Fin Dag i Dag (Fine day today)

Kaleb was off to school before eight this morning, so Kory and I sat and had a relaxing cup of coffee while doing our Bible studies.  At ten, I headed to the library to post my blog and on to the grocery store to buy a few things on sale.  Kory’s been pestering me for some marzipan candy but I told him to wait until after Easter when it will all go on sale for 50% off.  So today was his big day.  Instead of a piece of candy costing $6, it only cost $3.  Lucky duck.

Yesterday when we were walking around our neighborhood, I saw a really cool huge old bucket in the dumpster of a business we walked past.  I wasn’t sure if it was OK to take it not, so today we drove down there and I asked.  “No problem,” was the response I got, so I’m now the happy owner of a big old bucket from 1892.  Kory thinks I’m crazy to bring home such a thing, but he’s no one to talk.  They did plenty of dumpster diving when they moved to America when he was a kid – it’s just what immigrants do.  Our sense of style isn’t up to Norwegian standards, so one person’s garbage really is another person’s treasure.

When we were telling someone about the odd sized mattress Kaleb has in his room, they suggested we go down to a local factory that makes foam, and ask to buy a piece in the size we need.  We drove down there after I scored on the bucket, to ask them.  I would have asked for a piece of foam cut to a certain size, but Kory asked them for a mattress, so they said they don’t sell those directly to the public and we had to go to a store to find them.  So much for that idea.  If we knew someone that worked there, I’m sure we’d get what we wanted, but for now, we might have to spring for a new mattress (no pun intended – because there are no springs in it!)

Since we were near our old neighborhood we decided to take our daily walk down there to see what we could see from the other side of the mountain, as it were. (All the photos today were from our walk.) We drove out past Kaleb’s school and parked our car, then walked across a very tiny bridge to get onto the island of Turla.  We planned to walk the roads and check out the houses and yards, but we saw a sign for a hike up to the high point of that island, so we took it.  The trail was pretty soggy but we enjoyed some time in nature before the trail ended up back in a neighborhood that just happens to be where Kory’s cousin, Ketil’s, son has built a house.  Strange coincidence.  We walked as far as we could go on his road, then walked back along the main road.  It took 90 minutes total, so I’m well pleased with my little work out time today as I was sweating pretty good.  I so need more movement in my life.  Flitting about the condo from room to room just doesn’t cut it.

While we were out walking, we ran into my friend, Tina, the mother to Kaleb’s friend, Daniel.  She was out for a bike ride and she’d taken with her a slice of bread and a thermos of coffee.  It was such a nice day she just went out for a spin and a little time to relax by the seashore.  Norwegians love to just relax, wherever they go and whatever they do, there must be time to just “slapp av” (relax!).  Funny.

Sabina came by after school, not long after we returned from our walk/hike.  She’d spent all her bus money on candy at the mall and wanted to know if we’d loan her money for the bus ride home.  We invited her to hang out with us for a while and stay for dinner.  She didn’t have much else to do at home and I’m pretty sure she’d rather be here than there.  We challenged each other to “difficult” words – she’d give me one in Norwegian and see if I knew the English word for it and I’d give her an English word to see if she knew the Norwegian translation.  She was frustrated that I knew so many words so she had a hard time stumping me.  Kory made Kettle Korn for her, at her request.  She watched him make it so she can try to make it herself at home.

Kory is hoping to sell copies of his artwork this weekend at a Spring festival in the city, so we took Sabina with us to the thrift store to see about buying some frames to display his work.  She was thrilled the store has a FREE area, and she started stuffing her pockets with all kinds of goodies.  I nearly did the same, but tried to stay focused on the task at hand. 

Kaleb came home the minute I started saying Grace at dinner.  I hadn’t even set a place for him because I thought he’d be a bit later, but he was able to join us all for dinner.  I told him Sabina was our “vikar barn” (substitute child) for the day.  He didn’t think that was funny.  He spent the afternoon with Toban.  He said Toban felt bad about not connecting up with him this weekend, but he had trouble with his schedule and he apologized.  Kaleb was somewhat relieved he hadn’t done anything to cause him to stay away on purpose.  They will try again this weekend for a sleepover so I hope nothing gets in the way.

Tonight I scheduled a little reunion gathering at a coffee shop in the city with some women from my Norwegian class.  As of yesterday, about 12 women were coming, but by the time the event rolled around, only four showed up.  I’m sure it has to do with the fact that many of them have newborn babies, but several others had different last minute reasons.  The Good Teacher Inga had requested the gathering.  The four of us had a good chat nonetheless.  We’ll set another date before I have to leave, as the ones that couldn’t make it, really want to see Inga again.  She’s one of a kind.

