Here is a short clip from the 22nd in Trondheim and below
an even shorter one...sorry for the poor quality! :)



In just about an hour we are heading out to take the night bus to Oslo where we will fly out tomorrow morning to Germany! This will be our first time traveling to the country where many of our ancestors are from. We will be at the Students for Christ European Student Conference in Nuremberg that occurs there every other year. There will be a speaker, seminars, worship, sightseeing, and time to be with about 200 other people- many students from other countries of Europe. We will be taking with us the first Norwegian to attend an SFC event- exciting!
Brett will return on the 2nd and Cortney will be returning the 4th as she and Kelly will be visiting their friend, Anne, who studied in Trondheim last fall for a semester- they met in their Norwegian class and have continued to keep in touch. They will be spending a short visit with her in Freiberg and Dresden. We will post all about it when we return. We are excited for a new semester and the many ideas we have for this coming year! Please pray for the conference and for the upcoming semester and the many changes and planning that will be happening when we return from Germany.

GOD JUL! [goo yule] "MERRY CHRISTMAS"!
Here are just a few pictures of Christmas for Brett and I this year. We had a quiet Christmas just the two of us, which was nice, but we were definitely missing our loved ones from home! We pray that you all had a lovely Christmas and are looking forward to a new year in 2008! We love you and miss you!

Brett and I had our first experience picking out a Christmas tree together...and then hauling it home on the bus!

We had a relaxing day together on the 22nd, hiking along the fjord in 40 degree weather-no white Christmas again here this year!- followed by a night out together as a gift from Kelly and Jess, dinner complete with our favorite dessert of tiramisu. The walking street downtown was all lit up for Christmas, it was a great day-

Yesterday we spent Christmas eve with some international friends of ours. Our friend Peon from Thailand cooked us a traditional Thai meal and we hung out with friends from Russia, Belarus, and Indonesia. A Christmas to remember!

Here is an article from Norway's newspaper Aftenposten from yesterday. The statistics at the end of the article are indicative of a steadily growing trend here in Norway:

Find religion at Christmas

Norwegians flock to church at Christmas time, but for the rest of the year religious attendance is low.

Christmas Eve, the high point of Norwegian Christmas celebrations, is the day of highest church attendance of the year. In 2006 627,000 Norwegians took a pew on Christmas Even, and the number is rising every year.

Christmas Day used to be the busiest day in terms of church attendance, but the emphasis has now clearly shifted to the day before, local newspaper Gjengangeren reports.

About 13.4 percent of the population visited a church on Christmas Eve last year, up from 12.8 percent the year before, and equivalent to about an extra 35,000 visitors.

But church attendance is far more modest the rest of the year. Norwegians visited church an average of 1.4 times a year in 2006, including christenings, weddings, and funerals.

The younger generation show the least interest. A survey by the Norwegian Social Science Data Services (NSD) found that half of those under the age of 30 say they never go to church, compared to 25 percent of those over 60.