Christmas in Norway - A full Recap

The last three weeks have been utterly amazing. It has taken me a while to write about all of it because, for the first week and a half I didn't have internet here, a thunderstorm took it out, then I had a hard time making myself sit and really think about what has been going on. So, belatedly, here is what I have done while here in Norway.
The whole time Helen and I are staying here we are living in her parents house with the rest of her family either staying for Christmas as well or living quite close. She has an amazing family, I get along great with her siblings, especially her brother in-law, Rik, me and him share the same Dutch heritage and some crazy/mischievous characteristics.  The first 2 weeks that we were here Helen worked a lot, she's like a butcher and an artist combined, and I helped her dad around the house, which is also a farm. I stacked fire wood, cut trees with a chain saw, drove a tractor and essentially became a farmer. On Monday the 19th I fullfilled my alterior motive for coming here this Christmas, I visited a church in Stavanger (Western Norway) called Imi Kirka, the lead pastor from this church had come to Bethel in early November, along with leaders from around the world, for a conference and he was at a meet n' greet designed to recruit 2nd years for internships for next year. I talked with him back in November and we made a good connection so I contacted him later to try and organize a meeting during my stay here. He was also excited to meet so on Monday we made the 3 hour drive to see the church and talk with the leaders there. I was blown away by the treatment they gave us. This is an 800 member church and the lead pastor, his daughter, and the leader of the nationwide youth movement, all sat down to meet with Helen and me for an hour to tell us all about the church and themselves. Then, in response to the question we had about finances and stuff like that, they said that they could offer a free place to stay and a small monthly stipend. So, I am thinking rather hard about going there to work with them next year.
Christmas was wild, Helen's family (the Smidsrøds) and I had a super relaxed gift giving time in the evening of the 24th. It was awesome to see them open the presents Helen and I got them, especially the one that I got for Helen, and it was rather fun to open my own as well. I think it is worth commenting again on how well I have connected with the Smidsrøds, they really have welcomed me in to their home and family.
Since Christmas we have been doing some other cool stuff, went to a big pool park thing at the end of a fjord, I rode a horse for the first time and shot a gun, a Springfield I think, at least that was the type of bullet. Tonight we go to some super cool church friends of Helen's for New Years, it will be a great night of board games and deep theological talks.
Sorry for not updating sooner. All of you that read this blog are amazing and wonderful and a pray blessing over all of you. Thank you so much for caring about my life enough to read what I write about it. God bless and happy new year!

Life, and Some Exciting News

First and update of the state in which I was in when I wrote the previous post. During a worship time on Tuesday I felt God telling me that He had fixed me already, that I really did have different beliefs than before and God had changed the way my brain thought about everything. He said that even though my emotions may not line up all the time it does not mean that that is not true. I actually do believe that I am accepted and that God loves me for nothing about what I do, I can rest in that and whenever I begin to get stressed or angry at myself for messing up I can tell my emotions that they have no reason to be there and I do not believe those things anymore. Since then I have had a couple stressful times and, honestly, it is a little difficult to not get caught up in the midst of it and forget what God is telling me but I think I am getting better at it. God is so good and I know He is going to work it out for my best.

Life is full of challenges, but the grace of God is a constant and He will always get you through, alive and thriving.

So some exciting news, in two days I am going on a long trip for Christmas, a trip all the way to Norway. My relationship with Helen is getting to be quite serious, serious enough to merit a trip to her home and family for one month. I cannot wait to get there, I know it is going to be wonderful and amazing and very Norwegian. My next blog post will probably be from Europe! It is going to be wild, the only other time I have really been to Europe for an extended time was when I was 3, so this will be quite the adventure into new territory. I miss all my friends in my home province of Nova Scotia and they will be dearly missed over the holidays. What a beautiful country I hail from. Nevertheless, I go to Norway in two days and I know it will be the trip of a lifetime.

Facing Some Real Challenges

This week some real issues surfaced within me that I would like to share. On Thursday my community activation group put on a block party for our community, we had a free food, face painting, and entertainment on a portable stage, rappers and music and the like. I was in charge of MCing and organizing the entertainment and it was stressful. Even though it was going great the whole time and people were enjoying themselves and getting healed (One girl was using crutches and all the pain left her leg 7/10 to 0/10 pain!) and we were making friends with community members I was really uptight the whole time. Afterward I was exhausted because of all the personal effort I put in to make it all work, even though I did not need to. This was the same feeling I had about a month ago while I was leading a meeting for my international transformation group, delegating responsibilities and such. Even though everything was going incredibly well the whole time I was stressing out like nobody's business! Then, the most recent proof that there is a problem that needs to be dealt with, I was talking with one of my good friends last night about our dreams for the future, I started talking about what I saw myself doing in the coming years (a subject for another blog entry, perhaps several other blog entries) and, as I did, I felt this tension begin to take hold of my body. Instead of drawing life out of thinking about my dreams I began to feel heavy and burdened.
The constant in these examples and in the countless other times I can think of when I felt like this is this one vital thing: Responsibility. Every time I have been put in a position where the success or failure of something is based upon my actions I have taken on more than my fair share of stress.
After my conversation with my friend last night I began to realize that this was something that had to be dealt with, I fully intend on being in positions of incredible authority and responsibility in the future and it would not do to have an inordinate amount of stress all the time. I prayed about it and God graciously talked me through it all. Behind the feeling of stress there has always been fear, that emotion that can be so crippling and keeps us from our dreams. In this case it was the fear of failure, what would happen is I would get afraid that I would mess everything up and my automatic reaction would be to tighten up and try to exert my control over the situation, the logic being that if I try really hard it will be more likely to succeed. All of this is mostly subconscious of course. But emotions are never the root issue, they are always a symptom, emotions do not cause themselves they exist as reactions. So, I asked God what the root of these fear feelings were and He led me to read Paul's epistle to the Galatians. For those of you who do not know, Galatians is all about the issue of "Law vs Grace" the new covenant, the agreement made with God since Jesus, says that the only way we get to be righteous is by faith, believe and receive and you got it, whilst the old covenant, the previous agreement that God had made with the Jews, said that the only way to be righteous was by following a whole bunch of rules. The Galatians were trying to mix the covenants, which Paul vehemently rebuked them for. When I finished reading I realized that the issue I was having was that I was thinking that my success or failure was based upon my actions. But that is not what the Bible says at all. God tells us again and again that our success is entirely based upon Jesus' actions. This is a big deal, the idea that I have to do a bunch of stuff to be accepted is an idea quite ingrained in my head, it is going to be a process to overcome it. But I believe that I will and that it will change my life. I am incredibly excited to see what God is going to do and I know it is all going to work out wonderfully-