while hiking one day!

playing in the snow!

For Thanksgiving, the Americans hosted a big dinner- and my roommates dressed up as turkeys to help celebrate. It was hilarious!

hello!

I'm really sorry it's taken me so long to update my blog :(

It's been super busy here with the first half of the school year coming to an end.

To fill you in on some fun things I will make a list sooo enjoy:

1.) This past friday and saturday the dance and film tracks got together to film this year's dance video! The theme was freedom, and myself and another dancer were in charge of putting together the choreography for the video. On friday we filmed the dance in a beautiful field with the water and mountains in the background, despite the fact that our feet went numb for it being so cold, it was so fun to be part of a film! Saturday each of the dancers were painted like idols (I was violence, grr) and we went into town and were filmed standing, like statues, in a gazebo in the middle of town. I am very excited to see the end product!

2.) Last night we celebrated Sinterklass (kind of like Santa, but Dutch), and the night before we put out our shoes for Nicholas to come and fill them with gifts!

3.) Two weeks ago we had Ann Rosita from Norway come to teach us hip hop. She was such an inspirational teacher! Every day I left absolutely exhausted from her class. We learned two dances that we can use when we do evangelism on the street and we also did a lot of strength exercises and stretching. It was a very encouraging week! We had a chance to show our dances to the rest of the students and staff at the end of the week and many people were touched! It has been so cool to see how God can use any kind of art that is done in His name to reach people :)

4.) As far as weather goes- it snowed here for two days last week! We all had so much fun playing in it! And since the time change the days have been getting shorter- so now the sun doesn't rise until about 10am and it sets around 3:30...It's really sad, but the Norwegians just call it "cozy".

I will be back in the States for Christmas break next Monday! woo hoo! I am so excited to see my family and friends! Also, I will be dancing in church on the 27th- I am really looking forward to that!

the last two weeks

I can't believe its already the end of October. Time seems to just fly by here...it's so weird.

The weather has been great this week- no rain...its a miracle! The view from our porch is even prettier now that there's a little snow on the mountains. 

Just to fill you in on last week... our teaching was on spiritual warfare. Needless to say it was a pretty heavy subject for just the second week of teaching, but Eleanor (our teacher for the week) was really good. She made a point to focus more on God and how BIG He is instead of focusing on the enemy. It was awesome to be reminded of the enormity of God, its so easy to bring Him down to our size and keep Him there that we forget His true size- which is much bigger than anyone can imagine. Eleanor also spoke a lot on the authority we have in Christ's name, and how we have all of God in us- how uplifting! 

Below is a video we watched during the teaching on Spiritual Warfare from Louis Giglio's How Great is Our God tour:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGxsI8ksX8Q

Today was our last day of teaching on the Word of God. Lars Ølav Gjøre from Norway was our teacher. It was refreshing after a week of teaching that dealt mainly with emotions, to have a week of just facts :) We spent a day talking about where the Bible came from, how it was compiled, church history, etc., a day on the Old Testament, a day on the New Testament, and today was on how to apply all of our knowledge to further reading. This week confirmed a lot of doubts I have had about the Bible in the past- its so cool to know that the Bible is a history book, and at the same time its living and active!

Here's the website to all of our teaching from the week, Lars Ølav covered some really cool stuff!

www.biblebynight.no/dts

Yesterday I taught a salsa class for all the students! It was a lot of fun- almost everyone joined! Afterwards we had a double birthday party for two of the girls here! We had cake and ice cream, and Carlo from Mexico made delicious salsa and guacamole! Saturday night we are having a dinner party! The theme is Moroccan...I don't think anyone knows what to wear yet- but it should be a lot of fun! 

1st week of teaching...

This past week was on the Father Heart of God, and it was taught by Ezra Griffiths from the YWAM base in Orlando, Florida. He was a really cool guy, very down to earth. He began the week with Isaiah 61:1-3 which tells us that God has anointed all Christians to share the Good News, proclaim freedom, comfort others, etc. - basically telling us that as Christians we have responsibilities, and that service should flow out of our relationship with God. We talked about God's character, and the importance of loving and trusting Him. 

