Back at the Office

let me catch you nice folk up on whats been happening.

so Malmöfestivalen finished on the friday night and we returned to the office/base in Jönköping on saturday for debriefing. the last 2 days we've had off and everyones been catching up with family/friends and sleep.

throughout the week in Malmö, our team has had many good conversations with people from all different walks of life and i've actually been surprised at how many swedes, immigrant and domestic, who are interested in talking about God and Jesus, who are seeking answers. We've had some people come to faith over the week, as well as people signing up for alpha courses (discussion groups available worldwide where you can ask any & every theological question) and have even had some people healed.

one man had been to the doctors to get his vision treated after damaging his eyes from welding and it had been a success but he felt massive pain behind his eyes. Some of the guys met him and prayed for him and at first asked him to rate his pain from 1 to 10, with 10 being the most severe and they prayed for him until the level dropped from an 8 to a 1.

not that i've had masses of interesting stories but i'll just name two for me. there was Adriana the brazilian girl who came up to me and took a book and started telling me how she was christian but her boyfriend arvid wasn't but how he would pray with her and study the bible with her and she obviously wanted so much for him to believe. i honestly believe that God had meant for me to meet her since i could legitimately relate to what she was going through and so i prayed with her. charmain you will be proud to know that i was speaking in swedish the whole time!

then on the last night there was a swedish lady taking around her friend's mum who was spanish and we had a fun-filled, broken-trilingual conversation in which i got a bit muddled and threw some french in for kicks.

so the dealio for the next 2 weeks is that i'll be here in Råslätt, Jönköping and just helping with the orientation they're having here for the new permanent people joining OM, so it'll probably be bit of a slower week. after that, my fate is still yet to be decided, there are at current 3 possiblities:

1) stay here and help out with the stuff they have goin on here which includes a hangout they have for youth who dont go to school or work

2) go back to Malmö and work with the church there and probably the street church stuff as well. i quite liked the church we stayed in, and i know they had a spanish group and a iranian group so it could be pretty cool there

3) there's a sister organisation who work with visits to prisons and working in the schools as well i think

probably keen on either 2 or 3 but i guess we'll wait and see

so i am having a good time, definitely enjoy being in sweden and meeting all types of people but i think this trip has probably shown me more clear that its not necessarily what i want to be doing full-time. the soul search continues...

Oh I'll just go to Copenhagen for the day...

not quite legoland but the legostore on strøget - amazing works of legolicious art

me & katie b trying out some typical dansk pølse hotdog, actually really nice
me & my new elk friend

Street Churching the Festival

hanging out with moomins (not mormons, moomins are much cuter)
staking out our turf, handing out prayerbooks

this is our team from all over the world including Taiwan, Sweden, Germany, USA, Aussie (of course!), Sth Africa and Indonesia

Selling Matches at Malmöfestivalen

I have finally found both the time and the internet access to write to you guys! Sorry for the long wait.

So recapping from my last post, after spending one night at the hostel, i got up the next day to take a train to Jönköping. Now at first i had thought to myself that i should make sure i had plenty of time to get to the station, but i ended up having a bit of a chat with someone at breakfast and thought i had seen the station not far from the hostel the night before so left a little later.

I got to the station & soon found out that this was not the right place. I needed to be at Stockholmcentralen but this was only one of its exits & could not lead to the platforms. So then the semi-stress began as i had 10min till the train (which btw i had already booked & paid for, a little different from taking Metro) and there was a very groundhog’s day moment where i came up from the escalator of said exit, crossed the road to try another exit as marked by the Tunnelbana sign only to somehow find that i was somehow in exactly the same exit as i was before.

In the end, I hauled my luggage to the real station with a few minutes to spare but as i got to the platform and the fastidious Swedish train was about to leave, i was told by the conductor (who was nothing like Santa Claus traindriver & his Friendly Conductor Sidekick from last trip) that it was not going to Jönköping. The train left and i was thoroughly confused and went to Information and had to book the next train. The lady at the desk was also unsure as to why he had said that, but i guess that’s what you should expect from a train company called Veolia whose business in Australia is to pick up rubbish bins.

In the end i got to Jönköping and got picked up and met up with all the others that were on the OM team. OM is a christian organisation whose claim to fame is having big ships that go around the world with a huge bookstore on board. So for the next few days in Råslätt (which i’ve been told is like the ghetto of Jönköping) we had training/orientation. Theres actually 3 other ozzies on board, from all different states, NSW, QLD, TAS so thats been really nice.

So last Wednesday we left for Malmö. Malmö is the 3^rd largest city in Sweden & it has some pretty awesome parks. We’re staying at Immanuel Church while we’re here, and our days look like:

9am – breaky

11am – prayer then lunch

2pm – out in the festival

5.30pm – back home for dinner

8pm – out in the festival till 11pm

Malmöfestivalen is kinda like the culture days we have in the city/southbank, where there’s stalls of food and other stuff all on the 2 sides of the street, buskers and there’s also a stage further down with concerts and basically we’re helping out with Street Church which is organised by churches in Malmö who go out fortnightly to the streets and chat to anyone who come up to them and wants to talk about God, Life and everything in between.

The first day and a half i was like what the heck am i doing here. I felt like i had now become the people that i usually avoid on the streets, with our wagon of prayerbooks and the first night was cold and rained a bit and i very much identified with the Little Match Girl, though it was more handing out than selling and the match was physically a bible verse or prayerbook and metaphorically just a bit of God.

But i have to say that somehow i’ve become more comfortable with it. Sure, i’m never goin to be that eccentric “Repent or Die” guy at a city centre near you, but like one of the guys have said on the team, we’re just kinda there to be God’s presence and if ppl want to come take a book or talk, that’s awesome. And you get to meet some really fascinating people with fascinating ideas, like the guy who asked what if God is a magical duck. One guy took a book and started telling one of the girls on my team that he was interested in religion, and that he had this plan of being king and creating a new world and something like he didn’t really believe in relationships but he wanted to have stacks of kids who had to obey him and if they didn’t then they would become his slaves or something, i’m not sure. He was so adamant about it that i wasn’t sure if he was wacky or not but he actually said something that really stuck with me. Like most ppl, he said that all that was important was what happens in this life and to make the most of it and on anything after death he said ‘If there is something more, Give it to me, but i don’t want to pay for it’ and i think that might reflect the opinions of many. Thoughts?

i've taken someone's comment that there shall be more pictures this time! Not sure if u can see this properly but this is near my grandparents' place, apparently we have a fellow clan member who sells luggage. ok the quality of the pictures will improve from here on