Balloon Figure in Movie

Today I contributed on the film set during the shooting of a scene in a new norwegian movie named "5 Løgner" (5 Lies). One of the characters in the movie works as a clown, so I helped with a balloon figure for a scene showing him as a clown.

Entertainment Park With Family

Today I went to an entertainment park named "Tusenfryd" ("Thousand" and "joy" in one word) in Oslo together with my two sisters Elin and Else, Elin's husband Svein and five of my nephews. They all live in Ålesund, but are staying a few days in Oslo right now.

We was lucky that there were almost no others when we came, so we didn't have to wait in line for any of the big attractions. Unfortunately my stomich didn't find it too fun to be thrown 65 meters up in the air in 1-2 seconds and being thrown around in an insanely speed. Can someone pray for my stomich? It surely should adjust to the desires of it's carrier.

Unfortunately the LCD display on my camera stopped working for some reason during my stay here. It's kind of hard to take good pictures without the display, even though all other functions on the camera seem to work.

Picture: Svein Arild was kind enough to win this cool Daffy Duck figure for me. He's really good at that competition where you win those kind of figures. Unfortunately each person could only win twice.

Salmon Festival

Today I arrived by train in Kristiansand (south of Norway) at 4 AM and had to wait 5 hours for the bus. My first thought was: "Hey... Let's use the time to look around the city", but I haven't been drinking any coffee lately and I find it hard to sleep in the chair of a train, so I ended up trying to sleep on a severely hard tree bench on the train station. NSB (train company) - please show compassion and make your tree benches just a little softer. Please (pronounce it like Roger Rabbit would).

At 12 AM I started to twist balloons at a festival named "Laksefestivalen" (Salmon Festival) in Flekkefjord. This festival gathers around 10 000 - 15 000 people every year. This is the first time they have used a balloon artist. It was a bright and sunny day, really perfect for a festival. I also got to say hi to a magician named "Eddy Marvin" who was there to entertain. It's always cool to meet entertainers that have been doing it full time for many years.

Luckily I had booked a plane back to Oslo, so I didn't have to go one more night almost without sleep. For those who wonder... No, you wouldn't notice a lack of sleep while I'm entertaining. When I put my entertaining clothes on and meet the children, I'm wide awake. Always!!!

Better Clown

Today was my last day on the cruise boat. I’m already missing the other employees in the entertainment department. They are all so nice and friendly. I sure hope I will work on this boat more some time later.

Each evening I got constructive feedback on my show and was able to improve it for the next evening. The show I had on thursdag evening was the definite best solo show I ever had as a clown.

It was so good to work together with Erling Solland, who has been a magician full time for more than 20 years. He right away considered me his colleague and gave me tips as an entertainer. He genuinely cared for me and how I was doing.

Late this evening I got on the night train to Kristiansand, as I will do a job in Flekkefjord tomorrow morning.

Picture: Erling Solland right after a show. Happy and sweaty.

Robin Juggles

My nephew Robin is very good at gymnastics, so his first choice would have been acrobatics, but there is a limit how big each group in the circus school can be, so today he learned some juggling and balloon twisting and entertained a cheering audience.

Picture: Robin just before he enters the stage.

Family Visiting

Today my sisters Elin and Else, Elin’s husband Svein and five of my nephews came to visit me on the boat. It was fun to meet and hang with my family. It looked like the children had a lot of fun aboard.

Picture: Svein Arild and Michael. It was hot and sunny on the deck.

Circus School

Today we had circus school with the children. It was so enjoyable. They all get the chance to learn something and to see how it is to entertain on a stage in front of a lot of people. We have groups of acrobats, jugglers, clowns, strong-men etc. And they all dress in really colour-full circus clothes. I found the final show really fun and entertaining myself. My group learned some juggling and to twist a balloon sword. It looked really nice on stage.

Cruise with Stena Line

Today was my birthday. I was amazed how many remembered. I hardly did myself. I was just about to invite friends to barbeque and swimming when I got a phone call… They needed an artist at Stena Line immediately. Stena Line is a cruise boat that goes in traffic between Oslo in Norway and Fredrikshamn in Denmark. They needed me for a whole week, but I had time only until Friday.

The rest of my birthday I was packing and preparing. In the evening I had a show in the bar lasting for half an hour. My workplan for the next days are as follows (starting in the morning):
12:30-01:00 Bowl with the kids
03:00-04:00 Be one of the teachers in a circus school for children
04:00-04:30 Assist my students in a circus show that entertains in the bar
07:00-07:30 Say “hi” to the new kids when they enter the boat.
09:00-09:30 Have a clown-show in the bar.

