A TIME TO BE BOLD

It's all about stepping out and being bold! One of our NTNU student friends, Halvor, decided to put himself out there by memorizing the passion story in the last 4 chapters of Mark and recite them in the hallways at both NTNU campuses. As people walked by, he stood by a large cross (curtesy of Chuck's carpentry skills) and near a table with free candy and New Testament bibles. It was interesting to see how some gathered to listen and others walked by and grabbed a bible. Others walked by seemingly ignoring him, but God's Word never returns void! It is awesome to see the Christian students step out in boldness and proclaim the Truth! :)

Afterwards we all went down to one of our favorite areas of the city- Bakklandet- and enjoyed the sun and conversation at a cafe. Here when it begins to hit 40 degrees (Fahrenheit), everyone is outside! Here are Kelly, Magnus, Brett, and Halvor.
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This past weekend, we took a ferry across the fjord with the Haavik family as their whole family is back to visit for a couple of weeks. It was a lovely start to the our Easter break, or "påskeferie". We now have a week of no classes and Brett's sister Brooke is coming to visit for the week. It will be nice to take some time to relax and we are planning to visit some other cities in Norway for a few days. The tradition for many Norwegian families during this time is to go to cabins in the mountains for skiing and sunning and eating "Kvik Lunsj" (similar to kit-kat bars) and oranges. Sounds like fun to me....



I also recently had a great time attending my friend Idunn's Tae-Kwan Do test and was able to cheer her on as she received her first black stripe on her red belt...only a few to go and on to black! She is definitely small but mighty (seriously- she was chopping boards with her hand! Cool!) Idunn is currently studying and is on the worship team for the Unbad youth meetings and has been attending my cell group on Tuesday nights. She is hungry to experience more of God and I know God is going to do great things with her life!

STUDENT RETREAT!
As I promised, here are many images from our first weekend student retreat! There are so many more I would love to post, but you'll have to go to our online photo album to see more (click on the link to the right)! Following the photos is a little blurb to sum up what ended up to be an incredble time had by all. God really met us and we are already planning when to have the next one in the fall! THANK YOU for your prayers....The group- there were 24 of us in all- Praise God!

Fun in the SNOW!

Here we are with the beautiful view from the cabin

Of course there was lots of food! Norwegian spread: "pålegg"=anything you can put on bread My all-time favorite photo, playing a game and the guys cracking up!

Helena was all smiles

Thomas & Annette with John Koeshall (missionary to Europe) who came to Norway just to join us for the retreat

Lots of prayer time and seeing how God used the students to minister to each other

Everyone ready to hike back down the hill in the snow from the cabin

Lots of game-playing and relaxing fellowship time

Some of the ladies

Our good friends Ellen and Håvard- such a cute married couple!

Also lots of coffee and hotchocolate drinking- great picture of Erlend

The weekend started out with a longer than expected hike completely uphill in the snow with all of our gear and food for the weekend. It was quite the challenge, but well-worth the work-out! Once everyone arrived we filled the weekend with working together to make meals, hanging out together, and being taught about prayer by Chuck Haavik, who is back for a few weeks again. It was amazing and everyone said they received so much from the weekend.

The theme of the weekend was focused on prayer and we had a few opportunities to get away for an hour and pray through bits of scripture and just let God speak to us. It's amazing what happens when we get quiet and just let God do what He wants to do. Many of the students, though Christians, had never done this before and said some of the things they learned during the weekend would revoloutionize their personal devotional life with God. So important! Many students even shared with the group the things God had spoken to them during those times. We all received so much from these times. On Saturday night we had a wonderful ministry time and saw how God spoke through many of the students and brought us together to pray for one another and to regain a fire for the lost of this city. The Holy Spirit was moving strongly!

We just had a blast and laughed and talked so much...we were blown away by the way God took care of every detail and what a complete success everything was. The most important thing was that everyone left having been transformed in some way and most said they would never forget this weekend and are excited for another one in the fall. Be praying for us to know when the right time to have it next semester will be, we would love to have one each semester.

We truly believe that your prayers were key to such a successful weekend and hope you are excited as we are about the things God is doing in this place. But there is much left to do...so let's keep asking God to show us what steps to take next. This weekend just proved even more how important it is to have community with one another and give the Spirit freedom to move. Lives are forever changed....