To Scotland and Back: Mini-outreach

 What can I say about mini-outreach? I have no previous mini-outreach experience with YWAM with which to compare the one in Scotland with, but I have the feeling that it was unique in many ways. For starters, my team consisted of only three people including myself. I went to Scotland with Ragnhild who is Norwegian and Katherina who is German, both of whom are my DTS staff.


Katherina, me, and Ragnhild

 Another unique part of the outreach is the focus. If there was a theme to what we did in Scotland, it would have to be prayer. We, my team and our host family, spent a lot of time praying with people from the church that we were working with in Scotland and with a few other people who God put in our path.
 For the entire time in Scotland, my "team" and I were working with a small church called the Lighthouse Church which is located in the small costal town of Troon that few people have heard of. I think that the most that we did with in church itself was going there on Sundays and helping with their prayer rooms on Wednesdays. However, we did spend a lot of time connecting with people in the church. While the Lighthouse Church may be small, the people are fantastic. We also stayed with an amazing family from the church who not only opened their home to us, but also gave up their time to take us places and ministered alongside of us.



Andrew and Sadie: our wonderful hosts

 

The Lighthouse Church



Inside the Lighthouse Church



Part of Troon where the church is. Incedentily, the church sits in the center of Troon's roughest neighborhood.



Troon's harbor

 While the church that we came to work with is located in Troon, our host family lived about forty minutes away in the town, which looks and feels more like a city, of Paisley located near Glasgow. Paisley is a town rich in history which has fallen under hard times. I think that in a way Paisley represents Scotland in that it is a beautiful country with a rich history that has fallen under a lot of oppression and seen many hard times. We met many people in Scotland who were in need of hope in their lives. 


Paisley Abbey



Paisley Town Center

 Somewhere in the history of YWAM, the DTS staff figured out that it is good to have a day off to rest during outreaches and for our day off, we went to Stirling Castle and the city of Glasgow. Thanks to our amazing host family, we were also able to see a bit of the Scottish countryside as well during another day. 


Stirling Castle



 


From the battlements



Loch Lomon

 I want to end by sharing one incident of how God placed people in our paths while in Scotland. On one of the first days that we spent in Scotland, we had a time of prayer with our host family. This time of prayer was a bit more than a quick, half hour session and after a while I began to get distracted, thinking how nice it would be to take a walk (yes, I know that it must be a terrible shock to hear that a DTS student gets distracted). As I was thinking about how I could get outside, a strange thought came into my mind that if I were to go on a walk, I would meet a woman on crutches. This is not a normal thought for me, so I told myself to stop trying to think of excuses to go outside and to go back to praying. Not long after this, Andrew asked if we would like to go walking on top of a nearby hill. Hallelujah! My silent prayers had been answered. The hill turned out to be a frozen cow pasture with an amazing view of Paisley and Glasgow. About half-way through the walk, Katherina and I noticed that there was a woman ahead of us walking her dog. I couldn't believe it at first, but as we got closer the woman was unmistakably using crutches. As we approached the woman, debating if we should pray for her or not, the woman actually started a conversation with us and allowed us to pray for her. Nothing visibly happened at that moment, but we could tell that God had met her with His love. Now all that I see is people with crutches.



the hill

   

Update

 Welcome to 2011! I came back to Norway just in time to welcome in the New Year and to discover that the Norwegians like fireworks on New Year's Eve more than Americans do on Independence Day. 
 It has been wonderful to have a break and absorb what has happened since I arrived in Norway. God has shown me so much of His goodness while I have been here and the crazy thing is I know that there is more yet to come. Tomorrow I head off to the Grimerud YWAM base for Workers Gathering, which is where all of the YWAM bases in Norway gather together to hear about what YWAM is doing throughout Norway and send off the outreach teams. While I do not go on my main outreach for another three months, I am going to Scotland in six days for a two week, mini-outreach. Other teams from the DTS in Skien will be going to Austria, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, and Tromsø (which is a city in the north of Norway). I will tell you about my work and adventures in Scotland when I get back, but if you want to pray for my trip, please pray for favorable weather conditions for travel, protection, unity within the team, for a good connection to the people in the church that my team and I will be working with, and that God would give us the knowledge of how we can be a blessing to the people of Scotland. 
 I think that it is not too early to share with you the country where I will be going for my main outreach before I end this update. For my main outreach, I and seven other people will be going to the beautiful country of Ethiopia. As of the moment, I do not have a clear picture of what we will be doing in Ethiopia, but I will know more after mini-outreach. I think that it is better not to know everything now so that I can set my eyes on Scotland.