Not too bad. I live in a nice room. There are food and drinks available for free almost around the clock. There are good meals. I don’t have to make food or wash up myself. And my job is just to have a lot of fun with a lot of kids. So I got a five days dream cruise for my birthday present. Nice :)

Picture: I found this plaque on a wall on the harbour while I was waiting to get aboard the ship. In the inner circle of the plaque there is the following text: From Akershusneset started the transportation of 736 Jews with the ships "Donau", "Monte Rosa" and "Gothenland" to german death camps. Of 771 deported Jews, 32 survived.

I Will Change Your Name

Today I had a resting day. I listened again and again to a song named “I Will Change Your Name”. This song is available on a CD named "Celtic Worship 2" from a group named "Eden's Bridge".

The lyrics goes like this:

I Will Gently Change Your Name
(I will change, will change your name
I will change, will change your name)

I will change your name
You shall no longer be called
Wounded, outcast, lonely or afraid
I will change your name
Your new name shall be
Confidence, joyfulness overcoming one
Faithfulness, friend of God
One who seeks my face.

You can buy this song from ITunes Music Store on the internet for only 1 Euro. ITunes Music Store is available through ITunes, which is also a very good music player for your computer. You can download ITunes here.

Flying Ants

Today I was invited to dinner with Rut Dammann and her parents. It was nice to meet her parents, as I could straight away see in their faces that this is people that walk with Jesus. It was also cool to hear about their divine family planning. They have 7 kids and they all came out as boy after girl, girl after boy. They had received from God how many kids to have and that this would happen. So they always knew what would come next. Kind of cool if you ask me.

On the subway station, while leaving, I walked right into a big swarm of flies. That is... After a while I found it to be flying ants. And it was really many of them. They crashed into me all the time, so I looked forward to the subway saving me. I have never seen such a thing before.

This evening I visited Solbjørg. Stig and Solbjørg's friend Ingunn was also there. I haven't met Ingunn before, so it was nice to get a new friend.

Picture: A few of the ants followed into the subway. Unluckily the macro-function on my camera is not too good.

Swimming with Music

Today I went swimming with Tor Arne and Geir. I think we probably found one of the biggest detours to a close-by lake, so we also had a long nice walk in the forest. I brought my new very small music player named Logitech mm-50. It has battery capacity for 7 hours and is so light and small that I almost don't feel that I carry it. It's also so powerful that I had to think about the other close-bye bathing guests while fiddling with the volume knobs. I bought it to be able to have some background music for my clowning acts, but it sure have other good uses.

Picture: Tor Arne coming out from the water.

Norwegian Film

This morning when I tried to catch some sleep after spending the night in a train seat listening to music, I was woke up by a norwegian film producer named Anders Tangen. He wanted me to meet with one of his actors named Kim Sørensen almost right away. I was too sleepy to resist, so I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and at 12 AM today I had lunch with the whole film-crew.

Afterwards I talked more with Kim Sørensen. He is actor in a movie named "5 Løgner" (5 Lies). His character is clown by profession, so they wanted to show him in action a couple of times. I talked with him about the life of a clown and helped him to incorporate some elements of clowning into the movie. I will also be aiding at the set during the shooting of these scenes.

Chocolate Fast

I have found a new meaning in the term chocolate fast, it means to survive only on chocolate. This evening I tried to go out on a food hunt about the same time as yesterday evening, only to find that everything had closed. Tonight I'm taking the night train back to Oslo, and I assure you that norwegian food prices on a train are far beyond reasonable. Finding that a hot dog and a coke costed 6,50 Euro / 8,60 american dollars / 52 NOK made me look in my sack for one of my chocolates, but it is hard to survive only on chocolate, so during the night I ended up buying one severely overpriced piece of pizza. Beware... Remember to pack yourself a nice box of food before taking a norwegian night train, that is if you are at a place where it is possible to get hold of food.

Sarons Dal

Yesterday, today and tomorrow I will have balloon workshops and entertainment with balloons for the children at a christian summer festival in a place named "Sarons Dal" (Valley of Saron).

Today I bathed in the river here until 8 PM, only to find that they served the last meal at this place at 6:30 PM. I was starving and had to eat from my stockpile of Finnish chocolate, which I was smart enough to import. Luckily they sell some food right before and after the evening meetings here, and I was lucky enough to go out on a food hunt right after the meeting had finnished. During the meetings it is impossible to get hold of food. I think they have the attitude that everyone is supposed to attend the meetings or something. I used this time in my bed listening to praise music with the Bible on my lap. So lovely to relax with Jesus.

