Hey guys! 

          It's been almost 8 months since I moved to Norway and it's crazy for me to look back at these past few months. They have been nothing like I expected them to be. It's been wonderful to get to know Norway and the beautiful people that live in this country. Life in the base is starting to get brighter and brighter. I say this as I gaze through my window and see the sunlight shining on the gentle hills of Norway at 10:30 PM. The crops are slowly growing through the farmland around our home. The harvest is great and we the workers are getting ready for the harvest.

          A new season is starting to come. The horizon is looking great, there are amazing opportunities for his Kingdom to come in Norway. However I need your help in order to be able to enjoy these new opportunities. I humbly ask you to prayerfully consider to start supporting me financially with a monthly gift. Any kind of amount you are able to contribute counts! Even the smallest! If you want to know more about why I ask or how to contribute you can click here. You can also talk to me, I'm very open to talk about my job and living situation as a missionary through YWAM. I love my job :) On the right you can also see my budget for the next season.

          SO! The next season starts in August. I will be switching from being staff in the Discipleship Training School (DTS) into being part of the YWAM Lighhouse Hamar team.  I will be sharing an apartment with two other girls in Hamar. The vision of our team is to be a blessing to the youth in Hamar. What we do as a whole is that we work with many ministries that are meant to support youth. These are things such as the local youth café, confirmation classes, camps, and school meetings.

These are the things I will be involved in: 

Bible studies: We are looking into starting a Bible Study open for everyone in town who is interested. I want to use what I learned in my Bible School in Tijuana in order to be a blessing to the people in town. The Bible is such a key part in seeing the Lord's kingdom established on earth. It's so encouraging because we can see how the people in Hamar are so eager to get closer to God through the Bible!


Alpha Course: The Alpha Course is a series of sessions that include food and having an open environment for discussion about the hard questions about the Christian faith. This course is not specifically designed for people who are Christians but it's for people who are curious about Christianity. The meetings are meant to create a very easy going environment where people can discuss the basics of Christianity. As the creators of the Alpha Course say it's "an opportunity to explore the meaning of life".

Kristen Russ: At their last year of high school, Norwegian youth celebrate for three weeks in what is called “Russ time”. There’s parties, fun, craziness and often loads of drinking. The “Christian Russ” program helps Christians to keep their faith and share the love of God for their friends in this time. We go on a yearly tour to inspire and encourage the “russ” all over the country. In May we help hosting a festival which gathers more than 1000 russ.

Cafe Uno: Café Uno is a youth café in Hamar, which has been started by the churches in town. Everyone works as volunteers, without any pay, solely because we care about youth in Hamar. The goal of the cafe is to create a meeting place of different cultures and opinions, in which everyone can feel welcome.

          I'm really looking forward to moving into town and start helping out with these ministries. I hope that you feel encouraged by the things God is doing in this small town in Norway! There are many ways that God is moving and I really hope you are able to join me in what God is doing in Norway by giving monthly financial support. Feel free to talk to me and ask me about Norway!

Thank you for reading! :)

          Life in Norway has been way different than I expected. I'm amazed at how much I love living in Norway. It was somehow a scary thought to be here. I was entering a whole new world. New atmosphere, new people, new food and a new routine. I thought the transition was going to be easy but it was not at first. 

         Coming as a foreigner to Norway definitively requires some patience especially if you are from a culture where you're immediately accepted into a group of friends. In Norway it takes time for people to let you into their lives. However as Norwegians say, once you have a Norwegian friend, you have a friend for a lifetime. I cannot fully express to you how happy it makes me when I see the Norwegians come to me and talk, oh and when they smile, that's the best! 

         Before I came to YWAM Grimerud, I didn't have expectations about my time here. All I knew is that one of the biggest highlights in my life was seeing young Swedes getting excited about following God. Now I would have the opportunity to see the same thing happen with young Norwegians. I really do love the mission that the ministry I work with has. 

"To see a movement of young men and women living out God's calling in their lives"     

          The first three weeks I was here I still didn't know what my role would be here. When I first got here everyone knew me as the new staff for the "4.12 DTS" or the young leaders DTS. After a few weeks of just attending the lectures and being able to speak what God wanted to say to some of the students, I was able to sit down with my leader to talk about my future in YWAM Grimerud. He had seen how I interacted with the DTS and how God would speak through me. Since I don't speak Norwegian we decided that it was best for me to work with the DTS for now. I'm really excited to be part of the team even though I don't have full responsibilities this year. I would love to share with you what it means to be DTS staff until the DTS in the next fall. 

