Computer Breakdown

Some days ago my PC broke down. I found that the maincard was damaged. Changing it would be too much to spend on an soon to be obsolete PC. My first thought was buying a Macintosh, but my billing program runs on the PC platform, so I wasn't ready for the swap just yet. Buying a new PC workstation wasn't very tempting, so I ended up buying a laptop. A bigger expense than I like, but running a company without a computer could soon prove to be much more expensive. Now I can also bring my office with me to other towns. And hey - It even got a built in web-camera :D

Uplifting Weekend

This weekend there was a leadership conference at "Oslo Kristne Senter" (Oslo Christian Center), a big church in Oslo. Yesterday I dropped by and heard a very encouraging speech by a swedish dude named Magnus Persson.

Today, in the children's meeting in Jesus Church, Fred Håberg had a speech about Abraham, how he never stopped believing in God's promise. He was promised that God would give him children when he was 80 years old. That is an impossible thing, it's far to late to have children. Still Abraham believed God's promise. Even though it took many many years AFTER this before Abraham got any children, he never stopped believing in God's promise. AWESOME.

Balloon Student

Today I had a balloon twisting class with Rosalind, who are currently learning basic balloon twisting like 5-balloon apes and stuff. She is gonna do a 19 hour balloon twisting job (over four days) for me in april, so we will do some training in the weeks to come.

Picture: Me with some balloon-figures Rosalind gave me.

KrfU Recruiting

Today I did my second recruiting for KrfU (Christian Political Party Youth). Turid Lindal became a member. My first recruiting happened monday last week, when Solbjørg Akselvoll became a member. There is no reason to sit on the fence. Read my earlier post named Politics. If this is your heart also, KrfU membership is for YOU!!! Contact me, and we´ll talk about it (norwegians only).

Picture: Turid Lindal - up and coming politician.

Downhill with Toboggans

This evening me, Frode, Joakim, Annette, Sybille and Mona went downhill with toboggans at "Korketrekkeren". It was fun. I got kind of seasick on one of the rides, while there was a part of the hill that had a lot of dips. It made the toboggan jump like crazy.

Marianne

Today I met with my good friend Marianne from Ålesund, whom I haven't seen in a couple of years. Time doesn't change a good friendship.

For reasons she couldn't help for, she was an hour delayed. In the mean time I met and prayed with Anne Maria, posed as a pedestrian in a music video shootout and met Stig, Solbjørg's boyfriend. Fun to walk around and meet people :D

Another Sunday

This morning I went to "Skøyenåsen Kapell" which is a chapel not far from where I'm living. I went there to take photos of some of the confirmation youth there. We use the pictures for prayer cards and a "tree of life", a big poster with a picture of a tree and pictures of them attached, so that people in the church can see who they are praying for. They had a great sermon there about the living water that Jesus gives. They also gave bibles to the 24 confirmation youth attached to the chapel. I met Turid there, so we hung out for a while after the meeting and ate and prayed and had a good time. After that I went to a meeting in Jesus Church where we had lots of fun with the children, while there was a concert in the other meeting room and some youth said that they wanted to become christians. After that we were some people that went out and ate pizza and hung out for a few hours... And after that.... Well... Just another Sunday.... But not really. A great gift from Jesus. I am so lucky that I know Jesus, have good friends and can have this much fun :D

Pictures:
Upper left: Turid
Upper right: Frode, who is Stig's brother. He was one of the guys that went out to eat.
Down: Two pictures from Jesus Kids, the child meeting in Jesus Church.

Maria's Birthday Party

Yesterday evening and some time into today, I was in Maria's birthday party. She celebrated in her boyfriend Svein Erik's place, who live only four minutes walk away from me. They served an amazingly good pizza-thing that I really need to find the recipy for. I gave her a baking-book with pictures and recipy's for a lot of cakes and stuff. No no no. You mustn't accuse me for having any hidden motives :D

Picture: Maria is the girl in the middle.

Never Boring

This night when I laid down to sleep, I couldn't sleep. I ended up praying for something. I didn't know what I was praying for, but I felt that it was urgent and a matter of life or death in some situation. I laid and prayed in tongues and sometimes in norwegian as Jesus lead me. I prayed for a long time, then suddenly I felt that the situation was OK and I fell asleep. I don't know anything more about the situation I prayed for than I have written above. Talk about being on a need to know basis.

Things like this is not so unusual. It's not like it is pleasant or nice or that it always feel good, but at least it's never boring. Being together with Jesus is never boring. It's not like I have never been bored. Duuh. It's not like I'm perfect. Ironically enough - if I have ever been really bored it's been in so called christian meetings. Just like there ain't anything sadder than a sad clown, I guess there ain't anything more boring than hearing the most joyous, incredible message EVER, told in a boring way. Actually they have schools where people learn how to talk about Jesus in a boring way. They learn to talk in a certain way and are told that this is how they are supposed to preach. Problem is that everyone that is "good" at this sounds exactly the same. I get really really really bored the moment one of these guys open their mouth. Not much room for getting surprises and emotions coming up here (message and personality have to flow together - learning a certain "way" of doing things might constrain the personality in a bond/prison that God didn't intend and thus also limit the effect of an otherwise God-given message)...