Picture: A few of the kids at the festival. I have no statistics, but to me it seemed to be more children at this place than grown-ups. Nice :D

Leaving Finland

Today I got up early in the morning. I took the 06:35 plane from Tampere to Stockholm. Then I took a plane from Stockholm to Oslo and in the end from Oslo to Kristiansand, which is a city at the south coast of Norway. By 9 in the morning I had my breakfast number 3, thanks to the small meals on the planes and Erkki who was kind enough to make me breakfast at 5 in the morning. I would probably have skipped it otherwise. Unlucky me… I never got my breakfast number 4… They didn’t serve anything on the plane from Oslo to Kristiansand.

Picture: I took this picture on the plane. It reminds me of a heart. For some reason I found lots and lots of figures down there to remind me of hearts. Is someone trying to tell me something?

Sad/Fun Goodbye

Today I had to say goodbye to Hanna. Although it was sad to say goodbye, I had lots of fun doing it, running after her train as long as possible as one of the fun things I did.

After saying goodbye to Hanna I met with Niina, whom I hanged with the rest of the day. It was so incredible nice to have some time with her, like more than 5 minutes or an hour.

Picture: Hanna and her sister Senna when we bathed in the morning.

Erkkis Birthday

Today Erkki, Hanna’s father, had his 80 year birthday celebration. We started off the celebration with Hanna playing drums on the roof of the house. She played solo for a few seconds and then to a song on a very good Christian CD. Afterwards we played another song on the CD when all the guests was invited into the house. Hanna then played drum-solo again indoors, before I put on another song from the CD indoors. She then started to dance a worship dance to Jesus. It was very beautiful, and I don’t think I saw any dry eyes. Everyone seemed to have something they had to remove from the corner of their eyes.

Later I said some stuff that Jesus had told me to share and illustrated it with balloons. I also made a birthday hat for Erkki. It was so nice to see how open people were to hear about Jesus.

Meeting Elisa

Today Hanna and me went and picked up Elisa. It was nice to have some time together the three of us just hanging out and also praying with real unity for tomorrows big event: Erkkis birthday.

Picture: Elisa and Hanna on the neighbours trampoline.

Divine Picnic

Today Jesus, Hanna and me had picnic together. We went out in the rowing boat and landed at a nice place at the other side of the lake. Time just seemed to fly while we rested in a big green paradise called forest on the top of a big rock. When we went swimming afterwards, it felt like I was swimming in the big ocean of Jesus' love and I found out that it is possible to dance praise to Jesus in the water. Amazing. Swimming will never be the same again. When we came back we found that it was already late in the evening. Wow, how time can fly.

Day with Jussi

Today I had a good nights sleep for once, at least from 4 am to 9 am, when I had to get up and say goodbye to Brett and Markus. They are leaving for the New Wine conference, while I will spend this day with Jussi and leave for Tampere and meet Hanna in the evening.

Picture: I'm wearing a T-Shirt Jussi gave me. The backside says "Fully Holy Ghost".

Good Morning

This morning I woke up too early by an unpleasant dream. One of the things that happened was that I was chained down and put in a prison. When I woke up I felt a heavy presence of demons in the room. It felt like they wanted to make me fall somehow and to enchain me. I moved my hands regularily just to make sure that I could, while I was praying in tongues. For some reason I didn't get mad this time. I was just thinking: Ok, let's get rid of these buggers. I could see the demons quite clearly. There were many of them, but I couldn't see their leader. I just prayed in tongues for a while and then I said: You have no legal ground, and Jesus is the highest King. I didn't even have time to tell them to leave. At that word they all fled and I went back to sleep.

Today we went to some kind of summer cabin. We tried water-skiing, meaning I took three attempts to get started before I decided to try more some other time. Otherwise I think I was more asleep than awake during our stay in this cabin.

In the afternoon we went to a pizza place where I also met Niina for the first time since I saw her in Prague some time last year. We had a nice chat. Meeting her was the definitive high-point of the day. Maybe that doesn't say so much on this day, but I think it would have been also on another day.

In the evening I said goodbye to Maarit and some of my friends in Jyväskylä. Tomorrow the team will go to The New Wine Conference, while I will go to Tampere. Later in the evening there were someone in need of prayer, so we used quite some time for that. Afterwards I suddenly felt quite awake and me and Taru prayed into the long hours of the night.

Picture: Niina.