          I want to see my opportunities expand in Norway and an essential part to that is to learn to speak Norwegian! I have been praying for an easy way for me to learn. One of the options is to pay for Norwegian classes which would cost about 900 dollars per month. The other way is by full immersion into the language, basically learning as a kid learns a language.  I'm asking God to see which one is the best option, and so far the second one might happen so please pray it does! 

Here is a video of learning some Norwegian by ThatNorwegianGuy: (sorry for some of his language)

I also posted new photos! If you want to see photos of where I live go to the Photos section! 

Hey guys! 

          As many of you have already seen, I'm going to Norway! A whole new season will start now. I'm really excited for this new season in my life. I will be full time staff at YWAM Grimerud! I have seen the past few years as training for missions, but now it's time to start working. I feel mentally and emotionally equipped to start making disciples.

I just re-read the information of the ministry I will be working with in Grimerud, which is called "Make Waves". All I can say is that I am SO excited for it! Their vision is pretty much my vision for the world! This is what it says:

" We want to see a movement of young men and women living out God’s calling on their lives.

We want to raise up a generation that is reaching out to their school, community and to the nations. We do that through serving local churches and arranging events and trips both inside of Norway and abroad. Through this we will see a transformation in our nation, and Norway will return to be a sender of missionaries to the whole world."

Oh I LOVE this! I'm excited for what God will do in me and through everyone I meet.

          I definitively want to ask for your prayers as moving into another culture is not always easy. I am a little familiar with Scandinavian culture but Norway is completely different from Sweden! I am sure I will enjoy it so much but I think prayers will work so well. :) I'm also so excited because I already have all the money I need to travel to Norway! I don't need to raise money for the trip! This is the first time this happens! Thank you Jesus! BUT please pray because I still need money to be able to live there! I already have a few people supporting me and it adds up to 130/ month. I still need 120 to reach my goal! SO pray pray pray!

Hola!

So the time came when the bible school had come to an end. I still can't believe that I spent 9 months studying the Bible. I am so thankful to God that I got the opportunity to get to know Him better through the Bible. These months have been hard, we've cried, we've laughed, we have been blown away with how great God is and we have more questions than we did when we first started. However nothing compares to going through the Bible and seeing that we serve the one true God.



As the end came there was one question that all of us got asked multiple times and that is, what are you doing next? From past blog posts I had asked prayers to choose:

OR

So, what am I doing next?

I'm going to...

Wait what? 

 Yeah, I'm going to Norway! It was quite the journey to decide what I would do next. Part of the struggle I described in my past few blogs was about deciding if Norway was the place I should go to. I had a lot of doubt about going there because I have never been there before and I have only met a few people from Norway. But God kept on pointing me to Norway. I've had peace about it. I told a friend and she said she felt the Holy Spirit confirming it. I have a friend who gave me a plane ticket to Norway that she won't use anymore, of which by the way I need $650 dollars by July 8 in order to keep it. This would basically be half price! Finally I have been accepted as staff in the base of Grimerud! YWAM Grimerud is located about an hour north of Oslo, in a village called Ottestad. 

What will I be doing there?

         I will be working mostly with youth. As I have been in  YWAM for the past few years I have realized that I love working with youth. It makes me come alive to see people become more like God designed them to be. This is what I'm hoping to see as I work with youth from the local church, a cafe and in the Discipleship Training School.
        To be honest with you I originally was gonna go to Sweden, however God closed that door for me. But I knew that I still wanted to be in Scandinavia. So I wanted to choose a base that would have a similar ministry as the one I worked with in Sweden called the Mobilization Team. In this ministry we would visit youth groups and give some of the basic YWAM teachings about hearing the voice of God, relationships, and many other topics. As I was looking at the ministries in YWAM Grimerud I found the "Make Waves" ministry.  I read the description of the ministry and it really clicked with me. This is their vision:

"We want to see a movement of young men and women living out God’s calling on their lives.

We want to raise up a generation that is reaching out to their school, community and to the nations. We do that through serving local churches and arranging events and trips both inside of Norway and abroad. Through this we will see a transformation in our nation, and Norway will return to be a sender of missionaries to the whole world."