Gud er God, Hele Tiden

 To the dear people who are reading this blog, Merry Christmas! I wish that I was able to travel back to the US for Christmas, but I got to go to Germany instead, which has been a big blessing.
 I have talked a lot about my life in Norway so far, what living with a multitude of other people is like, and what we do in YWAM Skien. But now, I want to talk about what God is doing Skien; how He is working in the city through us. 
 In general, the Norwegian people are open to spiritual things, whether it is the Holy Spirit or not good spirits. I think that this is one of the reasons why God has met many, many Norwegians in what we would call a supernatural way. Before I go on and share some stories of what God has done, I want to say something about the core of miracles, signs and wonders, etc. The heart behind the supernatural is for a person to encounter the love of God in a tangible way. Praying for people is another way to visibly demonstrate God's heart, His love, and His compassion. 
 Okay, story time. One Saturday night in November, a lot of us from the base went out to evangelize. My group and I got to pray for a man with stomach problems. Not much happened after we finished praying, but when another group met the same man and asked if they could pray for him, he said that God had already healed him.
 On my last team week, my team and I went to a Baptist church in Skien to hang out with the youth group. While we were there, we got to pray for a girl with a sore throat and God healed her.
 Of course, healings are not the only things that God is doing. Another area that He is working with is divine appointments. Let me give you an example. One cold, dark night in November we had a fire drill just as the cafe that we run on Thursday nights was closing. The parking lot which serves as our safe meeting place in case of fires is right next to the disco club across the street from the prison. I guess a large group of people, some wearing pajamas, standing in a parking lot late at night looks funny because people from the club started to come outside and ask what we were doing there. When the fire drill ended and people started to go back into the prison, Melanie, a fellow DTS student and I started to talk with a girl who came out from the club. The girl shared her story with us and we had an opportunity to speak life into her life. Melanie is still in contact with this girl. I have no doubt that it was God who orchestrated things that night to reach this one girl. 
 There are many, many more stories of how God has healed people inside and out and touched the lives of the people in Skien. These are just the events which I have been privileged to witness. 

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.  

Life with YWAM

Relaxing with the SOE

 It is six-thirty in the morning and my alarm clock is telling me that its time to start another day. Already I can hear the pounding of feet as people run up and down the stairs to and from the bathrooms which, by the way, have showers with glass doors. The sun isn't up yet, but almost everyone at the YWAM base here in Skien is in order for breakfast.
 If I had to describe my life here in Skien with one word, routine would be one of the words that I would be tempted to use. On an average day here, life for a DTS student looks like this: we eat an early breakfast, spend an hour with God (praying, reading the bible, etc.), then we go to class where we learn about a different subject each week. So far, we've learned about the father heart of God, holiness, the bible, discipleship, and relationships. We have a break for lunch at noon and then it is back to class or cleaning the base depending upon the day.


class



waiting for class to begin

 Something interesting that I have learned about life here in Norway is that Norwegians eat four meals a day, most of them consisting of bread. Breakfast and lunch are at what we in the United States would call 'normal times', but dinner, the only hot meal we eat, is consumed around four thirty and then there is super which is eat around eight. The base here in Skien is no exception to eating four meals a day, which is nice because there is always cereal for supper if you didn't get enough for dinner. 
 Weekends at the base are good for two reasons mainly: you get to sleep in and on Saturdays we have a Norwegian specialty of rice porridge which has a name that my laptop doesn't posses the right keys to spell.

 I may have already mentioned this, but one of the best things about living here is the fellowship. Now that it is getting cold, we spend a good amount of time around one of the stoves drinking coffee or tea, talking, and laughing. Sometimes the conversations are deep topics and other times it is just swapping jokes. The atmosphere here is open and it is a safe place to learn how to be yourself. We are working towards being Youth Without Any Masks. 
 Of course, there are many times when we need to be alone and think. Thankfully the cafe culture is big here in Norway and Cafe Tullis is a good place to go for some alone time. However, there is always the chance that you will meet someone else from the base there so visitors, be warned.


Cafe Tullis

   I think that this nicely sums up what my life is like here on a day to day basis. After reading over what I just wrote, it sounds a little repetitive, but that is where people come in. People are the game changing variable and I would have to fight really hard here to be bored.
  