Jesus conquered The Devil. He defeated the head of evilness. He took all our sin, there isn't any reason to feel guilt anymore. He took all our diseases upon himself. There isn't any reason to be sick anymore. How on earth can anyone talk about this without getting really emotionally involved?

Well. Point is... It's NEVER boring to walk together with Jesus.

Clowning School Startup

This evening we had our first gathering in the clowning school. After a lot of commercial I only had 1 student, and she was already my student. She is gonna take a big job for me in april. I kind of found out that this was a really bad starting day, for a lot of reasons - for example that most schools in this area was having a big arrangement (school ball) at the very time of our gathering.

On the positive side, there came a new member for the music band that is also a part of the youth group, and there dropped by some more youth when we had a gathering after the class, so we had a good time together. Karl Anders was preaching in a very creative way. He told me to give everyone a blown-up figure balloon, and everyone was told to try to model something from the bible passage with their balloon. It was very interesting afterwards to hear everyone present their balloon-figure and what it illustrated.

Drilling

I'm in a process of redecorating my room/office. Today I placed my enourmous colour laser printer in a closet. Big thanks to Solbjørg for borrowing me her drill (to make a hole for the wires). We met for breakfast this morning. Afterwards she hung around and told me how to do everything. Kind of annoying, but very helpful.

Clowning in State Church

Today I did a clowning act that was a part of the sermon in an 11 O'Clock Sunday meeting in a norwegian State Church named Oppsal Church. This church is just on the other side of the road from where I live. The sermon was about the seeds that was planted in the good soil and in the not so good soil. I "interrupted" the sermon coming up the church hall with a mega-big garbage container. I then began taking out plastic bags with garbage emtying them on the floor. My silly idea was that the garbage would rot and provide good soil as he was preaching about. We then had an interaction between me and the preacher (Karl Anders) which was funny and also said some biblical points in a very clear way. I got the idea that people found this clowning act very funny.

BTW: It was Karl Anders that came up with the ideas for this act, not me.

Pictures: To the left is a picture of the clock tower outside Oppsal Church (archive). To the right is a picture taken inside Oppsal Church a while after the clowning act.

Still Christmas

I don't know if you have that tradition in other nations, but in Norway we have "juletrefester" (Christmas Tre Parties). From the beginning of january and at least unto the fifteenth (maybe even longer) there are these kind of parties all over. You go around the christmas tree and sing christmas carols, eat lots of cakes (and maybe food too), have some kind of entertainment going on, and in the end Santa Claus comes with gifts (usually candy) to all the children.

Since 5. January I have entertained as a clown in 8 of these parties and I have my last one tomorrow. Today I think I had my best commercial stage performance EVER, including in the days when I worked in a duo. I used an extended version of the "Finding Myself" clowning routine. Having done it some times and getting it floating, makes it easier to get a good interaction with the audience.

If I hear "that" carol ONE MORE TIME!!!
I'm looking forward to lots of non-christmas months.
It's been a lovely christmas, but some time it has to end....

Gathering at Åse Marie's Place

After the ice-skating we gathered 16 people in Åse Marie's living room. We had some Bible reading, praised Jesus and had nice conversations. I love this kind of gatherings. They are really encouraging and give fill-up that really can be felt afterwards. Nothing can replace meeting brothers and sisters in an informal way in a home. No kind of formal, organised meeting can ever replace that.

Ice Skating

Today we were a bunch of people ice skating together at Frogner Stadion. This was my fourth time trying this EVER. It's kind of fun, so hopefully I'll lose my counting one of these days.

Karl Anders' Birthday Party

Today we arranged a birthday party for our dear friend Karl Anders. We had it at Solbjørg's place, while Karl Anders is moving into a new apartment these days. His new apartment is really cool. It has an opening between the kitchen and the living room, serving as a bar counter - so we bought him three bar stools as a birthday present.

Karl Anders has a passion to see teenagers at Oppsal learn to know Jesus. May this be a year when he see this happening even more!!!

Picture: The party is over. Karl Anders is leaving with the packed bar stools. I'm looking forward to visit and drink cocoa :)

Finding Myself

The other day I made my best commercial clowning routine this far. I have named it "Finding Myself". It's about a guy trying to be all kind of things, before he finds that he really is a clown. Classic story, but it really works well and give me the opportunity to have a very varying program, doing lots of different things and all the time have a very clear line in what's going on. I did it for the second time today. The kids love it and the adults like it too. It's currently a fifteen minute routine, but can easily be expanded.

Balloon Storage System

The last days I have worked a lot with company related matters. Among other things I have made a storage system for my balloons. Well. I only have storage capacity for 36 different kinds of balloons yet, so it will have to be expanded a lot. This really beats looking around in a big box with thousands of balloons after just the one type of balloon I need :)

New Year Celebration

Yesterday evening we had new years celebration and birthday celebration at Solbjørg's place. She has her birthday on the last day of the year.