Mishpachah Lev-Tsiyon
Hillringsberg, Sweden
Central Kehilah of the New Covenant Assemblies of Yahweh
Pastor: Christopher C.M. Warren, M.A.(Oxon)
Booking Arrangements
Click here for this Current Year's Sabbath,
New Moon, Festival and Conference Dates
ALL VISITS STRICTLY BY APPOINTMENT
PLEASE BOOK WELL IN ADVANCE!
Visiting address: Hillringsberg Skolan 3, 671 79 GLAVA, Sweden
Postal address: Box 120, S-671 51 ARVIKA, Sweden
Telephone (office): +46 (0)570 42001
ESSENTIAL INTRODUCTION
This webpage was made to help those planning to visit our home, which sometimes doubles up as a conference centre during the three pilgrim festivals (Pesach, Shavu'ot and Sukkot), in Hillringsberg, Sweden in the spring, summer and autumn/fall, respectively. Regular weekly sabbath and monthly Rosh Chodesh meetings (according to the luni-solar Creation Calendar) are also held here for members of MLT and their guests.
This ministry is run as a cooperative so we try to keep costs minimal. We are not a hôtel and do not employ professional people. This is strictly no frills with the emphasis on fellowship and mutual service in close imitation of the first New Testament believers. We basically ask people to cover our food expenses for them (supper and/or lunch) and to volunteer their services cooking, serving, etc. and in exchange we open up our home. We wouldn't be able to manage otherwise. In order to minimise overheads in what are difficult times, rather than hire an expensive building for assemblies and create the burden for all visitors having to find hôtels, we in MLT/NCAY offer our homes as and when we can - we are a house fellowship first and foremost where labour and costs are shared. Please remember that when you come. We have no rich benefactors, all of our people are poor. Though we would like to accommodate people, we now only have very limited space, and whereas we previously operated a Guest House with two dormitories for men and women, respectively, we have had to end this service as these became private homes in 2016. Accordingly we can only offer accommodation for a handful of people in our homes and so conference delegates must now seek accommodation elsewhere. Sadly, local hôtels and hostels, including two right next door to us, have all now closed because of the current recession, so visitors will have to travel further afield to neighbouring villages and towns which creates transport problems.
Invited families with children are welcome at our homes provided they are under proper parental supervision and discipline at all times (inside or out) and are not disruptive of meetings or the smooth running of our home. We do not invite back those families whose children are left to run amok, disturb the peace of assemblies or who cause damage because of parental neglect. We expect all damage to be paid for. Though we, of course, do our best to be helpful, it should not be taken for granted that we provide baby-sitting and child-monitoring facilties while delegates attend meetings or relax because for the present we just don't have the staff. And whilst we have extensive grounds for those children who like to run around outside, the weather is not always clement. Swedish springs and autumns/falls are often cold and/or wet and force you to be indoors.
Main MLT Assembly Room
This webpage will give you information on registration, fees, house rules, travel arrangements, accommodation, etc. It is important that you plan any visit well in advance. If you are from outside the EU and/or need a visa to enter Sweden you will need at least 4-8 months for Swedish Immigration to process your visa once you have received a letter of invitation from MLT. Though 3 months used to be adequate, the government now has a huge backlog of applications owing to the refugee crisis in the Middle East and elsewhere. It's important you bear this in mind. Most who have encountered these difficulties in the past usually plan a year in advance to be safe.
MLT/NCAY does not, and cannot, finance your air travel, meals and accommodation. Only in very exceptional circumstances will we agree to assist a pastor from one of our established NCAY congregations where financing is hard to come by. Most of the time this is beyond our financial means. This goes for accommodation and food too. We were once visited by a pastor from another small denomination in Namibia who, without so much as a word of warning, demanded that we finance his return trip and expected to be serenaded like one of the rich American tele-evangelists. He was stranded here for some time before he could arrange, with considerable difficulty, his own finances to return to his homeland. We do not therefore take too kindly to those who feel they have a right to be financed and take liberties with our hospitality.
