I woke up thanking God for a good night’s sleep – finally! This morning I was feeling rather refreshed
for the first time since we landed. Kory
already had the coffee going so I was able to have some quiet time before
waking Kaleb up for church.
We are always torn, when we are here, as to which church we
should attend. We have friends at both
Pentecostal churches in our area, but Kaleb likes one better than the other, so
we headed off to Agape, even though his friends attend Philadelphia. Pastor Mark, at Agape, speaks such perfect
Norwegian I am able to understand his sermons better than at Philly, so I like
it a little better there, too. We were
warmly welcomed and there were lots of squeals of delight and hugs given and
received when people saw we were back.
Agape has moved into their new remodeled building and it is
very nice. The sound system is good and Kory
joked that it’s loud enough he doesn’t have to wear hearing aids (he doesn’t
wear them anymore, anyway). We had a
great time of worship, as they have so many gifted singers and musicians but I
swear they have a rule that at least one person on the worship team must be
pregnant as I’ve never seen it any other way.
It’s a church geared for the younger crowd and those folks make lots of
babies. Mark preached about heaven, and
what our bodies will be like when we are there – something I’d never thought
about much as I tend to focus too much on the one I have while I’m on earth. We
went to the café afterwards and visited a bit with people we know. The church is growing, but all the old
familiar faces were there, too, so it really felt like coming home.
We had no plans for the afternoon and since the local soccer
team had a home game, we knew many folks we’d like to visit would be there, so
we decided just to go for a walk. My
earthly body is a bit out of shape so I didn’t think I could conquer any
mountains (they are all covered in snow anyway), so we decided to take Inger’s
car back that we had borrowed for the weekend.
While Kory and Kaleb washed it, I started packing up a few
of my Norwegian treasures I want to take home.
I’m making up small boxes of things that easily fit into suitcases, as
there are several folks here that will be coming to visit us before we return,
so I’m hoping to send things home with them, bit by bit. There’s no way we have enough luggage space
on our return voyage for all the things my heart desires to bring along with
me. I may not be able to take them with
me to heaven, but I sure want to enjoy them as much as I can here on earth.
It didn’t rain all day today, but it was windy and fairly
cold - a perfect day for a Sunday walk.
Bjørn and
Inger live about three and a half miles from us so we drove their car over to
them, then walked home. (Bjørn
was gone with the boys to the soccer game.) We stopped by Cousin Axel’s house, which was
right on the way, to greet them and have a little chat. One of their daughters just had a baby on
Thursday and the other one just moved back from England with her hunky monkey
fiancé – they will be married in August, so it was nice to see them, too.
We tried to find a more scenic path along the water for the
trip home, rather than the one that follows the road the whole way, or the one
that Kaleb takes all the time on his bike, but we made several wrong turns along
our journey. It almost became comical as
we kept ending up in places we didn’t even know existed and they all dead
ended, so we had to turn around and go back to the main path. We left Inger’s house at 5pm and didn’t get
home until nearly 8pm, with most of that time spent backtracking along the
wrong paths. I needed the exercise, but
Kaleb was getting bored by the whole process. I love it that in these parts, everywhere I look I see either water or mountains.
I hate eating dinner so late but we were hungry and tired by
the time we got home so we had a quick soup dinner and played a board game
until bedtime. It wasn’t a bad way to
spend a Sunday, that’s for sure. And we
got the word out to several people that we need to rent out our condo for two
years, so maybe something will come of that.
I hate to put an ad in the newspaper, but we were told we could get over
$2,500 a month rent for our 725 sq ft place! That’s way more than we clear on
our 11-unit apartment in Seattle. I
guess if food is expensive here, rent would be, too, but I was shocked by that
bit of news. I’d rather rent it for half
that amount though and have it be used by God in some way, than to pay taxes on
all that income. Ugh. I had no idea
rents had gone up that much in this area so I’m sure if we price it lower, we’ll
get it filled with the right person at the right time. I’m already grieving that transition.
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