Sick Day

Kaleb was not feeling up to going to school today so we all slept in.  It was much needed.  It rained the whole day so we didn’t even venture out of the house, except for a half hour to go to the library so I could post my blog.   Kaleb was pretty horizontal all day – lounging around on the couch doing some school work.  He’s a little behind in grammar so I had no mercy on him today as the fever felt like it was gone and if I didn’t keep him busy, he’d just whine about being bored. 

Kory sat and drew faces all day of people we know.  They all look too fat to me - so now I don’t feel too bad.  I didn’t hear a peep out of him as he was lost in his artistic world.

We are having friends over on Sunday so I started meal planning a little.  I had to bring with me from America, some ingredients for my favorite recipes for things that I can’t find here in Norway.  I like to make a chocolate minted mousse for dessert, but last year I had to melt down some After Eight mints in order to get the mint flavor in there because there was no mint extract in any of the stores.  I made that dessert last week and I told our guests it was made with “imported” mint extract because Norway doesn’t have it.  They all immediately went into defense mode for their fine land and nearly shouted at me that, “Yes, we have mint oil!”  I asked where it was located in the grocery store, because I couldn’t find it anywhere.  “Oh, it’s not in the grocery store.  You have to order it from the pharmacy.”  That was going to be the next place I looked – NOT.  Apparently its “strength” makes it a controlled substance here.  Go figure.  I think I’ll just keep importing it from America.

My big accomplishment of the day was washing the living room floor and taking our rug out on the deck to let the rain get it wet.  We’d bought a brand new living room rug last year and the woman that rented our place for two months really trashed it.  I was sad about that since it wasn’t a cheap rug.  So, I’m trying an old fashioned method of cleaning, since I don’t have a bathtub or hose… I’m letting the rain get it wet.  I sprinkled it with soap today and I go out every few hours and scrub it down.  I’m not sure how the rinsing will go but I’ve got nothing to lose.  It looked terrible the way it was.  Sunshine is supposed to come tomorrow so hopefully it will be clean by then and ready for the dry cycle.

My other project today was to write up the speech I’m giving on Saturday at a Women’s Aglow meeting.  I fasted and prayed all day and trusted God to give me the right words to share, because Lord knows I often say the wrong ones.  I’ve also been praying for those in attendance, that God would speak to them through me and if I say apples and they need to hear oranges, then they will hear oranges.  God can do all things.

So that was our day.  Oh, Tante Kari came up this morning to see photos from yesterday and to ask how the party went.  She didn’t stay long but it’s always nice to see her smiling face. 

It was the kind of day here in Norway that we have almost everyday back in America – just the three of us hanging out at home doing our own thing.  We haven’t had one of those days since we arrived, so it was actually kind of nice.  But I wouldn’t want to do it two days in a row.

Kaleb's CLEAN Room!

A Busy Social Life

Most of my day today was spent being social. The tide has turned. There are several things I COULD have done, but I ran into LizBeth, my ex-neighbor (and bus riding partner) yesterday, and invited her to coffee today. I had to hurry through Kaleb’s school work this morning to get ready for her visit so I was a bit stressed, but it all worked out in the end. She loves our condo and coincidentally, she now works almost right next door. She changed jobs a few months ago and is only working half time and no longer takes the bus. I told her of our plans to use our condo as a business rental for short term situations and she offered to be our “agent” and do what she needs to do to get them rented and cleaned up afterwards. I didn’t even ask her or suggest she help, so I was quite pleased that she thought of that herself because she has a lot of rental experience. She has an apartment in her basement she has rented out for many years, so I was thrilled with her offer. We’ll see how things shake out over the next few weeks after we talk to some companies, but she would be a great help to us if we go in that direction.




One interesting thing LizBeth told me today was that the people who moved into our old place at the Sinking Houses only had a six month contract to live there. Norway had one of the worst winters on record for cold and snow. LizBeth said she couldn’t even let her little girls go out and play in the snow because they would have been lost – it was over their heads. It was also below freezing most of the winter. So I guess the people that became caretakers of The Sinking Houses didn’t know how to care for property the way Kory does, and all the pipes froze in January so they had no water coming in, and no way to get rid of the water in the house because the outgoing sewer drain pipes were frozen solid. They called up the Aalesund Kommune and complained about it, but the Kommune said there was nothing they could do, and there was only two weeks left of their contract so they just needed to deal with it. LizBeth said they dealt with it by putting plastic garbage bags over a bucket, using the bucket for a toilet, then throwing out the plastic bags in the garbage. When she heard about what they were doing (I’m not quite sure how she DID find out about it), she offered to let them move in to her basement apartment, where they are still living to this day – another coincidence. LizBeth was so disgusted with the Kommune that she told the renters they should just deliver their garbage bags right to the Kommune’s office downtown and tell them to deal with THAT. She’s a feisty one, that LizBeth. I like her.



So now we know why no one lives in The Sinking Houses – they are unlivable, as I suspected. The sewer lines have separated too much from the houses and it seems, the houses may be torn down. One garage has already been removed. I know when the Kommune bought that place out from under us, they had plans to do some work on the ground to stabilize it more, but now it appears they may just have to tear down the houses altogether. I’m so thankful God closed the doors on us buying them, but Kory still grieves their loss. He’s not a gracious loser.



LizBeth left just in time today for us to make it back over to our old neighborhood to have an early dinner with Tone and Sabina (Kaleb’s first friend in Norway). It was wonderful to spend the afternoon with them and to eat Tone’s good cooking (she’s a pro at everything she does.)