Furious Viking

Today I woke up early by a bad dream. I stood up and prayed. After praying for a good while I went to bed again. This time I had an even worse bad dream. At the end of it I had a feeling of falling down into something unpleasant. In this state of falling I opened my eyes and tried to get up. I could barely move and had to fight to get out of bed.

I wasn't mad... I was furious... How dare they? What kind of demon dares to interrupt my sleep? I was one loud, shouting, praying dude for quite a while after that. Some of the others also felt uneasy and got kind of loud in prayer.

Later today we played footbag in the center of the city. We did it in a kind of foolish way and shouted "Halleluja" and "Praise God" and stuff like that once in a while. We acted silly because we felt that the spirit of humanism (worship of intellect) is quite strong in this city. There were also a couple of young boys that thought it was fun to play with us.

In the evening when we were gonna pray together I was looking forward to some decent warfare, but Jesus wanted it different. We had a time of humiliating ourselves before God and of showing Jesus' love to eachother.

Resting Day Again

Today I had a restful day enjoying life, swimming and being in Jesus' presence. In the afternoon we prayed together and went to Jyväskylä.

In the evening we had a short time with powerful prayers for Jyväskylä.

Hanna's Birthday

Today we celebrated Hanna's birthday. We had a lot of fun. It was so cool that there were two kids in the birthday we could play with. It was also cool that Petra dropped by and that I was able to meet some new friends. In the evening we prayed/played in the pool in the basement (the pool was emty).

Picture: Hanna and Anni

Tampere

Today we went to Tampere. I felt really sick when I entered the train, but after reading in Isaia 53 for a while I felt good and ready to make balloons and preach for the children on the train. Praise to Jesus!

We are staying in the house of Hanna's father. We had a relaxing day today bathing and enjoying the beautiful landscape right outside the house.

Picture: Heli has a child on her lap and Markus makes balloon figures for the kids. I showed him some balloon models earlier on and found it very relaxing to watch him do a part of the job.

Beach Preach

Today we went to the beach. After praying a while, I started to make balloons for the children, while Elisa preached to them. She used a gospel cube while preaching, and the children seemed very interested. I didn't understand a word (Finnish); I just saw that some children seemed to swallow every word she said with great interest, and she often preached for 10-15 minutes to one small group.

When we came from the beach we dropped by a family that had a hard time. We encouraged and prayed for the mother and made balloons for her child.

Some time late in the night my good friend Mika dropped by. He came from another city just to meet me and Brett, and we stayed up to meet him. It was very good to meet him, and we had a good talk and prayer together, although I was so tired I felt I was gonna faint.

Kokkola

Today we went to Kokkola. On the train going there, I made ballon-figures and preached for the children. For some reason the Finnish trains seems to be crawling with children. We started out our stay in Kokkola with a sightseeing. During the sightseeing we met a local evangelist. He was standing in a central place of the city, talking with people and handing out tracts. He had a job working with alcoholics, and Jesus had called him to also do street evangelising reaching all kinds of people. We had a nice talk and then we prayed for him. Afterwards the team met at a girl named Mia's place and prayed there.

Picture: I kind of match nature in this outfit. I bought it insanely cheap in a supermarket in Kemi.

Center of Kemi

Today we went to the center of Kemi and had some sightseeing there. I was looking for some children to talk with and make balloons for, but it seemed to be very few people in the streets. In the evening we had a prayer meeting with some local people. We spent the night at Mikko's place. He is originally Finnish, but spends most of the year in Australia. He is only in Kemi during the Finnish summer.

Resting Day

Today the young evangelists had their resting day, after a full and intense week of prayer and evangelising. During this resting day I showed them some tricks with balloon twisting and I had fun making giant soap-bubbles. I also brought my face painting equipment. One of the young girls on their team borrowed it and had great fun with it.

Young Evangelists

This morning our train arrived in Kemi. We went to some church building where a gang of teenagers from different places in Finland had their base during a week of prayer and evangelising. They had already been going on for some days when we came.

In the morning they were singing in some sort of formal non-christian gathering. Later they arranged some sort of outdoor evangelistic gathering with singing and drama. There were some children there, so I got to preach to them using balloon-figures as illustrations.

Deep Sea Canoe Movement

Today we went to Helsinki in Finland by plane. On the plane I read a book named “Deep Sea Canoe Movement” by Michael Malieau. It really blew my mind and heart. I was grasped by the prophecies and stories in the book. I borrowed the book, but I will most certainly obtain one for further studies. In the evening we got on the night train to Kemi in North-Finland.