On a journey...

My heart is so struck by the brokenness and desperation of this world. I just got back from bowling with a bunch of people from my prophecy teams. My hair and clothes stink of smoke (which is really strange, haven’t had that for years as smoking in public places is illegal in Norway and even the UK now), and I feel a sobriety (I am not sure that’s the right word, but I suppose what I want to say is that I feel like I’ve had my eyes opened again to a bit of what reality here in Missouri is in a sense). My heart feels heavy. Not from the bowling time in itself, because it was a good bonding time, but from being around people who are enjoying themselves bowling and drinking and laughing loudly (I’m talking about the other people in the bowling alley, not the people I went with), yet seeing their whole composure portraying another reality then the one they are attempting to express. Laughter doesn’t always mean joy. It can also mean a desperate attempt to encounter that feeling of joy, whi...

Well it’s Friday again and I am sat here in the prayer room writing a wee blog update. I realise this is a good progression as it’s only been a week since last time. I just got here. To my great surprise one of the little desks was actually free for me to sit at. Usually they fill up very quickly with students (from the university connected to the International House of Prayer) and other people (like myself when I can get to one). It isn’t quite the same to sit in a chair trying to balance my laptop on my lap while hoping the battery will stay alive long enough to get what I need to do done (and if not, try to discretely get my adaptor plugged into one of the extensions strategically placed around the room). I love Friday mornings. The prayer room is less crowded and busy, and the 8-10 am set (i.e. slot/ prayer meeting, call it what you want) is always really mellow, and it is a Worship With the Word set, meaning that it’s basically 2 hours of worship and singing/praying the Word of Go...

I couldn’t find my journal the other morning (or my water bottle for that matter). I didn’t panic, but I thought it would have been kind of sad if it is actually lost, because I had a lot of good stuff written down in it. Thankfully I found it later on in the day. I’d left it on the kitchen table in a bag I don’t usually use, and so my housemates thought the bag belonged to someone downstairs and had kindly taken it down. After reading my note (which I wrote in the morning to see if they could help me solve the mystery of the missing water bottle and journal) they realised that it was my bag and brought it back up. Since it’s been a very long time since I last wrote here on my blog I wanted to jot some things down which I want to remember and so it might seem a bit disjointed at times. The last month and a bit have been eventful. I am finally done with my staff process here at IHOP-KC. I am now officially staff! I am excited. It also means that suddenly my time is more fixed then it wa...

Kansas City is COLD!!! We’ve had days of temperatures as low as (and probably lower if you ask me) –17 degrees Celsius! It is so cold!! In the midst of the coldest days, for about a week actually, I just couldn’t seem to manage to heat up my room. The rest of the house was nice and toasty, but for some reason (which I later discovered what was) my room stayed freezing cold. At first I thought it was because I had two outer walls (but the neighbouring room also has that), or because the heating vents weren’t working properly (but one of them does work). My final theory was that the windows were very badly insulated and couldn’t keep the cold out (or warm in). Little did I know that I was on the right track, but hadn’t quite got it completely. Anyway, one day I was sat reading with a little heater blasting heat right at me, and detected a cold breeze coming from the window. I decided I had to go investigate, as I couldn’t believe that the windows were so bad they actually let a tangible ...

I didn’t realise it had been so long since I last wrote on my blog. It seems like so much has happened that surely I would have written some of it down, which clearly I hadn’t, not on my blog anyway. But that’s life. The last weeks of December just went and suddenly it was New Year, and suddenly we’re already into the first proper week of 2009. Crazy, but it’s been a full few weeks, in a good sense. Good days; good weeks. Christmas was lovely! Lovely food, good times with families, and I got everything I had wished for for Christmas. The days went so quickly and on the 26th we were sat in the living room with some of my cousins visiting in the evening and it started dawning on me that I was leaving the next day. It was fine to leave. I wish I’d had more time, but I was also excited to come back to KC for the onething conference and to see how that would work. My journey went very well in spite of very short connections. At one point I was wondering if I would make my flight to Kansas C...

It is so good to be in Norway this time of year! It is lovely to sit here in the comfy, red sofa in my parents’ house (just to clarify: it is red all year round, we don’t have a “special” sofa we get out for Christmas, but it is nice that it is red this time of year). I am sipping a cup of PG Tips tea (we get the massive 500-teabag bags in the local shops run by immigrants, and they are very cheap!) and eating a julegeit (literal translation: “Christmas goat”. It’s a type of bread-roll shaped as a goat which is a little bit sweet) with our traditional brown cheese (it’s a slightly sweet cheese made from goat milk and it’s called “brown” cheese because it is brown in colour). We’ve started to put out our Christmas decorations, and now I am having a little break while I eat and write a little blog-update. My brothers have headed up to some woods close by where they will pick and chop the Christmas tree (and I won’t get into the whole ethical debate surrounding the use of real trees and c...

Today it’s been snowing! Everything is covered in white and when I walk there’s a nice crunch under my feet! The perfect day to make gløgg; a traditional, Norwegian Christmas drink made of (in a USA modified recipe) apple juice, grape juice, cinnamon stick, whole cloves, cardamom, raisins, and almonds. It was very nice! I am afraid I don’t have any photos of either, so I suppose it’ll have to be left to the imagination of each one of us to picture what it looks like.