Yesterday Kory was invited by his bosses to attend a trade show in a few weeks at a very fancy hotel/resort about two hours drive from here. The weekend is subsidized by a company demonstrating all their new construction products so it’s a cheap get-away and families are welcome to come along and enjoy the pool and other amenities. Kaleb is a big fan of the five star hotel scene so he was jumping up and down over that news last night. As I envisioned a day at the hotel with Kaleb (and Kory off to construction classes), I thought it might be prudent to invite Tobias along so Kaleb would have someone to swim and hang out with while I read a good book (something I’ve yet to do since I’ve been here.) I made the HUGE mistake of telling Kaleb last night, right before he went to bed, that Tobias’ mom said it was OK for him to come along. That did it. He couldn’t sleep a wink. He was awake for hours thinking about it and then wide away again at 4am and couldn’t go back to sleep. So this morning he had a terrible breakdown over how tired he was, and apparently the lack of sleep made him feel quite ill. He stayed home from school today hoping to sleep, but sleep didn’t come. Kory’s patience was worn thin by the time I got home. Kaleb was crabby all day because Kory wouldn’t let him use his Nintendo or watch videos all day or go play with Tobias this afternoon. Kory didn’t want to “reward” Kaleb’s day off school, so the two of them butted heads. Normally when Kaleb really is sick with a fever, I let him watch videos all day so he’ll stay in one place and rest. He had that expectation today and was sorely disappointed. He was asleep by seven o’clock tonight though so I’m sure tomorrow will go much better.
We had a heavy dusting of snow a few days ago and it’s been in the 20s ever since, so it’s still white outside. I love it! Today we had glorious sunshine and crisp cold air and I’ve been waiting for such a day to run several errands after school. I spent an hour in the “alien” office waiting my turn to ask a question. I wanted to find out what the rules are around renewing our residence permit for another year, and I’m hoping what the woman told me wasn’t the least bit correct. She said herself she didn’t know all the details, so I’ll have to go back another day and ask another person the same question (as it’s never the same answer). Our permission expires July 30th but we want to go on “vacation” in July and August around Europe and come back to Norway in September to drop off our car before flying home. She said we can’t renew our permit any sooner than June 30th and if we leave the country we have to be back by July 30th (not an easy thing if we’re driving around the south of Spain by then). She also said it could take 1-3 months for our paperwork to be processed so then we’d have to come back here just to sit and wait and miss the rest of the summer vacation. We could NOT renew it, but then she said we would have trouble coming back in September – why, I don’t know. Ugh. It wasn’t time well spent, but at least I wasn’t home with the crabby boys.
But the day ended on an up note as tonight I spoke for a few minutes at a prayer meeting at the Filadelfia Church. I talked about “soaking prayer” (a term used to describe just being STILL and soaking in the presence of God.) It’s not a time to ask God for anything, it’s just an opportunity to be quiet and see what He wants to do. It’s been very powerful in my life and I was able to share some things God has done for me while soaking. The talk was well received. I could see on the faces of the 20 or so people there that they understood perfectly what I was getting at. Afterwards the leader of the group stood up and invited everyone to come up and start the prayer meeting, but the Pastor of the church said he thought maybe we should all take about 20 minutes and just SOAK and see what God does. They are a Pentecostal bunch, but they are still conservative Norwegians, so I was surprised they would do it right there and then… but they did! And it was good. Then afterwards we prayed out loud as a group for about half an hour. When the prayer meeting was over several people came up to me and told me how powerful my talk was and then shared what God did for them while they were soaking tonight! One woman said she sits still before God a lot but she never thought to ask Him to just come love on her (like I shared) and she said she felt Him kissing her face over and over and it made her cry to feel she was that close to Him and He loved her that much. She then invited me to come with her next month to go to the women’s prison in town and share the same message, as she said, “Those women need to know God can love on them too!” So Hallelujah! And another woman invited me to another prayer meeting tomorrow to share with a different group of women about soaking prayer because she was so impacted by it she wants her friends to know about it too! God is good. The Holy Spirit is alive and well and touching people’s lives in Norway. Hallelujah!
We had a heavy dusting of snow a few days ago and it’s been in the 20s ever since, so it’s still white outside. I love it! Today we had glorious sunshine and crisp cold air and I’ve been waiting for such a day to run several errands after school. I spent an hour in the “alien” office waiting my turn to ask a question. I wanted to find out what the rules are around renewing our residence permit for another year, and I’m hoping what the woman told me wasn’t the least bit correct. She said herself she didn’t know all the details, so I’ll have to go back another day and ask another person the same question (as it’s never the same answer). Our permission expires July 30th but we want to go on “vacation” in July and August around Europe and come back to Norway in September to drop off our car before flying home. She said we can’t renew our permit any sooner than June 30th and if we leave the country we have to be back by July 30th (not an easy thing if we’re driving around the south of Spain by then). She also said it could take 1-3 months for our paperwork to be processed so then we’d have to come back here just to sit and wait and miss the rest of the summer vacation. We could NOT renew it, but then she said we would have trouble coming back in September – why, I don’t know. Ugh. It wasn’t time well spent, but at least I wasn’t home with the crabby boys.
But the day ended on an up note as tonight I spoke for a few minutes at a prayer meeting at the Filadelfia Church. I talked about “soaking prayer” (a term used to describe just being STILL and soaking in the presence of God.) It’s not a time to ask God for anything, it’s just an opportunity to be quiet and see what He wants to do. It’s been very powerful in my life and I was able to share some things God has done for me while soaking. The talk was well received. I could see on the faces of the 20 or so people there that they understood perfectly what I was getting at. Afterwards the leader of the group stood up and invited everyone to come up and start the prayer meeting, but the Pastor of the church said he thought maybe we should all take about 20 minutes and just SOAK and see what God does. They are a Pentecostal bunch, but they are still conservative Norwegians, so I was surprised they would do it right there and then… but they did! And it was good. Then afterwards we prayed out loud as a group for about half an hour. When the prayer meeting was over several people came up to me and told me how powerful my talk was and then shared what God did for them while they were soaking tonight! One woman said she sits still before God a lot but she never thought to ask Him to just come love on her (like I shared) and she said she felt Him kissing her face over and over and it made her cry to feel she was that close to Him and He loved her that much. She then invited me to come with her next month to go to the women’s prison in town and share the same message, as she said, “Those women need to know God can love on them too!” So Hallelujah! And another woman invited me to another prayer meeting tomorrow to share with a different group of women about soaking prayer because she was so impacted by it she wants her friends to know about it too! God is good. The Holy Spirit is alive and well and touching people’s lives in Norway. Hallelujah!
