We Have Wheels!

Today was the day for freedom… we got our van registered, licensed, and insured and now we can run ourselves around town doing errands. I am so thankful for that as I often feel like I’m inconveniencing Turid with our endless trips, but she’s always so gracious and says it’s no problem. Bless her. Kaleb got a new (used) bike today, too. His grandma Adeline gave him $75 before we left home for “spending money in Norway” so he spent half of it on the bike and we chipped in the other half of the $100 purchase price. (New kid bikes here are around $500). Now he is as free as we are to make his way around the neighborhood. (That's our new van and Kaleb's bike in the photo).

I changed some dollars into kroner today and got 5 kroner for each dollar. That’s up from the 4.6 I got when I wired money over before we came. A few years ago you could get 10 kroner for the dollar but the normal range is around 7. Converted to dollars, it was $983 for the tabs for one year on the car and at least that for the insurance for one year (but we haven’t gotten the bill yet.) When we went to register the car we were given a piece of paper and told to go to our bank and pay the bill, bring back the receipt to show it’s paid and then they will give us the license plates. How bizarre is that? They don’t do check writing here and the only way to get money in and out of accounts is to do electronic transfers, so, we had to go to the bank to do it. Talk about a run-around (and lots of standing in line). And we got back the exact license plates that were on the car before. When your tabs expire you must turn in your plates if you aren’t going to renew them. They hold the plates until you come back in or you sell the car and the next person comes in to register it. How funny is that? And it took all day to get insurance as the country is nearly shut down this week and next as it’s high season for summer vacations and EVERYONE goes on vacation in the summer. We had to go register with the “folkregister” people to get our ID number before we could get insurance. It was almost a comedy of errors going through the steps to get the car details figured out and even funnier to watch Kory and Odd try to get the license plates attached back onto the car. I felt like there was a joke in the making… how many Norwegians does it take to put on a license plate?

We still haven’t heard anything about a place to live, but everyone we know and everyone they know have been on the phone today calling everyone anyone knows to see if they know of a house or apartment for rent. The housing situation is so desperate that even people who come here to work for just a few months a year, keep their apartment and pay on an empty place all year, just so they know they have a place to live when they return. It’s nearly impossible, but again I say, “with God, all things are possible“ (oh wait, I didn’t say that… the Bible did!)

Kory is losing faith a little in the whole housing situation, but I maintain God will see us through just fine. We went for a prayer walk through the neighborhood where we were supposed to live and prayed for the houses as we passed them by and also that God would open doors for us to live there -- it’s ideal for Kaleb. Kory and I could live anywhere, but this is all about him right now so we just keep trusting God will provide. Odd thinks we should keep fasting and praying and not get up from our knees until God notices us and answers our prayers. He’s quite the skeptic so it will be fun to see his reaction when God gets us out of this mess!