I asked Inga about our car insurance.  Kory noticed when we got the bill (for $1,700 a year!) that it said we can’t drive over 8,000 kilometers.  I wondered what would happen if we did.  Inga said that car insurance in Norway is sold by the mileage driven.  The minimum amount is 8,000 kilometers, (less than 5,000 miles a year), but if we think we’ll drive more than that, we have to buy more miles for the year, otherwise, we have to pay a penalty premium for going over the amount that’s allocated.  We didn’t know that when we lived here before.  Good thing we’ll only be here three months at a time.

Baptism Day (Døpt dag)

Today was Hege’s big day (Odd and Turid’s fourteen year old daughter). We were invited to attend the State church with them to watch her get baptized, and then attend the celebration afterwards. In the State church here in Norway, it’s required that all those who go through Confirmation, be baptized first. Most people are brought into church as infants and sprinkled with water soon after they are born, but Odd and Turid never did that. Odd was raised in the Pentecostal church (and they don’t baptize infants) and Turid was raised in the State church, and they do – so they could never come to an agreement as to what to do, so they just did nothing, as neither of them attend church anymore. But now that Hege wants to be confirmed in the State church, she must be baptized.

It was all quite formal and very special and I’m glad we got to attend. The church bells began to ring five minutes before the service started, which is actually the norm for every Sunday, and we arrived just as they began to chime, calling all to attendance. (We heard on the radio once that in a remote area of Norway they blast off a cannon instead as everyone lives too far away to hear the bells.) A whole section in the front of the church was reserved just for the family. The church was very modern (and round) and circling the entire church were stained glass windows with a very artsy design depicting the major stories of the Bible (this follows after the tradition in the big cathedrals where they used the windows to tell the stories because so many weren’t able to read or didn’t have Bibles.) When the organ began to play, three women in white robes came in bearing candles, followed by Hege in her white robe, and her two older sisters in their bunads (traditional Norwegian costume.) Normally, for infant baptism, the parents would accompany the baby, but Hege chose to have her “God parents” as her witnesses. (Her sisters will take custody of her should anything happen to her parents before she is 18.) The Priest announced it was a special day today because of Hege’s baptism and then everyone said the Apostles’ Creed (which I recognized even though it was in Norwegian) and we sang a song. (The page numbers to all the hymns we sang today were posted on the walls, but it was done in such a way it reminded me of the numbers on the walls when I was a kid that signified how many were in attendance the previous Sunday, so it took me a while to figure it all out.)

The Priest called Hege and her witnesses forward and they all stood at the baptismal stand. The Priest asked Hege if she believed Jesus was the son of God and that he died for her sins, and she giggled and said “Ja.” He then laid his hand on her head, said and prayer, and made the sign of the cross on her forehead. She leaned over the bowl of water, the Priest cupped his hand in the water and poured it over her head three times as he baptized her in the name of the “Father, Son and Holy Ghost,” and then gave her a cloth to dry off. And that was it. Hege and her sisters sat back down while the Priest went back to the pulpit to deliver the sermon. And I do believe it was the same sermon being preached in all State churches in the entire country today, as that is the tradition here. Our friend Halton, who was born in 1920, once told me that when he was growing up, if the weather was too bad to attend church in person (they had to take a boat to get there), his father would read the sermon right from a book that was published every year that all the churches (and families used). My teacher Inga said when her father was young, the whole family would dress up in their Sunday best and sit by the radio and hear the sermon, if they weren’t able to make it out to church – so they have the whole sermon thing well prepared before the day arrives for its delivery. And the sermon today was good enough in parts that Kory wanted to shout Hallelujah a few times, but he whispered it instead – causing his cousins to have to contain their laugher as they all sat in fear that he might actually raise his voice and embarrass the entire family. I whispered a few “Amens” myself as I caught parts of the sermon referring to God calling us His children, but otherwise, I was lost in the formalities of the service and routine responses, but at least I understood the Lord’s Prayer.

After the service was over we took photos in the church before heading off to Turid’s art studio for a big Sunday dinner. All formal events here in Norway are cause for people to wear their bunads, have sit-down dinners and formal speeches. Odd gave a welcoming speech to Hege and the guests (it was only family in attendance) and Hege gave a little speech as well. We all ate until we couldn’t eat anymore, and then had coffee and cakes afterwards. It was customary to give gifts for this occasion so Hege got a lot of cash and all the silver accessories she needs for her own bunad, which she will get on her Confirmation day in June. It was a wonderful time for the family to gather today and celebrate this religious event, and we felt honored to be included. Kory shouted HALLELUJAH as soon as he was able to not embarrass anyone.