MLT Assembly Room Painting
Though it is very rare, sometimes scam artists from abroad try to use us to dishonestly gain entry into Sweden in order to conduct black market activities, become illegal immigrants, or to have a free vacation at our expense. We will not hesitate to report such to the authorities for immediate arrest and deportation. For this and other reasons we do not usually invite people we do not know. So please make yourself known in our online discussion groups over a period of time. We only want serious investigators to this work who are familiar with our beliefs and are serious about possible conversion.
We have very limited resources in terms of manpower and finances and must therefore rely on our visitors to properly prepare, organise themselves and present their festival tithes and/or registration fees at least a month in advance to cover accommodation and food expenses here if they want to get a place in our new Guest House. We also expect visitors to volunteer their services in the kitchen and elsewhere as it is impossible for the full-time residents to both cater and organise the conferences themselves. Those who are offered a place in our Guest House are expected both to obey residency rules and to clean and tidy up at the end of the conference.
Main MLT Assembly Room
Because of bad experiences at past conferences, where we have been taken advantage of, we have been forced to create a number of stricter house rules. Prior to Sukkot 2014 we expected visitors to live by their conscience and had no kind of official registration procedure though those reading this page knew what was expected of them. Members of NCAY are expected to save up a third of their annual tithes, as Scripture teaches, to finance their travels, accommodation and food when they visit a venue away from home. Providing food for numerous guests is a very expensive and labour-intensive undertaking for a single family. Each visitor should bring the equivalent in cash of what it would cost him or her to eat for the entire duration of a conference (8-9 days at Pesach and Sukkot, respectively, 2-3 days at Shavu'ot).
At a recent conference we realised the way we did things needed to be changed. Only one guest brought food sufficient for his entire conference stay, two brought a tiny amount. The rest of the visitors (about 90% of attendees) paid or brought absolutely nothing at all. When almost no one helped with the physical running of conference, and children were unsupervised and left to cause considerable physical damage to our property and expenses for repair work we did not need, we felt that our trust had been seriously abused and that something drastic needed to be done in the name of Christian stewardship, fairness and decency. And that is why this new webpage has been created as an illustration of what 'following the spirit' without Torah (Law, rules) leads to.
Messianic Israel is about responsible, accountable, communal labour. MLT is not a hôtel or a vaccation centre. If you want to have a vaccation, as many do (taking advantage of the proximity of Oslo), that is fine provided you do so before or after Conference. This is particularly true of the shorter summer Shavu'ot Conference. Though we would love to show people around, and have done so in the past, as numbers of visitors have increased this obviously is impossible. We are happy to advise people of the things to see and do here, and have included a section on this page for that purpose. It is important you realise that public transport is very limited out here in the countryside - there is none on Sundays, almost none on Saturdays and nothing after 6.15 pm. If you have booked private hôtel accommodation in the local town you will either need to hire a car or occasionally use a (very expensive) taxi. Plan ahead, be prepared, carefully weight your options. This also becomes important as you plan arrivals and departures. Unless you are willing to hire a car or use expensive taxis, or are planning to do some sightseeing (in Oslo, for example) and overnight in a hôtel before you travel to Hillringsberg, you should not arrive at a weekend and you should not arrive in Norway or Sweden later than noon. If you do, you will find yourself stranded and forced to stay in a hôtel for one (if you arrive on a Sunday) or two (if you arrive on a Saturday) nights. And if you cannot afford to do that, you may be forced to spend the night in the airport weaiting lounge. So PLAN AHEAD CAREFULLY!
Shavu'ot 2014 Summer Conference Delegates Fellowshipping
Conferences are qadosh (set-apart, sacred, holy) moedim (appointments) commanded by Yahweh for the assembly of talmidim (disciples), and like the Sabbath, and are not for "doing your [own] pleasure on My qodesh (holy) day" (Isa.58:13, NKJV). Those who come to MLT/NCAY conferences with that in mind will find great delight in them, and such are most heartily welcome. We do not gather to have a worldly holiday!
We expect you to carefully read and understand all the sections on this webpage. Please do not skim over them if you are planning to visit us. If you are definitely planning to come to a Conference, please select an item from the list at the top of the page or continue by clicking the NEXT arrow button below:
