Summer Came Today!

29 May 2013

These are the days I live for.  Warm sunshine and not much to do.  The day lingered and I took as many little walks as I could with my shorts, flip-flops and sleeveless top.  It was an all-out summer day today in Norway and may very well be the best day of the year.  It hit 80 and it was 94 on our deck.  All windows and doors were open, I pulled out the awning to cool things down and we ate popcicles twice.  Now that’s my kind of day!

I didn’t have a thing on the agenda for today so I piddled it away, doing a little writing, running a few errands, visiting a few folks.  Kory went to Philadelphia Church across the street and worked all day building a seating platform inside a little trailer that will be used Sunday (probably in the rain) for a children’s festival that day.  The pastor of the church asked him if he had time to do it and he was happy to help.  Lars, the guy staying at our place right now, also helped him a little so the two of them were gone all day being carpenters.

Kaleb slept in until 10:30 then sat inside and did schoolwork, against my advice.  I wanted him to at least sit on the deck so he got some sunshine on his bones, but he’s so afraid of getting a sunburn that he wore a long sleeved shirt even in the house! Crazy kid.

I worked on a few articles, organized and put away my thrift store treasures and made dinner.  Those were my big thrills for the day, other than the short nap I took out on the deck with the sun baking my skin into a deep bronze tone.  I’m still short on Vitamin D so I need to soak it up when I can.

After dinner the three of us took a long walk around the outer perimeter of the malls nears us then stopped in to buy more popcicles because they are on sale right now.  Normally one popcicle costs about four dollars, but today we bought a box of them and they were only about 75 cents each, so we couldn’t resist.  Kaleb loves the pear flavored ones but I think the peach flavored ones are pretty good, too.  They even have pear flavored pop here which is all of our favorites, but we don’t buy pop very often.

Kaleb made a little money on our walk as he picked up some pop bottles along the way.  The deposit on them is either about 18 cents or 45 cents, depending on the size, so he made over a dollar just picking up trash as we walked along.  Folks just leave the bottles on tables or sitting on top of garbage cans as they don’t want to be bothered with taking them to the recycle machine.  A person could really supplement their income in Norway just by picking up bottles and cans.

Today I saw in the back of a grocery store, two employees heaving all kinds of food into the dumpster.  It looked like packets of things like nuts or candy or something.  Previously I’ve been to the mall at closing time and the bakery does the same thing – they just toss out all the baked good that don’t get sold that day. There are no food banks or hungry people here.  Everyone has a good life and is well supplemented by the government so there is no need to keep that kind of stuff.  It just seems wrong to me, but there is nothing practical that can be done with it.  There are homeless people here in the summer from Romania, begging in the streets, but no one wants to feed them or more will come. 

Tonight was a special meeting at Agape Church they have once a month for the “heartbeat” of the church – the core group - kind of a deeper training for people who are very involved in the life of the church.  It’s a time for the staff to talk about the vision and passion of the church and for them to emphasize important aspects of Christian life.  We were honored to be invited and it was good to see the many ways they want to grow the group spiritually.  They don’t talk about numbers of people attending their church, as far as church growth goes, they talk about getting closer to God.  Now that’s my kind of emphasis.  One woman was prayed for as she starts a two year stint on Mercy Ships in Africa as an optometrist.   Norwegian churches or individuals don’t sponsor missionaries like they do in America.  Each person with a heart to serve on the mission field has to come up with their own financing, so they just prayed for her and let her talk about how long it took for this dream of hers to come true – 12 years!  I guess it took awhile for her to save the money she needed.

Kaleb spent a few hours at Daniel’s house while we were at the meeting and he wasn’t pleased when we picked him up a few minutes before he expected us to be there, so we visited with Are and Tina a bit before we headed home.  The sun was setting when we got home and it couldn’t have been a more beautiful ending to such a sweet summer day.