Extreme Home Fellowship

I’m going to miss our home fellowship group the most. I have often felt like I don’t belong to things or fit into groups, but I have come to love each and every person in our Sunday night Home Fellowship group and I appreciate their tolerance and acceptance of me and it will be hard not to connect with that every week. I belong there. At last and for once, I know I belong.

Today we did a service project – just showing a woman we don’t even know the love of Jesus by doing a lot of work to her yard and in her house. All of us gathered over at Shelter Bay for a beautiful spring day of sprucing up her place and I’m so tired now I can barely type a word, but it felt good. We were all proud to be part of being the hands and feet of Jesus today.

Here's the article I wrote about it for our church newsletter:

Extreme Home Fellowship

We have been blessed the last two years to be part of the BEST home fellowship group Bethany has to offer (OK, I’m partial because I’m part of it, but still… it is a good group!). We meet every Sunday night for soup, salad and bread – all 14 of us adults and 15 kids. Jason and Benita Rozema host the event and we all chip in for a babysitter so we can have uninterrupted adult conversation revolving around our relationship with Christ. We always start the evening off with a “getting to know you” kind of question, even though you’d think we’d know each other pretty well by now, but we always learn something new every week, so we keep doing it. One week the question was, “What kind of volunteer work have you done?” and in hearing some of the surprising answers, someone suggested we should do a volunteer project together. There was a hearty round of agreement and in minutes the Thulens suggested a single mom they had heard of that could use some help around the yard and needed a few small home repairs done. We picked a date and the deal was done.

On Saturday, April 26th, we set aside the entire day to bless this woman that none of us knew (her daughter was good friends with Debbie Thulen’s niece). God gave us a wonderfully sunny day to carry out our task. Besides massive yard word, the list of tasks involved repairing some door hinges, minor plumbing repairs and replacing wood damaged by a leak. My ever-so-handy husband, Kory Slaatthaug, took care of the inside jobs. While he was busy with that, the good-with-details members of our group - Gail Williams-Martin, Susan Lange, Anne Clark and Denise Hanstad (on loan to us for the day) were busy in the living room painting it a new color, tidying up a bit and washing windows. Outside the house the total yard makeover was in full swing. Up on the roof were the not-afraid-of-anything people – Debbie Thulen, Benita Rozema and Dave Clark – scraping off clumps of moss and tree debris that had managed to cover the entire surface of the house and clog every inch of the gutters. In the front yard were the Martha Stewart’s of our group - Windy Hindman and Carol Annema, busy planting flowers in a flower bed and creating planting strips where none had been previously. Supplying our group with the latest in “cool boy toys” (I mean, “tools”) was Jason Rozema on the chainsaw with his willing-to-do-anything handy side-kick Terry Annema, removing what seemed like half a forest that surrounded the house. Tough guys Avery Hindman and Ian Lange were in the back of a very large farm dump truck as they helped stack up two full loads of yard waste and branches. On the ever-so-fashionable John Deere riding lawn mower was dear John Thulen (looking a lot like he’d done that before). Smiley faced John Hanstad (another loaner for the day) worked the pressure washer (with a grin, no less) that cleaned up the house, deck and sidewalk. Buffed-out Ahmik Hindman came with a load of soil and unloaded it in the planting beds before the beauty bark was put down. And I spent most of the day wresting a nasty patch of blackberry bushes (a task similar to getting a comb through my hair). Even cutey boys D.J. Clark and Carter Annema helped haul things to the dump truck when they weren’t busy catching snakes, picking up snails or petting the local puppy dog’s tail.

What amazed me the most was how much we all got done in a matter of six hours. When one person was done with one job, they looked around and grabbed a rake and started cleaning up, or helped someone else with another task. There were no slackers. There was no chit-chat. We were putting our hands and hearts to work to show this woman the love of Christ in a way I have never experienced before. The house came alive and had Jesus’ love shining through. At the end of the day a neighbor walking his dog yelled out at the homeowner, “Is this what a miracle looks like?” And she responded, “Yes, it’s a miracle!” Indeed it was - one that we were all so very happy to experience together. And then we all went back to the Thulens for a Bar-B-Que (including the home owner and her daughter).

It gave the term “Home Fellowship” a whole new meaning.