Pains, Plumb line and Palau

Wow, only 1 month left and we’ll be on our way to our outreach in Palau. Crazy to think how fast our time here in Hawaii is flying by :-(

Our last weeks have been packed with teaching, activities, but also illness unfortunately.
Both Herbert, Marthe and I have been sick and I am in fact still recovering from a (already 1 week long) cold. Yes, a cold… also here that’s possible ;-) Last Sunday we had a nice day on the beach with another family, the weather was great, the ocean warm.
Later in the afternoon we went for an ice cream and sat down by the Old Airport when it began to rain and cool down pretty fast with a firm wind blowing. We all were freezing and decided to back to campus.
That Sunday night I started to sneeze and that was the beginning of a week in bed :-(
Today, 1 week later, I feel much better, although still coughing a bit, quickly tired and with pretty heavy back pains (probably from not really walking or doing much for the whole week). But, I finally did go out of our apartment again today and even off campus, so I’m happy :-)

This whole last week, teaching was about a Bible Overview. Unfortunately I missed class this week, but will try to read up on it a bit as I do have some notes from others.

The week before we went through the Plumb line.
Just in case you, like Herbert, me and several other class mates, think that we’ve been kept busy learning how to install toilets and do plumbing…. here‘s the definition.
And, as for the teaching, this was about God’s plumb line. In this context our lives should be in line with what God has created us to be. As Christians, our plumb line should be God’s love and truth.
Our plumb line can be swinging from one side to another instead of being straight in God’s love and truth. The swinging is being caused by the lies in our lives. Lies being told by other (authority) figures in our lives.
Where does it come from if we feel we’re never good enough, too stupid, too fat or whatever lies we believe?
All those things result in us building unstaidy walls of lies around ourselves which we believe in instead of just building a strong wall based on what God created us to be, His truth about who we really are!
It was a difficult but VERY good week where we really got to know ourselves and our walls of lies around our lives. And yes, we did get to start knocking that wall down :-)

Else, we’re starting to be more and more together with our outreach teams. Our Palau team consists of 20 adults and 6 children. We have a great team and we’re very much looking forward to our 2 months in Palau!
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This is (part of) our Palau team – don’t worry, we can behave normal as well, occationally ;-)
The tickets are booked and we’re leaving Hawaii on December 15th and will return to Hawaii for our last week of evaluation on February 19th, and return to Norway on February 27th – arriving March 1st.