Soooo Thankful!

16 June 2013

I could hardly sleep last night, I was so overwhelmed with gratitude that our condo will be in good hands and we can just walk away and not think about it.  I was also unable to sleep thinking about what exactly to say at church today when I gave a little talk.  I hadn’t prepared anything prior to today as I was so preoccupied with the condo business.  We were up until 1:30am, then I was awake before 7, so I’ve been rummy all day, which doesn’t help my emotions one bit.

Kaleb spent the night with Daniel so at least the house was quiet this morning as I sat down to write out what I would share with folks at Agape Church.  I just gave a 10 minute testimony, but I wanted to say the right things.  I expected to give the speech in English and have it translated, but when I got to church, Pastor Mark said I could say it with no translation as he was sure people would understand me, but I decided to give it a shot in Norwegian, which upped my stress factor considerably.

As always though, God took control and the Norwegian just came flying out of my mouth like I knew what I was talking about.  Kaleb said he counted five grammatical errors, but others said I did just fine.  I got as many compliments on my “good” Norwegian as I did about the content of the speech, so that was surprising.

I was so relieved when church was over and I could just relax, as I’ve been kinda of stressed out lately.  It was a sunny day and I didn’t even lie back in a chair on the deck, I just paced around the condo wondering what we’ll be doing for the next week before we take off.

We had tickets for the Giskespelet today – something akin to the Ashland Shakespearean festival, only this play is all about the Vikings.   It happens every summer for one weekend only and is really a big deal around here.  It portrays true historical events during the Viking times and I’ve been wanting to go for several years but either we didn’t have time or the weather wasn’t cooperating, as it’s outdoors.  I figured we could splurge on the tickets for today since it was Father’s Day, and rather sunny and nice.

Kory enjoyed the play the most since he followed along on the story line better than Kaleb or I, but I still thought it was tremendously well done.  The beginning of it felt like being in one of those living history museums where we watch people in period costumes re-inact certain parts of life from that time period.  There were 150 people in this play, so the opening scene was a Viking village and all the different tasks going on in a regular day “in the life of” kind of thing.  It was fascinating to watch.   They had all the trades people work, women baking bread, carding wool, people stealing, kids quarreling, mothers disciplining their kids and even one kid with a toothache where the tooth got extracted by the blacksmith who had big pliers.  It was soooo well done.

I still don’t know the full story line but it was about Viking king rivalry and the introduction of Christianity into the mix.  (The island where it’s held is the former home of the most powerful Viking King in Norway and also the home of the first Christian church – still standing after a thousand years!) Of course there was the big sword fighting scene, which got Kaleb’s attention.  He kept interrupting with all the things he noticed that couldn’t have been historically accurate, which actually got annoying after a while so I had to shush him up.  It was great though and I’m so glad we went.

Tonight we went by cousin Bjorn’s house to see if he’d be willing to be our maintenance guy on the condo should anything break while we’re away, and he generously offered to do so, so that’s yet another thing I’m thankful for.  We talked a bit about their trip next year to visit us also, so that’s something to look forward to.  He thinks he’ll be able to bring the rest of our stuff home then because he’ll be traveling with empty suitcases over to America, since they plan to do a lot of shopping – so there’s another hallelujah moment for me today.  Woo hoo!

It was such a good day, I can hardly stand it.  The woman that’s renting our place will come by tomorrow and sign a lease agreement and we are just downright giddy that it’s working out so well.  The neighbors were all relieved to hear that just one person was going to be living here, so I’m glad we’ll stay in good graces with them, too.  Oh, I just have to say it again, HALLELUJAH!