Here I am a married woman.  Life took some crazy turns over the past six months.  My wildest dreams keep coming true.  I feel pretty lucky

Ministry-wise, Ryan and I were able to work with our church through the transition of finding new pastors and establishing new identity after our founding pastors decided it was time for them to move on.  These few months ended up being probably our best time at our church this far, and it was super nice to see how God moved and raised up new leaders, a new sense of empowerment among our church friends, and changed the direction of our church’s ministry during the time when we had no official leadership.  This affirmed our faith in a team-based, strengths-based way of doing ministry, and much more importantly, was living proof to us that the church and the mission must always be God’s and not overtaken by people, and that he will raise up, send out and remove leaders in his timing.  We decided to give Oasis our all for the duration of the transitional period and that it would likely be time for us to move on once our church had figured out its course forward.  I have loved being with my church community over the past few months, and it’s super sad to be leaving Oasis and Pasadena now, but we’ve got better people taking over whatever we’ve been involved in, and God is for sure calling us to new places.

In September, we decided that the time had come for us to get hitched.  Ryan is pretty much the greatest guy ever, and it was pretty dang exciting to get engaged to him.  We wasted no time, and planned history’s best wedding in two months.  I had assumed that there was no way I’d ever get this guy to go with me to Norway.  In fact, the last time I went home I filled up my suitcase with all kinds of little comfort items, table cloths, candle holders and other memorabilia that my friends and family had given me over the years, so that I wouldn’t miss home so much in case I ended up settling here.  Needless to say I was just a little surprised when Ryan started getting really excited over the thought of moving to Norway for a while.  So, as a short recap to those of you to whom we haven’t talked recently…

We’ve been married for a total of nine days… We are currently in a car with a UHaul, on our way to moving back to Ryan’s hometown Albuquerque in New Mexico.  We plan on staying there through February.  After that we are moving to Norway, most likely to Hedalen in Valdres, and we’ll be there for a year or so.  Then, we’re heading south to Europe where we’ll either lead a team to start missional initiatives (churches) or join an already existing team.  That is where we believe that God is calling us at this point.

Pretty exciting times.  Our next year will be devoted to having fun, building a strong foundation for our marriage, seeking God’s guidance for our life, re-learning Europe, travelling around a bit and getting to know other followers of Christ who are choosing to live missional lives as well.  We’ll be starting a new blog for our new life.  I’ll post the link to it here in a few days or weeksJ

Please keep in touch!!!!!!

As you will see, my life here is pretty diverse, just the way I like it.  Over the past month I have:

- Interviewed for one position which I didn’t get.
- Spent about a week undergoing an existensial crisis over being “unemployable,” over not having enough money, and over the at times extreme discomfort of following God’s calling into uncertainty versus settling for the comfort which I know deep down would never be the better choice.
- Vented to my closest church family, who has been going through exactly the same, and experienced a unity and liminality that has been a strong affirmation to where God is calling us; to live incarnationally as missionaries/representatives of Christ in Pasadena or wherever else we may find ourselves; making ourselves available to those who really, desperately need God to break through in their lives, testifying to the working of the power of God in our own, more or less desperate lives…

- Gone through training and fingerprinting to volunteer at the Juvenile Detention Center, and will soon be ready to start.  Our hope is to be able to make a little bit of a difference, and to represent Christ’s love to children and youth who are in prison.

- Started the process to volunteer in the local school district.  California, being on the verge of bankruptcy, has had to fire hundreds of teachers, as a result of which children are not getting the education or attention they need.  Pasadena now needs lots of volunteers to help out, and I am really happy to do so.

- Started working towards doing various internship.  I really want to learn more about work with immigrants, because this is something I definitely see myself doing in the future.  I have had this calling for about 10 years, when missionaries in Ecuador challenged me to go to the US to work with immigrants, and I think that the time has come for me to move towards this.  Hopefully, over the summer I’ll be able to do a part time internship with an organization that works with brand new immigrants to America.