We came home for about an hour before we headed back to Agape Church to attend a concert by the Watoto orphaned kids from Uganda. Just before we were leaving, Kaleb started crying and saying how much he wished we didn’t care so much about him and his safety so he could have more time to play on his Nintendo and have a cell phone. I’ve told him kids are getting carpal tunnel from too much time on those hand-held games, and they’ve also linked brain cancer to excessive use of cell phones, therefore he has no cell phone and he’s limited to an hour a day (or more if he earns it) of his Nintendo. He was crying buckets and asking why he is so deprived when all the other kids don’t get similar restrictions. He even went so far as to say he wished he didn’t have any parents at all because then his life would be much easier… then off we went to hear these orphan kids tell their stories of living in the streets of Uganda, with no hope, no food, no parents, and how thankful they were for this Watoto orphanage and how it changed their lives. After listening to that concert and watching those kids dance and sing for joy, I think there was a little change in Kaleb’s life as well as he realized maybe he doesn’t have it so bad afterall.



After the concert we went to look at a used dishwasher that was advertised in the paper. The house where it was at was very near Kory’s mom’s childhood home (see photo I took tonight of Solevaag). As thrilled as I was to finally be buying a dishwasher, I was more thrilled that I remember to bring my camera along so I could take pictures of that amazing landscape scene – it’s quintessentially Norway to me and my heart skips a beat every time I see it.



In the photo, there is a cluster of trees on the right side, down by the water. Kory drew that landscape last year with an ink pen, then he hid an image of a Viking ship in the water, that is really only visible if the picture is turned upside down. He longs to be Bev Doolittle, I think. Anyway, his cousins that actually live in that picture, saw his drawing on Sunday and I pointed out his cleverly sketched Viking ship in the water. To our amazement, they said that there actually IS a Viking ship lying in the water in that exact spot. Who knew. Kory sure didn’t.

The Day After

Things were pretty quiet today in our little neighborhood. I didn’t venture out much so I don’t know about the rest of the city but it sure had that “day after” feel to it. I was home from school to prepare my Bible study lesson and when Kaleb woke up complaining he didn’t feel good, I panicked. I need the house to be quiet for a few hours while I’m studying and praying, and it’s anything BUT that when he’s around, even if he is sick. I took his temperature and it was normal, but I could tell by the way he was acting he wasn’t up to snuff. I suggested he stay home but he moaned that today was his music lesson and he didn’t want to miss it. So I suggested he go to school and see how he feels and he could always come home early if he is too sick. He agreed with that idea and I didn’t see him again until after school was out, but then he was sick as a dog with a high fever. I asked why he didn’t come home earlier and he said because I didn’t have a car to come get him and he didn’t have much energy to ride his bike home so he thought he’d just tough it out until school was over. He had 102 temperature and slept on the couch all afternoon. I hate it that I let him go to school. He said several others were out sick today too so at least he’s not alone.

After I finished my Bible lesson and prayer time I used Kaleb’s very slow computer to try to buy tickets home again, and this time, I was successful! We will be flying home on Friday, August 7th on Icelandic Air. We haven’t traveled with them before so it’s exciting we are stopping in Iceland on our way home. And as a bonus, they let me just buy a one way ticket for half the price of round trip – like when does that ever happen? So all three of us are flying from Ålesund to Seattle for under eighteen hundred bucks. Not bad. And once I knew for sure our departure date, I started making reservations for our road trip around Northern Europe in July. That took much longer than I expected and I’m only a third of the way done. I spent at least two hours just trying to find a hotel in Berlin, with no luck so far. Uff da. But at least we have our route planned out and with a few reservations under my belt, I’m feeling confident things will fall into place, Lord willing! Things happen, but we always make plans like nothing will stop us and then see if God starts closing any doors. We’ll be spending time in southern Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Northern Germany, Holland, Belgium and Czech Republic. It will be just a “Reader’s Digest” version trip as we will be in each city just a few days, but at least we can hit the highlights and see where we might want to visit again. Deciding what to see in each place is still a project for another day, but at least I’ve begun to make reservations at campsites and hotels.

We had to cancel our normal Bible study group because we didn’t want anyone to get what Kaleb has, so that was a bit of a bummer, but then I was invited to another Bible study group I haven’t been to before. Kristen, one of the Praying Women, holds a Bible study for a bunch of women she knows and most of them don’t attend church. Kristen asked if I could come talk to her group and tell them about “soaking prayer.” (One of my friends in America renamed it “Son bathing” – I thought that was pretty good.) I tried to explain it in Norwegian, but it’s hard to explain being in the presence of God even in English. I did my best, and then we gave it a try. The women were all from the State Church background so they seemed rather skeptical at first, but once they quieted themselves before God, He did the work. A few of them had visions or words from God, which was a first for them, so that was exciting. I prayed for each one of them and it was as if I was “reading their mail.” I don’t know anything about these women, but once again God gave me “words of wisdom” and I said to them things only God would know, so that really got their attention. I love being the vessel and being used to help others draw closer to God. I sensed that one woman needed a lot of wisdom, so I was able to explain afterwards how to lay out a fleece to ask God for guidance. Another woman I could tell was under some kind of spiritual attack so I got to explain spiritual warfare and how to kick Satan out of a situation. Another woman there I just saw as a flower that bloomed right out of the pages of the Bible and I suggested she might find new meaning in the words as she reads her Bible now. Another woman I saw as a lighthouse, shining in the darkness. It was so fun to see what God had for each of the women and to spend time praying together. They want me back. I told them it’s not me, it’s the Holy Spirit, but if I can teach them a few more things before I leave, I would be happy to do that. They are all fairly new to the idea that a person can actually have a “relationship” with God – that He is someone to interact with, not someone who sits idly by watching the world spin around. I’m excited for them as there is so much ahead for all of them if they have a hunger for more. God is so faithful to meet us where we need Him most.