The Amazing Marjoe Gortner

Today I surfed by a video of an evangelist that started preaching at the age of 4. He experienced lots of people being saved, healed, baptized in the spirit and shaking and falling under the "power". He preached for big audiences. In his late twenties he exposed that he was a fraud. He didn't believe in God and never had.



This video shows more of his tragic childhood:



More to read about Marjoe Gortner:
Wikipedia (gives a good overview on his life)
Interview with Marjoe (by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman)
Resurrecting ‘Marjoe’ (by Sarah Kernochan)
Evangelism as Entertainment (by Robert M. Price)
Marjoe at IMDB (he became an actor after he stopped preaching)
Amazon.com (buy the documentary of his life on DVD)

Lessons From Contact Improvisation

This evening I went to a contact improvisation jam. I danced with another person in a way, where I totally had to trust this person for balance all the time. In other words, I in myself were out of balance, but me and this person together were in balance. If this person would suddenly disappear, I would certainly fall. I think of this as a lesson in how to live my life, trusting God is always there.

In this kind of dancing, you have to be aware of the other person all the time, moving with the other person. I see this as a lesson in listening to God and moving with Him. When you dance like this, you form a unity. Both persons would fall and look stupid if the other person would disappear, but together you form a beautiful moving unity, a dance. I see this as a lesson in what it means to be one with Christ, and also what it means to be one with other Christ followers. In order to be one, we have to lean on and depend on eachother. If we "manage" by ourselves, we can never be one. When Jesus talked about us being one, I don't think He meant that just to be some kind of spiritual unseen reality that we can talk nicely about. I think He meant us to be dependent of eachother.

Awake

Late yesterday evening I had Karl Anders, Anne Maria and Åse Marie over to my place for some pourage. Tor Arne also joined us after a while. Actually I suspect them for coming more for the company than for the pourage. We praised, prayed and talked and the night came... Then it was late night. Before we knew better it was early morning. But I have to say I had a great night, although I didn't sleep.

Campus Crusaders for Christ

This evening me and Karl Anders visited Hartvig Kloster. He is the leader for Open Air Campaigners in Norway. It was very interesting to hear about their work. He obviously is a man with a passion to reach people for Jesus.

Marc and Karolien

Marc and Karolien dropped by Oppsal (where I live) yesterday. Karl Anders, Anne Maria, Kjell Arne, Elsie and me had a good time together with them - until they left today. It was great to see Marc again, since I haven't seen him in a while. And it was also great to see his wife, Karolien, whom I had never met, but felt like I knew right away.

You can also read about it on:

Marc's blog: Reconnecting in Oslo

Picture shows (from left) Anne Maria, Elsie, Karolien, Kjell Arne, me and Karl Anders

Tomatoe Soup

Today I thought I would try to make a tomatoe soup from the ground up, with REAL tomatoes. I was kind of surprised when I saw the colour, because it wasn't all red, like it would be with a package filled with artificial colour - like I'm used to. Thing is that even the picture that came with the recipy was fake, it showed the soup like really red. When I saw the colour, I caught myself thinking: Can this taste good? We are so used to artificial colour, that we have a hard time thinking a tomatoe soup can taste good if it hasn't got a strong red colour. And good it was. It's the best tomatoe soup I've ever tasted, beyond all my expectations. There is no going back after this. After tasting THE REAL THING, I don't think I will ever be able to go back to to the fake packages with a lot of chemicals, which they allow themselves to call basis for tomatoe soup.

Recipy (1 person):
- 3 tomatoes
- 1/2 onion
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 1/4 liter vegetable broth (I used chicken broth, since that's what I had)
- Salt and pepper
- 1 tablespoon fresh chopped basilikum
- 2 eggs

How to do it:
1) Boil some water, make sure the level of water in the pot is at least the height of a tomatoe. Dip the tomatoes for a few seconds in the boiling water, this makes it easier to remove the thin skin from the tomatoes. It should now be fairly easy to just peel the skin of with your fingers, make an opening with a knife if necessary to get a grip on the skin.

2) Put the eggs in the water and boil them for 8-10 minutes, while you continue to work on the soup.

3) Chop the half onion in small pieces and fry it lightly in the oil. When I say lightly, I mean lightly. It should be a bit soft afterwards, but it shouldn't be brown and it should still have kind of strong taste to it. Put simply: Don't fry it so long that all the taste disappears.

4) Cut the skinned tomatoes in boats and put them in a pot together with the onions and the vegetable broth. Give it a boil (it doesn't need any boiling time) and give it a go in the blender or use an immersion blender till there are no big pieces left. It's OK that there are small onion bites that you can chew a little on, it really adds to the soup.

5) Add pepper and salt till you are satisfied with the taste.

6) There should be enough soup for 2 medium sized plates. Chop 1 boiled egg in pieces for each plate and add half of the chopped basilikum. Decorate with some basilikum leaves on top.

Public Transport Valentine

Today I was gonna deliver a romantic balloon bouquet for a customer. Normally I either borrow a car, use a transport company, or even taxi to do this. It's always best to deliver the bouquet personally though - I don't expect any transport company to do that in a professional way. Delivering a balloon bouquet is a whole lot more than handing it over, delivering a balloon bouquet is a happening. If you do it in the right way, you also get some really good advertising for your company.

