Norway, May 2007 Part 4

Wednesday

Today was a bit of a quiet day. I spent the morning designing a leaflet for the service on sat night and then. I delivered them to the houses in the afternoon. I do not envy the postmen here, they have miles and miles to walk and most of that is up hill! Although if there are houses half up a mountain they have the post boxes at the bottom of the hill.

After that we went to Britt’s house for dinner. She made us a lovely dinner of sweet and sour pork with rice, which was a nice change from bread!

Then we had a massive evening of casa Feliz extra! Apparently the night before Norway day a lot of the teenagers go out and get drunk. But they put this extra event on so that they would go to casa feliz and stay sober. They even had a competition to win an iPod, if they could stay sober and pass a breath test.

It was a really good evening the atmosphere was brilliant, we had people praying the event all the way through and it really helped. Two young people became gave their life to Christ. We were able to build some relationships with them. So it was a really good time. It went from 8pm – 2am. It was only the lord that kept me awake!!

Thursday

Norway day! Or the Norwegians uniquely call it 17th May! Today is such a special day for the Norwegians. It commemorates the signing of the constitution in 1840. They all get dressed up in their national dress and watch parades or join in them. We went to Bergen and watched their parade and ate lots of Ice Cream!
There were so many different people being represented in the parade and they all had their different display. It was really lovely to see.

We then went to Arna and was part of the scouts parade. Most of the people in Arna join in the parade and they stop at the Old peoples homes and play music for them. The Parade then ends at the school and they eat lots of ice cream and hotdogs and then they listen to children playing the recorder and singing.
We had a party at the church. They have a delicacy in Norway of Raw Lamb that has been salted and dried and they eat this with a porridge that is not very pleasant.
The buffet was lovely, there was salmon and meets and lots of bread. It was a really lovely evening.

At 11pm I went to the Airport to pick up Tim. It was so good to see him.

Friday

It was horrible weather, the rain was back. But we went back to the house to paint. It calmed down a little bit so we were able to get a lot done, but we were finally rained off. The couple that we painted their house for, gave us an amazing lunch of pizza, chocolate and strawberries. It was so good.

In the evening we went to Casa Feliz again. It was a good time. They have such a good group of young people, and their way of doing youth work really works well, it was such an inspiration.

Saturday

Today was a bit of an easier day, we had the morning off and then in the afternoon we prepared for the evening family service.

The family service was really good. The church are great at doing things for individual groups, for example Popcorn church and casa Feliz, but all the groups don’t really mix together. So we put on a fun evening to get the church together, we did loads of little games and songs and the crowd puller. (If I was not upon this stage..) The church really responded well and it was a great evening.

Sunday

Today is officially the last day. We have two meetings to go to and that is it. Some of the group went to popcorn church again and some of us went to Bergen to the church there. Me and Tim led worship and Phil Trainer preached. It was a little hard work, but Phil spoke really well and I think it inspired the church.

We then went back to the church and we all ate pizza together with some members of the church. After lunch the Durham guys left for home and only the Radnets were left. It was really weird. For 10 days we have been a group of 21 and suddenly we were down to about 8 people. We just chilled out and ate waffles!

The evening meeting at the Arna church was so amazing. We had a great time in worship (even though it was in Norwegian!) Ian Marden spoke and was challenging us to be hot or cold Christians. We then spent time praying for the people in the church for healings and deliverance and for those that were challenged by the preach.

Everyone said goodbye to us and it was quite sad.

Monday

We flew home to England, Yay!
I do love coming home.