Merry Christmas!!!

Hi

Merry Christmas everyone!! I hope y'all had a really great holiday. I did! Here are some pictures of how my past month or two has been!!!

I got to go ice skating for the first time and it was amazing!!!! I only fell once when I tried to look cool and turn around. 

The ice rink was in the winter Olympics at one point!

These are my friends Ingrid and Rikke. They're awesome.

This is a random cat.

The other saturday I went to my favorite coffee shop Larsen and wrote my journal and ate a macaron and drank a chai latte while it snowed. It was nice.

also I had a croissant 

Milk Cartons, Knit Socks, and Street Signs

Hello friends and family,

This week has been really good but also challenging. We're doing the  Course which is a course that basically redefines missions as you know it.. or at least that's what it's done for me. I've learned so much about different aspects of being a missionary that I'd never thought about and it's so exciting.    I'm learning things that my brain probably already knew but my heart needed to know it too

•  to be patient because Gods timing is always better than ours
• I'm responsible for saying yes to Him but not responsible for worrying about everything that's happening that I can't control while I'm waiting to be "out in the field" 
• also I should be happy and present where I am right now and know that when the time comes I'll be able to go. For now wherever I am in the present is my mission field. 
• to really focus and work on loving people unconditionally and seeing people that I live with. I think it's so easy to go through my daily life and not truly know the people I live with. I can know them on a basic level but most of the time it takes effort to know them on a deeper level. and right now I really want to work on that. Just to be able to see that someone close to me is struggling and walk with them. I think that sometimes we try to fight our battles by ourselves or just us and God and it can be so exhausting but when we let others into our lives then they can build us up and we can link up arms and fight forward together. Normally it's so easy for me to think that I wouldn't want to put them out of their way or that they probably are dealing  with some tuff things so why should I bother them with my troubles but I'm learning to be more open and real and in that I feel so much more freedom and love and the ability to love others and want to help them fight their battles. If that makes sense:) all of the above and everything else I write are still things I'm processing and figuring out more and more every day and some days I realize what I've been thinking isn't that accurate or something clicks and it's just lovely. Basically dear Mr. C.S. Lewis sums up my thoughts perfectly "I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand." 
• Also, I am beyond glad that I am here. I got really homesick on Wednesday especially while I was trying to fall asleep. Partly because I wanted to Skype my mom and I realized she was at work and then also because I have thought for the past month that Thanksgiving was on the 20th this year and I was thinking about my family having Thanksgiving the next morning. And me being me I decided to be super nostalgic and look up children's books I had when I was little and just meh it was no fun. So I started to just talk to God about it and tell Him how hard it is and just that I missed my family and friends so much. Also, I miss being known. I think it's human nature to desire to feel like someone knows them completely or at least understands them. So after living with people for 19 years and having such amazing friends that I see every day or often and coming to a completely new place I think after a while you just miss having someone that knows you. But it's kind of silly because everyone starts as strangers except for parents and friends that you grew up with so meeting new people and making friends is something that must happen. I think I've just missed the comfortableness of having someone love you unconditionally, not that no one here does but we're still all learning to love each other and how we work in this new environment together. I didn't realize how nice it is to have someone you can say "remember when" or quote movies to or laugh about inside jokes. Anyhow as I was praying I started thinking about Jesus and how He says He's been through things so He understands what we're going through. And then it kinda hit me. How did Jesus feel when He came to earth. He left the most perfect most comfortable beautiful place in the divine dance and came to earth. He wouldn't have been able to say to anyone around Him "hey remember that one time" or anything like that because all of His memories were from eternity and the disciples didn't even understand Him when He was speaking clearly about normal things so how would they have responded if He looked up and saw a rainbow and was like " hey I remember when I created that and Noah was so cool" Their human brains probably would have exploded or just ignored Him and not have understood. How would He have felt when He saw different people that He had created and they were hurting other people He'd made or when people were in so much pain. I feel so terrible for Professor-X in X-Men in the scene when he is able to feel all of the people's pain around the world but that's just a movie. I can't even  imagine how Jesus felt when He not only could see all of the pain but know that that wasn't the plan and that they could have had a better life. Talk about extreme culture shock. I also thought about His friends, how even though He had the disciples the majority of the time they had no idea what He was talking about and it took Him dying for them to understand partially what was going on. He was never able to have a deep conversation with anyone in the flesh. I love having deep conversations and isn't definitely not the same if it's over the phone. For His entire life He was never understood. His parents didn't understand Him, His friends didn't understand Him, and the people around Him didn't understand Him. He must have felt so alone. He prayed a lot and spent time with God but still I can't imagine the feeling of not being understood by anyone for your entire life. And then I thought. What love that must have been. What kind of love would be so extreme that someone would willingly allow themselves to live through a life of such isolation and then be killed by the people that you came for. His love for each of us is just unfathomable. That He would go through all of that even if it was just for one person. Mind blown. So after that I calmed down and realized that it's okay to miss my family and friends because they've played and still play such a huge role in my life and shaping me into who I am but I can be comforted in that I'm alone in missing people and be a comfort to others. Plus in all of this I think I've come to really appreciate my "old friends" and value getting to know my new friends. 
• I was washing dishes last night and while I was washing them I was thinking how glad I'm here at Grimerud. The atmosphere here is so different. Everyone feels like family. God is so good because the morning after I had gotten so homesick our base had it's annual "Home Days" where the entire base meets in the barn/fellowship hall and everyone that's out comes back to the base and we spend 2 days together in fellowship eating, talking, and listening to speaker or the base leaders talk about things we can do to make our base a better place to be and live and how to just be better family for each other. After being here for 2+ months I've gotten to know a lot of people and the ones I haven't gotten to know well I've at least seen around the base so the home days were like this huge family reunion with children playing everywhere and grownups talking and everyone just feeling safe and koselig. It was exactly what I needed. But anywho back to washing dishes.. So I was just standing there thinking how I'd rather be here washing dishes than anywhere in the world. I think it's that peace of knowing this is exactly where I need to be right now doing what I'm supposed to be doing that makes it easier when I feel homesick or anxious about where I'll be a year from now. I know that God's got me covered so far and that He'll definitely be able to handle whatever comes next.
• I also finished the book A Severe Mercy which was one of those books that I started and read so much but it was so deep I had to stop and process and then pick it back up again. I think it's on my top 5 favorite books. It was the kind of book I dreaded finishing because it's like losing an old friend and even though you can always read it over it won't ever be the "first" time again. 