- Celebrated Norway’s national day with a few hundred Norwegians and wannabe’s at Nansenfield, with Solo and ice cream and a marching band that crushed Norge i Roedt, Hvitt og Blaatt to pieces :s

- Become adopted by a group of nannies and children at this one park where I hang out a lot.  Now we have lunch together a couple of times a week, and I LOVE our new friendships!!!  These women mean a lot to me already, and I really hope that we can be friends off-playground too. 

- Started meeting weekly with my friend Melinda for mentoring, encouragement and accountability in following the voice of God in our daily lives. 

- Acted in a movie for the first time in my life.  It was a short film about this girl who loses her job, her apartment, is raped, tries to kill herself and then God shows up and finally turns things around for her.  I had a small role, but it was a lot of fun being a part of this project.  I have been thinking about taking acting classes, not because I have any kind of talent, just because acting is so much of what LA is about.  There are small, but active playhouses all over the place here, and I think it would be fun to be part of one of them.  I would also like to get back into singing, once an opportunity opens up.

- Thought a lot about starting up infant/toddler/parent music groups here.  There are some in the area, but they are too expensive for normal people to be part of.  I miss Moholt Open Kindergarten, and would like to create something of that sort over here.

- Handed out ice tea with Oasis at Pasadena’s DooDah Parade.  That was an awesome experience.  I will post pictures once I can bug someone into sending me some.

- Been working on writing down the basics on our church’s DNA–the values that are at the core of who we are.  And sent a lot of emails, made newsletters, and done the things I normally do at Oasis.

- Interviewed for a job where they actually really liked me (now that was something new;) ), and I have a second interview coming up this week!

Tonight I am assisting my photographer friend Will Keeler at a photo shoot in Orange County.  Yep, I have to fight to ever have a boring moment in my life:)  I’m quite satisfied with the state of things, really.

Happy for a quiet morning at Starbucks…

-hanne

1. I made my student loan payment.  I had budgeted on making only half the payment this quarter, because I haven’t been able to get as much work as I needed over here, and because I hadn’t been very successful with fundraising for my position at Oasis.  Then last week when I went online to schedule my payment I noticed that generous friends back home had indeed given money towards my support, and much more than I had counted on.  So today I made my quarterly payment ($1300) only lacking $100 on the full amount, and I’ll be paying those next week.

2. I came down to Starbucks to do some work–the best office space I could ever imagine.  The barista forgot about my coffee–and not even long enough for me to really notice–then came up to me an apologized and handed me one of their free-coffee cards.  Which means that instead of my normal 2dollar coffee I can go wild and order the 5dollar kind next time I come:)

In all things, great and small, God is faithful!

I have been wanting to update the blog, but I’ve been putting it off because so much has happened that I have no idea where to begin or what to focus on.

I’ll make it my goal that over the next few days I’ll blog about some of all this stuff.  I want to tell you how God has been looking out for me, I want to talk about where he is leading me (and also keeping me in the dark), about some super exciting new opportunities for ministry that I have come across, and about some new friendships that I have been given that have blessed me SO SO SO MUCH!

So check back tomorrow–I can’t wait to fill you in!!!

Today I had an interview/test, for the position of Subtitle Editor at a company in LA.  I really, really want that job.  It’s hard to get on with the day after driving across the city, meeting with people at an awesomelooking company and having huge hopes for something that maybe isn’t very realistic.  Now I’d rather go off and hide somewhere and not have to think any thoughts at all until I know:) If I got this job, it would provide a stable income, health insurance, a brand new community of people that I would be plugged into, and a whole lot of new directions that my life could take.  My plan has been to work part time for Oasis Church and part time for a local company, and I really have few preferences as to what kind of company this would be.  I want to be somewhere where I can learn new skills, connect with new people, be challenged to grow both professionally and personally; where I can follow God into new things. 

I hope, I hope, I hope!!!