When we began talking about the Father Heart of God, Ezra asked us to write down how we viewed our own dads at age twelve, and then how we think our dads viewed us. Luckily, I have been blessed with a loving and supportive father, so when Ezra told us to relate our experience with our own father to that of our relationship with God, it was very easy to understand God as my heavenly, well...dad. My whole life I've known that God should be like my "daddy", but this week was the first time I truly understood God in that kind of way. I have felt a closeness that I've never felt before, because I know that God loves me just because I am his child, and that I didn't have to do anything at all to receive this fatherly love except be born again in His name- how cool is that?! Ezra was a great teacher for this week because he used a lot of illustrations from his experience as a father to three girls. We finished up Friday afternoon with a lesson on forgiveness and the power of the spoken word. And after the teaching we broke off into smaller groups and verbally forgave anyone who has hurt us. It called for a heavy end to a long week, but I think we all learned how freeing forgiveness is. 

This coming week we will have teaching on Spiritual Warfare. 

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Hi! 

If you want to comment, email me at davism22@mailbox.sc.edu, i'm not sure whether or not i'm getting the comments on this page :)

catching up...

a very tiny car. 

Yvonne (Holland) and Me with the Guard in front of the castle.

yay! all the girls (minus a few) on the stairs to the castle

me with a norwegian troll outside a tourist shop :)

It's been a while since my last post... part of the reason is because I was computer-less during the time I was in Oslo for Nations 2 Nations.  N2N was neat, eye-opening, exciting, and absolutely exhausting. People from over 30 nations gathered for this conference to promote unity amongst Christians, and to learn about God's heart for Oslo. We had worship and teaching every morning, and in the afternoon we were sent to evangelize in Grønland (the area in Oslo where many immigrants live), and afterwards there was music and dancing at the Grønland square. Also, the dancers from my school were asked to choreograph and perform a dance during the weekend celebrations which were held at local churches- so we spent almost all of our break time working on that. It was a great experience, getting to spend time with people from all over the world, and learning about God's heart for all of His people. As they said at the conference "The Kingdom of God is not about tolerating differences, but embracing diversity." Oslo was a really cool city, and I'm glad I was able to spend a week there, but it is definitely good to be back in Aalesund. 

We start the regular schedule tomorrow (we had today off after such a long week). Our teacher this week is from the U.S., and he'll be teaching on "the Father Heart of God." It will be nice to get into more of a routine after three weeks of trips and adjustments. 

As far as adjustments go, I'm really loving it here. There are times that I feel really homesick and wish I was back home... but at the same time I don't want to be anywhere else but here, because I know it's where God has called me. 

just a little update :)

we have started classes!! i dance for about five or so hours a day (which is really awesome) we've only had two classes so far, and during those we've spent a lot of time worship dancing (the dance leader just played music and we worshipped as we felt led), and we've also been learning about rhythm and choreography. there are six other dancers (three from the us, two from sweden, and one from norway) they are all really sweet. its really cool because since i've been here i've had a rollercoaster of emotions, but God has really been showing me- through my dancing- that he wants me here and that he is going to take care of me :). Oh yea, and we got our first assignment in dance- to watch a recent dance video (from So You Think You Can Dance, a music video, etc), and "redeem" it. We've only just started (it's due sometime in Oct.), but it seems like its going to be really neat!

next week we're going to a conference thing called nations to nations in oslo, norway. all of the other discipleship training schools in norway were invited, too. and there's not much of an agenda, but the plan is to reach out to people in various ways (very broad description...but i dont think anyone here is entirely sure what we're doing because its the first year they've ever done it).
also, i might get a chance to teach a dance and perform it, which would be really cool! 

hiking and touring

tonight before supper a group of us sat on the porch and sang worship songs for an hour or so...and as i'm writing this post I can hear everyone in the living room still worshipping. God is so present in this school, its truly awesome :)

the coffee shop run by YWAM in downtown Aalesund

Beautiful Aalesund!

a picture I took during the hike!

my hiking group (aka Frosty Feet)

The hiking trip was really fun! It was the first time I had ever been hiking, so I was a little nervous. But it was a great time, just getting to know everyone. We camped near a lake on top of a mountain- it was beautiful! We also had "luxury time" (aka quiet time) at the campsite. I found a place right on the edge of the lake to pray and write in my journal, it was so cool being in that environment...being in the middle of nowhere will definitely make you feel closer to God :)