Last Friday in class, my partner was telling me that she felt a little sad inside – that nothing was making her happy. I said, “Maybe you’d feel better if you went to church.” And she said, “OK” so this morning we picked her up and brought her with us to Agape Church. She’s new to the Norwegian language like I am and I so appreciate the pastor’s ability to speak the language clearly and slowly enough for me to understand (it’s his second language, too), so I was excited to bring her along. The only problem was, the pastor didn’t preach this morning… a member preached, and he’s a local guy with all the local dialect and he spoke fast and a bit faster than normal because he was nervous. He lost us both. Better luck next time. The music was still good though and afterwards we had her come over for coffee and banana bread and we had a chance to visit and talk about God things. It was all very nice, but she said it didn’t do much for her and it would have been better if she could have understood the message. I guess that was the point of going. Oh well.
One of the leaders of Kaleb’s afterschool program goes to Agape Church. He mentioned a few weeks ago that he’d like Kaleb to meet his little brother, William. They are the same age, but Kaleb is a year behind him in school because of our decision to put him in 4th grade. They met for the first time today as Andreas (the older brother) took them both to a café downtown and then back to his house where they played together all afternoon. Kaleb taught William how to play chess, William showed Kaleb how to play Pokemon on his Nintendo, and Kaleb read the rule book for playing the card game of Pokemon and explained it to William (it was written in English). It was all good – as they both had to work at speaking a foreign language and they both had the exact same interests – and are only a few months apart in age. And best of all, (besides the fact that William has a DOG) is that they live only about a half mile down our street! So the world just opened up for Kaleb today as he finally found a boy his age to hang out with – HALLELUJAH! And they like each other. Imagine that. I’m thrilled beyond words.
While Kaleb was gone today we had over a teenage boy and his mother. This boy has been having lots of bad thoughts lately (suicidal) and we have been praying for him fairly regularly. It occurred to me as I was praying for him one day that he has a lot of unforgiveness in his life, as many people have hurt him over the years. The last time I prayed for him I asked him to make a list of everyone that has hurt him that he hasn’t forgiven. He came today with two pages of names and it took us three hours of praying to get through the list. He had a few other things that came up that he felt he should also ask forgiveness for so it was quite a productive time and we are trusting God to work miracles in his life. He left here feeling much better - Hallelujah! It felt good to feel so useful. I think they were more comfortable coming to us because we are NOT Norwegians. It’s just not the norm here to share your problems with the world, so it was nice that God used our “weakness” (of not being Norwegian) for his strength. The language barrier was a bit of a challenge, but thank goodness for biblegateway.com as I was able to look up appropriate scriptures for him and just with the click of the mouse, pull up the Norwegian translation and show him the verses to memorize. (All the names of the books of the Bible are different in Norwegian – like the book of James is called “Jacobs brev,” so it’s hard to even know where to start when using the Norwegian Bible.)
The photo today was taken a few days ago from the end of my street at school. It was early in the morning so the lighting was very dramatic. I thought for sure a storm was coming that day, as the clouds seemed like a wave, ready to break over the land… but the storm never came. Kind of like tonight -almost. We stayed up until 11:30 – waiting for a SKYPE call from our home fellowship group back home (they were getting together today in Mt. Vernon at 2:00 for a cider pressing and they were going to call then – which was 11pm our time). But the call didn’t come. Then just as we were just heading off to bed –they called! It was so nice to see their smiling faces again! And it was only the baby in the group that made us aware of the passing of time. For the two years we met together every Sunday night for dinner and fellowship, they were all so supportive of Kory and his “heart healthy” diet, but they are now so relieved they can eat fatty foods again. They gave us the run-down on the menu and I think they are making up for lost time. Bon Appétit and thanks for the call!
One of the leaders of Kaleb’s afterschool program goes to Agape Church. He mentioned a few weeks ago that he’d like Kaleb to meet his little brother, William. They are the same age, but Kaleb is a year behind him in school because of our decision to put him in 4th grade. They met for the first time today as Andreas (the older brother) took them both to a café downtown and then back to his house where they played together all afternoon. Kaleb taught William how to play chess, William showed Kaleb how to play Pokemon on his Nintendo, and Kaleb read the rule book for playing the card game of Pokemon and explained it to William (it was written in English). It was all good – as they both had to work at speaking a foreign language and they both had the exact same interests – and are only a few months apart in age. And best of all, (besides the fact that William has a DOG) is that they live only about a half mile down our street! So the world just opened up for Kaleb today as he finally found a boy his age to hang out with – HALLELUJAH! And they like each other. Imagine that. I’m thrilled beyond words.
While Kaleb was gone today we had over a teenage boy and his mother. This boy has been having lots of bad thoughts lately (suicidal) and we have been praying for him fairly regularly. It occurred to me as I was praying for him one day that he has a lot of unforgiveness in his life, as many people have hurt him over the years. The last time I prayed for him I asked him to make a list of everyone that has hurt him that he hasn’t forgiven. He came today with two pages of names and it took us three hours of praying to get through the list. He had a few other things that came up that he felt he should also ask forgiveness for so it was quite a productive time and we are trusting God to work miracles in his life. He left here feeling much better - Hallelujah! It felt good to feel so useful. I think they were more comfortable coming to us because we are NOT Norwegians. It’s just not the norm here to share your problems with the world, so it was nice that God used our “weakness” (of not being Norwegian) for his strength. The language barrier was a bit of a challenge, but thank goodness for biblegateway.com as I was able to look up appropriate scriptures for him and just with the click of the mouse, pull up the Norwegian translation and show him the verses to memorize. (All the names of the books of the Bible are different in Norwegian – like the book of James is called “Jacobs brev,” so it’s hard to even know where to start when using the Norwegian Bible.)
The photo today was taken a few days ago from the end of my street at school. It was early in the morning so the lighting was very dramatic. I thought for sure a storm was coming that day, as the clouds seemed like a wave, ready to break over the land… but the storm never came. Kind of like tonight -almost. We stayed up until 11:30 – waiting for a SKYPE call from our home fellowship group back home (they were getting together today in Mt. Vernon at 2:00 for a cider pressing and they were going to call then – which was 11pm our time). But the call didn’t come. Then just as we were just heading off to bed –they called! It was so nice to see their smiling faces again! And it was only the baby in the group that made us aware of the passing of time. For the two years we met together every Sunday night for dinner and fellowship, they were all so supportive of Kory and his “heart healthy” diet, but they are now so relieved they can eat fatty foods again. They gave us the run-down on the menu and I think they are making up for lost time. Bon Appétit and thanks for the call!
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