell the coal burning.”

High Chaparral’s western village has a 15th century Swedish church where the team held cowboy church services each afternoon.

“We got a lot more opportunities to preach and spread the gospel than we anticipated,” said Jamey Burrus, pastor of Cowboy Gatherin’. “We were only actually scheduled for one service. After we went there and preached to them and I did one of my rope sermons, they kept talking about it and asking for more.”

Most of the work was accomplished through one-on-one evangelism. Burrus said he felt encouraged by what he saw God doing in the lives of the friends they made.

“They really want Bibles—that’s one of the biggest things,” Burrus said. “We met a guy named Ulf Noren who writes a horse magazine over there. We gave him a Cowboy New Testament, and he was so excited about it. He sat and read it and looked at it a long time. Just sat and read it and insisted that we get him more to pass out to people in Sweden.”

Members of Texas cowboy churches enjoy time with new friends on a trip to Sweden. They are (back row, left to right) Gary Tull, pastor of Cowboy Church of Mineral Wells; Jamey Burrus, pastor of Cowboy Gatherin’ Church in Bunger; Delise Burrus; Ralph Hull, Lay Pastor of Cowboy Church of Mineral Wells, Maureen Hull; Katarina Nielson; Staffan Nielson; Bjorn Karlsson; (front row) Maria Westgaard holding Juni Westgaard; Rolf Westgaard; Marianna Karlsson; and Peter Westgaard. (PHOTOS/Courtesy of Maureen Hull)

Burrus and Ralph Hull spent time throughout the week speaking with a Swede named Rolf, one of the Hulls’ customers.

“He had been with us through our whole trip,” Hull said. “He’d been at all the services and heard us talk to people. He said, ‘The idea sounds very interesting, but I’m not ready yet.’ I told him: ‘Whenever the Lord says it’s time, it’s time. Be ready and don’t turn away when he does.’ And we just gave it time. On that last day he wanted to talk to Jamey and me alone, so we were able to visit with him. And through that, he knew that the Lord wanted him to turn his life over to him, and he did.”

The change in Rolf was immediate, Burrus said.

“You could tell by the way he talked that he really found peace in the Lord,” Burrus said. “Several people came up to me later and said they could really tell and that his life was completely different.”

Maureen Hull and Delise Burrus had many opportunities to tell Swedes about the gospel in casual conversations while sitting in the stands watching their husbands compete.

“I think there are people whose lives we touched and we’re not really aware of it right now,” Maureen Hull said.

Ralph Hull said God used the group’s unique talents to draw people into conversation. They had more opportunities to share the gospel than they expected.

“The Lord worked in amazing ways while we were there,” Hull said. “Jamey is a fabulous roper. He did well in roping there and really got people’s attention. Through that, people would come up and talk to him who normally wouldn’t. The abilities God gave us caused people to want to come to us. God was pulling them toward us.”

Reporters from various equine magazines interviewed Hull after the horse he showed won reserve champion of the show. He talked freely about his faith in interviews and said his testimony, at least in part, would be shared in print throughout the Swedish cowboy culture.

Burrus said the trip was not a one-time thing. The relationships the team built continue to grow as they stay in e-mail contact, and the show’s organizers have already insisted that the team come back in the future.

“It was a very, very moving experience for me,” Burrus said. “I personally just run out of words trying to explain it.”

To learn more about the Sweden mission trip and watch Burrus’ roping sermons, visit the trip blog at ourridetosweden.wordpress.com .