And what else is new?  This past weekend I got to volunteer at the Nordic festival in Thousand Oaks–with Ruth Skree and a few other Norwegian students I promoted the designer clothes of Moods of Norway.  It was alotta fun.  I have never been this close to riding in a limo in my life;) Although I was majorly disappointed at the lack of Solo and ice cream the whole thing came close to soettendemai and Christmas all at once:)

Last night I met with a group of people what I hang out with weekly.  Our goal is to be discipled and to keep each other accountable to follow the Holy Spirit and serve our communities throughout the week.  We do this through our Sunday evening times of worship and discussion, and through smaller groups of two and three people.  I have loved these Sunday evening gatherings, although our discussions are pretty challenging to my patience, coming from a culture (or at least a family) where things are best said with as few words as possible.  I look forward to serving God with this smaller group of people as my local-est family.

As for the larger Oasis body, we are preparing to take part in Pasadena’s second great parade of the year, the Doo-Dah parade on May 1st.  And this Saturday I am super happy to get started on the training to become a mentor for youth on probation.  We’ll be a group from Oasis attending the first info meeting which will take place at one of the LA county jails.  I belive this is something which our region and local community needs, so I hope that MANY of us will be able to join and truly invest some of our time and our life into people who need to get out and rebuild theirs.

Ok, must continue on my to-do list.  Have a good afternoon.

If you know anyone who might be or should be interested, feel free to forward this info to them;)

I was going to start this off by just posting one of our Oasis YouTube videos, but I think it would be more appropriate to take you to the right end first, and talk a little bit about Pasadena, the city where I am at.

Pasadena is,in my humble opinion, one of the jewels of California.  It took a while for me to understand what the big deal was, to crack the Pasadena code, but now that the city and I have gotten under each other’s skin a bit more, I can say that I love it.  For sure.  Pasadena has this incredible mix of people–this is a place where cultures from across the world meet, and cultural, ethnic and economic diversity is vast.  To one degree one can see this diversity integrated well and see all these different people co-existing and even appreciating each other.  At the same time there are areas of the city where the majority fear to pass through, where innocent people fall victim to gang violence and where segregation still is obvious.  Looking at numbers, 95% of people here belong to only one race, which I believe is a bit of an indication that integration has not come as far in our city as many of us might think.  What do you think?

With an unemployment rate of 12% in California, you can daily see long lines of people waiting for free food at the city’s many free food events, and homelessness is common, even for families with little children.  Our closest neighbor Los Angeles is the homeless capital of America with thousands of youth living by themselves on the street.

While some are homeless, huge parts of our city consist of mansions, overflowing with oil- or Hollywood money.  Lots of contrasts here.

Some more numbers for you (from the U.S. Census Bureau):

Population: About 150,000 people live here in Pasadena, but we are surrounded by cities that together make up the about 11 million people that live in Los Angeles county and that we “like” to be stuck in traffic with every single day.

Median age: 36,9 years old

Language: Only 55,1% of the population speaks English at home.  28,1 % speak Spanish at home.  32% are foreign born.

Education: 45% have a bachelor’s degree or higher.  85% have graduated from high school.

Income: 20% of individuals live below poverty level.  This goes for 13% of families.

Religion: 58% are affiliated with a religious congregation, most of these are Christian.

That’s all I’ve got for you today.  Must run now, to my second office, at Oasis Church.

Have a great day, all!

-hanne

I find that I have agreed with most blogs I have read this quarter, so, for me, the hardest part of the quarter has been to find blogs to interact with in a constructive way because a lot of the time I didn’t see any new big points to interact with.  Maybe we could have been assigned to make sure to throw out there some points for others to interact or disagree with?  Some of the classmate blogs were so genious and deep that I, at my stage in wisdom and knowledge and life, didn’t understand a bit of them.  Which is good, cause that gives me something to reach for.  And some times I felt like a weakness was that we didn’t take rules of grammar and good flow in the text seriously and that made it harder to draw meaning out of the blogs.  This of course goes for my blogs as well.  But in general it has been useful to have to interact like this, and helpful for me to read other understandings of articles that I may not have understood so well myself.