live life live

All settled then! I am now officially the youth and children’s worker at the local Methodist Church! I know it will be tough and hard work – yet it feels mostly like I have a long summer vacation ahead of me. Summer’s always been filled with camps and projects and friends and God. What used to be extra curricular activity has now officially become a job. Wow. So I am really being paid for doing fun things.

At first, I shall start up the kid’s after school group, and then bite into the big challenge: get organized with the youth! It feels like I’m walking in a secret garden at dawn: all sorts of mysterious flowers and scents begin to show them selves and open up as the first hours of light unfold. All of a sudden there are several people moving to this town I work in, young adults with devoted servant hearts who just “happen” to be thinking of joining my church. And I cannot help but stand in awe, wondering about what God is planning and preparing. I’m delighted to walk in this garden of surprise flowers! Autumn may be creeping in, but this garden that God has planted in my congregation is awakening.

As of yesterday I’ve also begun the Big Art Project: creating a cozy home out of the 36 sqm I have at my disposal. I shall truly be living in the holy of holies, right behind the altar. Presently, I am preoccupied by the, oh, so perpetually difficult job of deciding on colours. The whole place needs a good renovation. I am eager to begin scraping windows and fill holes and dents with putty and give the sink’s edges a good go of silicon. My apartment has two floors and a creaking wooden stair case: down stairs there’s one large room with three little windows, and upstairs one room and a kitchen. And a funny little closet… come to think of it, that’s the place where Lucy will get to paint her path to Narnia! The flat is most unpractial, however cute and bohemian  – I shall indeed feel very much at home. Please remember, good friend, that you are always welcomed to stay; a cuppa shall always be at your disposal.

What then of Oslo and the job I held down there? Well, I am grateful for the time I had there, the divine providence I experienced, the absence of feelings of loneliness, the simplified days, the good humoured people I worked with; and the great steps I took. I am truly blessed I got to spend a couple of months there. Now I am indeed a happy merry lady, alive, nervous, awaiting the future with great expectations – to recieve the great and small and equally precious gifts of every day life. Come and share the joy with me!