Playing Catch-Up

Once again it has been a while, but here is some of what has been going on over here. We had our second student service on October 20 at Betel. Continuing with our "Quest" theme, we talked about journeys and how it is impossible to live your entire life without affecting others or living a life where no one else has an impact in your life. We then broke into groups and had everyone draw out his or her journey. For those of you who have been witness to my insanely awesome drawing abilities, you know that people were blessed by my pictures that night. :)

The following Friday night after Unbad, the youth service at Betel, we had an all night prayer meeting. It was really cool. We started at about 10:30 and left the following morning around 8:30. We started out with about 17-18 people and by the morning there were still 8 people there so that was really cool. It was an awesome time where we just gathered together in prayer over the city of Trondheim, the students, the church, and other personal prayer requests.

Sorry the pictures are kind of blurry. I didn't want to use my flash and be a distraction. We set up different prayer 'stations' throughout the sanctuary where you could go and specifically pray prayers of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication (we used 'ask' instead). Seeing as how I hardly know what supplication means though, it didn't translate as well as hoped, therefore destroying the 'ACTS' acronym. It all worked out fine though. We had worship throughout the night and had fruit and tea on a table there as well. In the front we had a place where people could write down prayer requests and then have others pray for them throughout the night. There was a group from the Chi Alpha in Duluth that got together during part of the time that we were praying which was really cool to know that we had people all over praying collectively for the same things. It was such an amazing night and we have another one planned on November 30th so mark your calendars and feel free to join us!

These next pictures are from Lade, an area of Trondheim along the fjord. I went there with Linn Cecilie, who is Kelly's roommate and a huge blessing in my life. We had a blast.

Way to sport the authentic Norwegian sweater Linn! So great.

Haha. We were going around to all of these old historic places and making up our own stories about how history went down. I was currently pretending to be a great commander in the army giving my troops a pep talk during 'the great war'. I think we kind of scared some of the other tourists. We were laughing though.

Yes. We found a swing in the middle of the woods. It was awesome.

This is a place at the end of the trail where you can go and buy waffles and coffee and tea. As many things are in Norway though, it was very expensive so Linn and I opted to purchase soft (the Norwegian equivalent to Kool-aid) and chocolates at a little stand along the path.

This one is for my mom. :)

Ahhh the trip to IKEA!! It is times like these where a car would be nice. You can't see it but Linn has another huge blue bag on her right shoulder. It was freezing cold that night and we had a bit of a hike to get to our bus. Sigh. Oh well. My only purchase of the evening was a comforter for my bed. In the same way you should never shop for food when you are hungry, you should never shop for new comforters while you are freezing cold. I bought one of the warmest ones and am paying for it nightly, I am always so warm. I guess I won't get cold again though. That is always a plus.

Helena, Kelly, Cortney, and me. It was Helena and Cortney's birthdays so Kelly and I had them over and they had foot baths (no, I did not touch their feet for those of you who just gasped) and had facials. The red masks were self-heating. They were crazy. Pretty much right when you put them on your face they started to get really warm. Kind of like those little hand warmers we use when we are deer hunting, except all of my face. It was amazing.




This was at our Halloween party. From left to right:

Magnus is a gangster, Brett is the Holy Ghost, Cortney is a basketball player, Brita is an old Norwegian woman (Oh wow...I just realized she is wearing the same sweater that Linn was wearing from our trip to Lade. The funny part is, it is Kelly's sweater) and Kelly is a Zebra...Cat....Lemur. We couldn't actually decide.

We wanted to carve pumpkins really badly but we couldn't find any in Trondheim. No one there had ever carved pumpkins (some couldn't even remember seeing a pumpkin in their life) and none of them had ever dressed up either. We bought Halloween candy though and served caramel apples (they hadn't had those either) and hot apple cider (also a new thing for them). It is funny how there are so many things that you just assume the entire world enjoys but I am daily finding out new things that they've never heard of and many things in their lives that I've never heard of or experienced. It makes life more interesting.

This is me and Fredrik. I was a troll and Fredrik was a pirate. Kelly and I put his costume together and I put on his tattoo :) It says I love MOM in case you can't see the whole thing.

I wish I had an excuse for why I tend to only blog about once a month, but I am just going to have to say it is a sign that I am keeping busy over here. I really am loving it here. I wish that you all were here and able to experience it with me.