The vision for this ministry is like my life vision for the world and anyone I meet. I feel so privileged to be able to partner with a ministry that has the same vision as I do. So, this is what I will be doing for the next two years of my life. I am really excited about this new season and I hope to have you join me in prayer for the ministry I will work with and for the country of Norway. 

Prayer points:

1. I need $650 by July 8 for the plane ticket

2. The visa process, and for the visa to come before August 16

3. I need $650 a month for food, stay and personal things

"But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing."

- James 1:25

            One of the best things about the New Testament is that it convicts you; it challenges you to put away all the ideas you had about God and live in the truth that you can only find in His word. The book of James is definitively one of those books that challenges you. Through this book I have learnt that it's not about the talk but it's about actually walking the talk. James tells the Jews that they need to stop just talking about the word but start acting according to it. He goes as far as saying that if someone thinks they are religious but they don't control their tongue then their religion is worthless. (James 1:26) Worthless! Later on he says that true religion is to take care of the orphan and the widow. In other words he is saying that the way to express faith is not about how good we are about saying we are Christians, or posting on Facebook nice Bible verses but about showing that we believe. We show that we believe by following the main commandment to love God and to love others before yourself. 

           There are a few things that James talks about specifically in the book. I won't talk about them all because I think it would be good for you to read it yourself! It's only 5 chapters :) The first thing that stood out to me was about James' view on faith. He is challenging the Jews to ask for what they lack for in Faith. (James 1:2-18) He tells them that if they doubt then they shouldn't expect to receive what they ask for. This hit me so hard, knowing that I have asked for things without faith. This tells us that we shouldn't have a double standard. We shouldn't believe God does things sometimes. No. We should believe that if we ask with faith we will receive what we ask for be it wisdom, insight, strength, finances, hope, healing, freedom.
           One other thing that James highlights in the book is the Jew's mentality on money and things of the world. (James 2:1-13; 3:13-17; 4:1-17; 5:1-6) First of all he touches the issue of partiality. Many times people treat others according to the amount of money they have. "Oh, you are rich come sit in the best place we don't want you to get dirty, and you poor person you are used to sitting on the floor or close to the dirt maybe you can sit there right?" No. partiality is as much of a sin as murder and adultery are! We need to go back to the royal law "Love your neighbor as yourself". We need to look back at Jesus, he was there for the poor, the outcasts, the sinner. Let's not separate ourselves from the "sinners". Let's remember that we are also sinners.

"For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment"

- James 2:14

            James was also calling the Jews to submit themselves to the Lord. The Jews had let their own selfish ambitions take over their actions. They asked for things but they did not receive because they wanted it for their own passions. They desired what they did not have, so they coveted and did not  receive. Therefore they fought and had quarrels. We do the same things! We seek to have more money, we seek fame and acknowledgment according to the world. We get security from our financial situation. We have therefore we become proud. We seek to please people when we should be seeking to please God. We make plans about how we will go places and make more money here and there. Yet we don't even know if we will live tomorrow! We seek to have riches yet we forget that riches will rot, they are not everlasting. We need to stop having false happiness and repent. We need to acknowledge that we need to change our heart. We need to become selfless and give to those who need. We need to get out of our comfort zone and meet the poor, the orphan, the widow, the broken. We need to look at Jesus. 

           Ouch! That message hurt so much! As I read the book I was so convicted about my motivations and my actions. I asked myself, "Am I really seeking to help my neighbor? or is life all about me? I need to feel good, I need money, I need pleasure, I need comfort. Me, me me. Life has become all about me! But I have learned that there is more to life. In the moments when I do live seeing my neighbor higher than myself, I end up receiving. A selfless life is a life of freedom. 

           There is repentance available for us. We can pray in Faith that God will heal us from this sickness in our hearts. We can look for people with greater perspective and wisdom. He will open up our eyes so we may see our sin. So we may change our minds and know how to live selflessly, fully submitted to the Lord. 

"And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working." 

- James 5:15-16

My prayer is that we can all live out this life that God has called us to. So we may become more like Him. 

So, as an application to the book of James we got to build a house for a family! Here are a few pictures: 

Putting up the walls!

I love working on the roof!

The team and the house after the first day! :)

The house the family used to live in. Now they will have more space for everyone!