Today I got the idea to do something new, why not use public transportation delivering the bouquet? When I thought of it, there really wasn't any good reason why not. And it was really a happening. If you have ever wondered what it feels like to get looooong stares from all surrounding or passing girls.... If you ever wondered what it feels like to have girls flocking and leaning out of windows calling for you.... Try walking around with a romantic balloon bouquet in a big city. Here in Oslo celebritys can walk around relatively unnoticed compared to this. The height point was of course to deliver it to the surprised man, getting one more confirmation of his wifes love.

Pasta Heaven

Today I thought I would try making dinner using organic spelt spaghetti. I had bought one of those boxes with tomato purée and thought I would make sauce for the meat with it, but then I got the idea that I could make my own tomato purée, since I had bought too many tomatoes. Long story short: The result was fantastic. Usually I put a lot of ketchup on the spaghetti, but this time it tasted incredible without. And the sauce basically just consisted of tomatoes and spices.

Tomato purée: Chop tomatoes in pieces and boil for 45 minutes on low temperature with a lid on. You don't need to add water, the tomatoes contain a lot of water. At least with the kind of pot I have, you don't need to stir. You can use the time for other stuff. Put it in a blender (I paid like 40 Euros for mine, they're worth it) for a few seconds and let it go through a strainer. Now you are supposed to cook it till it is thick enough and add salt, pepper and sugar for taste. Do yourself a favour: Skip the sugar - you eat enough of that thing already. Actually I skipped the second cooking too (so I didn't actually make purée, more like tomato sauce) and just added salt and pepper and fried it together with the meat. You can freeze what you don't eat right away.

Organic Prayer Breakfast

Yesterday me and Karl Anders went shopping at "Smart Club" in Oslo, a gigantic store that sells groceries and cars, and a lot of other stuff too. We went there on a hunt for organic food. Being a "Rema 1000" shopper I have hardly seen organic food, besides organic milk. They had an own section in the store, with hundreds of different organic products.

Well home I found that organic oranges are better than any other orange I've tasted. The same went for the apple.... And the banana (was fairtrade too). A little more expensive, but worth a lot more.

This morning me and Karl Anders had an organic prayer breakfast, proud of our new tasty groceries. Karl Anders had also bought an organic bread called "Profeten Esekiel Brød" (English: "Prophet Ezekiel Bread"). It's a bread made by a recipy God gave to a prophet named Ezekiel in the Bible. He was supposed to live quite long only on that kind of bread, so it's supposed to contain most of what the body needs. But the real surprise was the taste - I didn't know bread could taste that good. If that kind of bread is available to you: RUN AND BUY IT!!! (It's available at "Smart Club" in Oslo).

Visit From Finland

This week I have a Finnish dancer/actor visiting. It's always inspiring to hang around creative people, especially the Finnish ones. Talking with him I have realised more how close link there is with dancing and acting. Since I do a lot of acting myself, maybe I should pick even more inspiration from dancing. He recommends basically everyone to try Contact Improvisation (dance form), so I'll just write it here as a note to myself: I should try that sometime.

This is a video I found on YouTube. It shows a contact improvisation piece. Personally I think this is pretty beautiful (be aware of bad cutting though - nothing really happens the first 30 seconds or so):

Nutrition and Organic Food

I recently read a book about nutrition. Quite shocking really to see how dangerous the modern junkfood diet really are. I have seen the "Supersize Me" movie, but still... It was also encouraging to read about all the benefits of a healthier diet, and also some advice how to do it. I will just have to take one step at a time, but I already started up drinking the juice freshly squeezed, as it is healthier that way. I have also found that it is much better. I am now looking for places I can buy more types of organic vegetables. It's really shocking to read how much poison there are in non-organic veggies. Why is it that people are willing to risk their own lifes and the state of our planet just to get some percent cheaper food? If people knew more about this, there would be an enormous demand for organic food.

Whooping Cough

The last month I have had whooping cough (Norwegian: "kikhoste"). It's also called the 100 day cough, because it's littery very common that this thing lasts that long. Luckily I feel better now, although far from well. The worst thing about it is that sometimes after a cough, it's impossible to breath for a while. I just have to wait till it opens up again. Sometimes I sound extremely astmatic or like a dying person, when I crampily grasp for air, because I used my air coughing and my air supply has gone tight. Kind of cool sound :) Coughing till I puke is a somewhat less funny experience - it's so messy :( Luckily I found a trick to avoid it: Just hold that last cough before it happens. Hold it long enough for the body to stabilize, before you allow the coughs to come again. You'll have to be sensitive about the timing and very determined about holding that cough no matter what.

I'm lucky. I read stories on the net about people having this cough that had broken ribs coughing and that had major problems sleeping at night.

Having Fun With Young People

Today I entertained some young people at a club named "Trosterud Fritidsklubb". There are some really nice pictures on their webpage. Yesterday there was an article about my coming show in a local inlay in the national newspaper named "Aftenposten". This inlay was distributed all over Groruddalen (150 000 people).

We had a lot of fun together at the club. The demand for more balloons are never decreasing.

Picture: I took a photo of the newspaper article.