That's all for now:) I'll post more later
love you all!! -matisse

Missions in Cities

We had Tim teaching us for half of this week. He talked about how to do missions in local and global context. It was so awesome. He spoke about all the different ideas that can be missions that are out of the box. He also talked about International Justice Mission, Because Justice Matters, 826 Valencia, and the Lava Mae project.

Some really great points He made 

• Contextualize yourself instead of syncretizing with the city or place you're in which basically means understand the culture, the history, and the beauty of the place you live in without molding yourself into the society. In the world not of it. Adapt and be amongst the people. Be like Daniel. "Contextualization:
  Attempts to communicate the gospel in word and deed and to establish the church in ways that make sense to people within their local cultural context, presenting Christianity in such a way that it meets people's deepest needs and penetrates their world view, thus allowing them to follow Christ an remain within their own culture."Darrel L. Whiteman
• Missions is not about what you want to do. It's about what God is doing. Because basically it's super easy to get caught up in the vision and idea of what you're doing but not realize why you're doing it or who you're doing it for.
• Don't come into a place and tell the people what they need but listen and be present and observe and see the people. See a need, fill a need.
• Don't shut yourself in your safe community but go out into the world or your neighborhood and be with people.
• "We don't invent our mission in life, we detect it. Because God's already placed it inside us we just have to peel back the layers and find it. We are blind to the fullness of our potential by either pride or unbelief."
• Train yourself to see the positives, not the negatives.
• Don't try to gain Gods love. Just receive His love.
• Make your own grass green before you try and get to the other side of the pasture. 
• Be present where God has placed you.
• Work where you live, live where you work in missions. Don't try to reach people if you aren't willing to live with them and be around them.
• There are such rich gifts in cultures 
• Don't adapt so far into the culture that you lose your Christianity

Settlers, Fish spreading, and Christmas Stars

Hello everyone, here is an update of my past week.

I played the board game Settlers of Cantan. It's really fun and it might be a tad bit similar to Risk.. You have settlements and try to build more settlements and roads and cities while the other players are doing the same and you get points for your settlements or roads and the player with the most points wins.  I also played a card game called Ligretto which is a ton of fun too!

This is fish spread called .. something that I can't remember but yes. It is seriously amazing.

I also got to go into town and try kebab. It was a huge tortilla with beef, lettuce, and dressing wrapped up. Maybe one of my favorite things yet. Unfortunately I couldn't finish it but I almost did.

These are Swedish car candy.. They're good and I might have eaten half of a bag before I realized it

We put up our Christmas star and it makes our room so koselig.

Good Morning :)

Hello friends and family,
        It's currently 9:48am this lovely saturday morning in Norway. So far today I have

• woken up
• eaten a breakfast that consisted of open faced sandwiches with spreadings of nugatti ( nutella) , eggs with white cheese on top, and a knekkebrod with cream cheese spread
• made my pack lunch of brown cheese and sausage with cheese

And my to do list for the day is

• go into town 
• help Elisabeth (my roommate) shop for a dress for her brothers wedding
• go to the new shopping mall that opened on tuesday *sigh It should be insanely busy today but yay for new shops!!
• look for cute postcards, nose piercings, maybe a sweater, and hopefully earrings

So it's now currently 11:47am on Sunday and I didn't get to post the above but now you can see how my day of shopping went.

There are so many cute yarn shops here. Knitting is taught in school so almost all of the girls and some of the guys are really good at knitting things like socks, sweaters, blankets, and everything else.

Elisabeth, Ingrid, and I

We went to the new mall and all of the Christmas decorations were up in all of the stores and everything was so lovely.

 We got to go to a shop that's from Denmark and it had the most darling knick knacks everywhere and I want to buy everything in the entire store but I don't really need it:) so I just window shopped.

These little Christmas gnome men are my absolute favorite. They're called Nisse and they're the Norwegian version of Santa Claus. They're known as "gift bearers" and I think they're adorable.

Norwegian Christmas book

More Nisse

Chocolate:)

So this is Christmas soda. Depending on who you talk to the red Christmas soda is the "real" Christmas soda.. or the brown is the "real" one. It's also completely wrong to drink it any other time that near Christmas because it's traditionally very special for some families. I tried the brown one and it kinda tastes like carbonated bubble gum. Also, God Jul means Merry Christmas in Norwegian :)

Small marshmallows in cartons!! Love. Basically it's buying the Lucky charms minus the cheerios.

.15 cent bobbles/ornaments

Ingrid, Frida, and I dress shopping:) 

I found this lovely dress but didn't get it. I did find a plum colored sweater, earrings, postcards, and my nose piercing so it was a successful shopping trip plus Elisabeth got the dress so yay!!

Norwegian Kroner with King Harald on it!

I tried out the fast pace app on my phone... It went a lot faster than I expected but here are some shots of the grocery store and a cute bed bath beyond type store. Enjoy!! Merry almost Christmas

xx- Matisse