One Man Wedding

Confirmation fever hit the Dalseth house this weekend, in a flurry of lawn-mowing, tablecloth-ironing and surgery. Confirmation is a very widespread tradition in Norway, with the majority of fourteen-year-old Norwegians going through the motion. It's such a tradition, in fact, that some people get confirmed in non-religious ceremonies. What they're confirming, probably they can't even tell you but they're happy to confirm it, just like the church-goers are happy to defy logic and confirm a decision made by someone else for them, when they were so young that they barely possessed the ability to blink. Sure, they have to go to a few confirmation classes but they get to wear an outfit from Lord of the Rings (which, for the girls, costs something like a thousand pounds), have a banquet held in their honour and take home between two and three grand.

Eline chose to start her confirmation weekend in unconventional style by having emergency keyhole-surgery to remove her appendix at six o'clock on Saturday morning. This meant that she missed the church ceremony but was home in the afternoon to watch all her loving family and That English Lodger tuck into a feast of smoked salmon and Potato Gratin, followed by a truly incredible spread of cakes, the like of which I doubt I will ever see again until I enter into Paradise. The proceedings of the average Confirmation Day are very much like those of a wedding, only for one person: a morning church ceremony in fancy clothes, a meal with the extended family, speeches from parents, embarrassing childhood photos and customised songs set to traditional Norse ditties. They even stand a little plastic figure, all alone, at the summit of the improbably-tall centrepiece cake.

I can't understand how confirmation fits in with anything the Bible says but then I can't think of a way to end this post either. So let me lay a quick update down for you and sign off: Eline is recovering very well and will be playing football again in a fortnight. I am preparing myself for The Biggest Game Of Football Of My Life So Far, coming this Wednesday. And the Dalseth Household (of which I can proudly call myself an honorary member) enjoys leftover cake with every meal. This is Dan, signing off from Indre Arna, Norway.

Mission and Improbable Weather

Last Wednesday evening I was sat at the back of a small meeting in Voss. It felt more like a very conservative church service than a seeker-friendly gospel night and I was thinking philosophically to myself that even if we didn't see any real results from the day we'd spent there, at least we knew that we had really worked hard for the place. And who was to know what unseen future fruit would be reaped from the seeds we had sowed. Nevertheless, I did feel disappointed; there had been such an expectation among us that God was going to do some big work in Voss and I wanted the satisfaction of seeing some of that work. Then Jacob preached and eight people stood up.

Jacob is a quiet and friendly Nigerian gentleman, who was a part of the mission team from England that I had the pleasure of being involved with for these last ten days. On Tuesday he had taken the opportunity to touch snow for the first time in his life. He had to be driven a short distance away from here because, aside from the fact that Arna gets relatively little snowfall, the team enjoyed almost nothing but sunshine for the duration of their visit. I remember that on the day they landed I told them that, in terms of the weather, it was probably one of the top three days I'd experienced since my arrival in October. The following day easily joined it in the top four and the temperature just kept on rising until this weekend, which was certainly the hottest I've enjoyed in Norway. Now there are leaves on the trees and the mountains are green all over. I've barely seen a cloud in a week.

In fact, the only day of bad weather was the Wednesday in Voss, a weird little town with a pair of parallel main roads and not much else. It's the location of the area's main ski resort and the home of a number of boarding schools, neither of which do much for the community, as you can imagine. My church here in Arna is currently in the process of planting a congregation at Voss and it was with this small group of Christians that we were working with.

I joined the team at the church in Arna that morning to hear that they'd had a particularly intense prayer meeting the evening before. Some of them had continued to pray in their rooms afterwards, unable to sleep, and everyone was eager to see how God would use us that day. After a team time and breakfast, we took the 75 minute train ride to Voss.

We were greeted by wind and rain that didn't ever really let up until the evening. As well as grim weather, Voss has a heavy, imposing spiritual quality that is hard to explain but not difficult to notice. Almost immediately we set off, walking around the town, evangelizing and inviting people to the evening meeting in a building on the high street. Phil and I just walked endless laps of the long block formed by the twin main roads, stopping to pray in the prayer room after the first half hour and then going back out again for two or three hours more. Phil had seen a picture in the prayer room of all of us pushing against a massive onyx door that we just managed to shift in the end and, as time wore on, our initial enthusiasm was being tested by the oppressive atmosphere of the place. When we weren't speaking to Norwegians we were praying hard. Responses at first were either totally disinterested or shamelessly rude (elderly Norwegian men can be brutal) but as we pressed on, which took no small amount of self-discipline, we found people were becoming more and more open to talking about Jesus. My Norwegian vocabulary was tested to the limit on the odd occasion that a person said they couldn't speak English but I surprised myself by not being totally out of my depth.

At half past five, the arranged finishing time, we were outside the main entrance to the building the church meet in but Phil wanted to do one more half circuit before we went in. We did so and we were just going to cross the square back to meet the others when we met three Muslim gentlemen. Hilariously, Phil had met them when he visited Norway two years previously! They were really happy to see him again and said that they'd come and join us that evening (actually, they did more than that, one of them forced me to walk him all the way to the door of the meeting room to make sure he knew where it was).

We returned to meet the others, went for a Chinese and set up for the meeting. The Voss people ran the it, with the team contributing testimonies among the very inaccessible, old hymns. I was not optimistic but then Jacob preached; he spoke about how our life is like a car engine - we can put water in the petrol tank, oil in the radiator and petrol in the oil tank if we choose to but that's not the way a car's designed and it'll get damaged. Jacob appealed for people to raise their hand in response and then asked them to "put Satan to shame and stand up!" Three Norwegian ladies recommitted their lives to God, a teenager called Kristian became a Christian and four Muslims chose to become followers of Jesus Christ!

The five converts joined us in Arna on Saturday for a barbecue. Loads of the community turned up, and rightly so considering the amount of invitations we'd given out. We also went to Øyrane Torg, the local shopping centre, earlier in the day to give out free waffles and drinks. Unfortunately it turned out that there was a group from a local school there too, trying to flog waffles to pay for a band trip to the dream destination of Scarborough. It was a shame but after we'd given away about six thousand waffles we left in the afternoon so they could have some time to raise their funds.

There was a good atmosphere at the barbecue and Terje asked the team to perform the sketches they'd been performing at the shopping centre. Tate and myself had taught them some Ichthus mission classics - Crowdpuller, Chocolate Box, The Ribbon Sketch - that went down well. Phil then gave a short gospel message during which nobody made a sound and what must have been at the most one second later, somebody screamed, there was a bang and a car knocked a girl off her bike. There were a few nervous minutes but thankfully she only suffered some grazes and a bruise on the inside of her knee. The initial stunned quiet wore off when everyone heard the good news and it turned out to be great night with the community. Me and Øyvind performed a few numbers that I just didn't know the words for (until PA Guy inexplicably pulled the plug on us) and one of the former Muslims got on the drums and soloed like the saved.

I was sad to see my friends leave and I do miss people in England - you know who you are. But actually, it's only eleven weeks until I'm back for John and Mel's wedding, and then it's Revive. I will see you again... but not yet. Not yet!