There Is A Generation...

 It feels like it has been a long time since I last sat down to write about what is happening here in Skien. I am sure that many of you are curious what life on a DTS is like, much less life in Norway and I promise that some day soon I will give out more details with pictures. But today I would like to share with you something that God has put on my heart while I have been here: the youth of Skien.

 
 Everything started one Saturday night as I was walking down to the YWAM office building to watch a movie. Our base, the old prison, is located in the bar and disco club district of Skien and after dark on the weekends is when what looks like half the city comes here to party.
 In order to get to the office building you have to walk through the main hub of clubs and as I was walking on that particular night, something caught at my heart. At one of the clubs, there was a long line of rowdy youths from the ages of about thirteen to seventeen all waiting to get in. As I was passing, something happened inside of my heart that is rather difficult to explain. While looking at these youths, I all of a sudden was overwhelmed by a feeling of hopelessness that was coming from these youths. They were pursuing what they thought would fill them, but it is all empty; an endless cycle of trying to find worth and escape from the monotony of life. As I was sensing this hopelessness, compassion for these youths overwhelmed my heart. I saw God's heart for them and felt His longing to be their hope and fill their lives. 
 Now my mission is to meet and connect with the youth here in Skien. There is a great lack of self-esteem among youths in Norway, many come from broken families, and many youths are depressed. Talking with people here that have worked with the youth, I have learned that they are open to hear, but they have a hard time believing that there is such a thing as truth. 
 Please pray that the hearts of the youth would be opened to know that there is truth and for opportunities for myself and other people from the base to connect with them.  

Sweden: Celebrating 50 Years of YWAM

 To start this entry off, I need to correct a mistake in the last entry that I wrote. As it turns out, Andy happens to be a student in the School of Evangelism, not a staff member. With one hundred people, it is sometimes difficult to know who belongs where. 
 Okay, now back to my real reason for writing.
 When I applied for the DTS in Skien, I had no idea that I was entering into YWAM on such an awesome year. This year is YWAM's jubilee year, its 50th birthday if you will. In order to celebrate 50 years of young people bringing God's good news all over the world, celebrations are being held all over the world at various YWAM bases and the gathering place for all of Northern Europe (Scandinavia plus Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania) just happened to be in the gorgeous country of Sweden at the Restenäs base. Restenäs looks like what it used to be before YWAM made the place into a base; a picturesque farming village complete with cows. The picture below shows only the dinning hall, dinning tent, and office building. Restenäs is too large for one picture, but just right for a meeting of over seven hundred YWAMers.

  To celebrate fifty years of YWAM, we, YWAM of Northern Europe, attended meetings for the better part of four days in the foremost building you see in the picture below. A lot of different leaders and visionaries spoke during these meetings and we got to hear stories of how God is using young people all around the world. While hearing the stories was good, some of the best times in the meetings were when we worshiped. Nothing can compare to the sight of all generations worshiping God together in freedom.

                                        
     The cowfield: what a wonderful view to wake up to.                               

An inside view of the meeting hall. It reached incredible temperatures in this room, considering the cold weather outside of the building.

 It is very difficult to celebrate an organization or a movement without honoring its founder. Yes, we honored God without whom nothing, including YWAM would exist, but we also honored the man who obeyed God's call to mobilize young people for the kingdom of God and his wife who is much more than just a help meet to him. The man and his wife are called Loren and Darlene Cunningham and they came to Restenäs to celebrate along side of us the organization they founded. It was a great privilege to hear Loren and Darlene tell of how YWAM began and of their visions for its future.


Loren Cunningham (right) and translator

 When we were not being Youth With A Meeting, it was good to take advantage of the fact that Restenäs is located near a large body of water. Many people went swimming, but swimming looked more like walking on water for some people because the water temperature did not reflect bath water in the least. And also....

                                                                
                                                               ... there were jellyfish!         

 

So what came out of this trip to Sweden? One: I learned that YWAM is a much larger organization than I had first thought and that it has impacted every corner of the globe. Two: I saw that people in Northern Europe are very passionate about seeing revival break out in their countries. Three: I realized that a large bottle of hand sanitizer would be prudent in the future for large gatherings of over ten people. Yes, seriously. Over half of the people at this base came back with some kind of sickness from Restenäs including yours truly, which is part of the reason why its taken me so long to post this. The good news is that everyone is starting to feel better. The bad news is that it is supposed to rain the majority of this coming week.