Team-Weeks

 Team-weeks, ah yes. These weeks are a chance to apply what I've been learning in the DTS and are also the reason why I haven't been able to update the blog in so long. Thankfully, I am here in Skien this team-week so I actually have free time to write.
 So what is a team week? A team week is where my DTS class splits into six teams (hence the name team-week) in order to work with different churches and evengelize on a smaller scale. Usually three teams stay here in Skien and the other three go out to different cities or towns in Norway.
 For my first team week, my team and I went to a city called Haugesund which is on the West Coast of Norway where we worked with a pioneer church that is running a cafe. I think that was the hardest team week so far because I had to drink a ton of good coffee, meet amazing people, and go to one of the most beautiful parts of Norway. Any sympathy? In reality, it was an awesome experience. My team and I were in Haugesund for only six days, but from the moment I stepped into the coffee shop/church I felt at home. Our contact in Haugesund was Nils, a man who is on fire for God and works in the church's cafe. Nils arranged for our team to go to a confirmation class, a tween's smallgroup, and different home groups from the pioneer church in the evenings. In the end, I think that we were as blessed by the people in the pioneer church as they were by us.


 

My team: on the top row from left to right is Nils, Stefan, Ole Kristian, Ole Johannes. On the bottom is Ragnhild, Barbro, Jaanika, me and Lisa.  



The beautiful West Coast



The pioneer church that we worked with.



Haugesund



 The next team-week, I was here in Skien with a team whose specific focus is worship. However, we did not have much worship in the normal sense of playing music. Instead we centered in on living a lifestyle of worship by serving and encouraging people. The most that we did here in Skien was going out to evangelize with the School of Evangelism students and during the weekend of that week, my team and I went to a Christian youth conference called Get Focused for the weekend where we cleaned toilets and spread the love of God to the youth that were there.

 My last team-week was probably the most challenging and the most fruitful ministry wise. The city that my team was in is called Sarpsborg, which is near Sweden. There is a lot of spiritual warfare going on over this city and we got to experience some of what was going on. As the week went on, it became a struggle for our team to communicate with one another and we had to fight to keep our eyes on Jesus. If this week proved anything, it clearly demonstrated that it is God who is powerful and will meet people no matter what. And meet people is what He did, directly where they were at. The main place that we saw God work was in the youthgroup of the church we were working with in Sarpsborg. Almost every night, we would have prayer and worship meetings with the youth where we were able to encourage and minister to them. By the end of the six days, we could see a visible change in the youth. Seeing this was completely worth any struggles that we might have had.


The Sarpsborg team: front row is Eva with the baby, Erik, and Katharina. Back row is Barbro, me, Jussi, and Andreas.



The youth room in the church where we worked in Sarpsborg

 So here I am again on another team-week here in Skien. I am with the worship focus team again and we are going to spread the love of God in creative ways throughout Skien. In general, the prayer needs for team-weeks are that we can keep our eyes on Jesus, unity in the team, and protection both in traveling and in health.