Picnic (and Rain) in the Park

It’s amazing how long we can sleep in when Kaleb doesn’t come crawling in to our bed in the morning. I’m sure I could have slept all day, but got up at ten anyway to make it to church on time. We went to Filadelfia this morning and heard a wonderful sermon on Pentecost (which is next Monday and another National holiday in Norway). The pastor read the words of Jesus, telling us it is BETTER for us that he doesn’t stay on earth because after he leaves, he’ll send the Holy Spirit, which is much more powerful. It was such a thought provoking and inspiring talk, and I understood most everything he said without using the translation headphones, so that was cool. It was such a great sermon everyone applauded afterwards. That was a first, and a little odd in church, but nice at the same time.

Before the sermon began a group of kids from Youth With A Mission (YWAM) made a presentation about their two month mission trip to India. The YWAM base in Ålesund is called “Creative” Discipleship Training School because all the kids that go there have some artistic gifting they want to use for God’s glory. The coolest part about their presentation was the music video they made while in India. It looked like it was cut right from MTV, as they knew the song they would use ahead of time and they set different stages for the messages they were trying to convey while filming it. It was all very clever and a great way to display their mission. They are indeed talented folk.

After church we stayed for coffee and cake and sat with Tone (pronounced Tone-ah) and her husband (she is one of The Praying Women). Her husband became a politician after he retired from banking. When he was first running for office, the week before the election, he came down with a severe case of Chicken Pox, which nearly killed him as it spread internally as much as externally. He was actually on life support the day of the election, and when he won, he didn’t know about it for weeks afterward because of how sick he was. Tone was sure he would lose the election because all the newspapers and TV were reporting he was on his death bed, but they voted him in anyway. Gotta love that.

We picked Kaleb up from his friend Andre’s house after church and he was just gloating. I had taken away his Nintendo privileges yesterday because he disobeyed me. His friend Andre had a Game-boy system so he played that all night instead, and felt so triumphant that he was still able to play video games while not disobeying. I am trying to help him understand the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, but I’m not sure I’m making progress. We headed right for a park to go to a church picnic with Agape Church this afternoon and as everyone was packing up and leaving, I noticed a lot of garbage on the ground. I asked Kaleb if he could go around and pick up all the garbage he saw, so he started walking away with his eyes closed then came back and reported he didn’t see a thing. Not funny.

The reason I asked him to pick up litter was because when he was playing volleyball I was watching him from a distance and saw him wrestle the ball out of a kid’s arms and then start throwing sand at the kid. I was so disappointed to see him behave like that and then he wouldn’t fess up to doing it when I talked to him about it later. Not good. I’m so miffed with him and not sure how to handle this behavior. I don’t know what’s normal and what’s not, but I certainly don’t like some of the things he’s been doing lately.

We weren’t sure we were going to go to the picnic because it was raining a little this afternoon, but wouldn’t you know, that doesn’t stop a thing here. We showed up a little late and the picnic and games were in full swing. Norwegians have a very cool invention they use for beach parties called an “engangsgrille” which literally translates as “one time grill.” It’s basically just an aluminum lasagna pan with charcoal in the bottom and a light metal grill over the top. With one toss of the match, the coals ignite and after a few minutes, the grill is ready for hot dogs or burgers (see photo). But we provided the ultimate entertainment for the day when we showed up with our full sized BBQ. We are so American. Kory just had to have his barbequed potatoes and didn’t know how to do them on those little grills, so we got several snickers as we pulled up in the van with that big BBQ. We have no shame. The park was empty except for our church party, so there was lots of room to play volleyball, croquet and another lawn game (Kubb) that came from the Vikings that involves throwing sticks of wood at other sticks of wood in a strategic way. Any game that involves throwing objects is a hit with Kaleb and he did very well playing it his first time. Now if he could just focus that precision towards being obedient, we might have a little more peace in our household.