Himalaya

Hey,

We all survived the week with trekking in the mountains! It has been a good experience for us all but also a big challenge. We have been walking around for 8 days, up to 4000 m above sea level. It's been tough physically but we all made it! Every day we had prayer meetings for the people group here. We have learnt much about God's heart for the unreached nations and about prayer.
It's been great to be with the norwegians here! Great people really! We enjoy staying with them and we learn a lot! They take good care of us!
On Thursday evening we will go back to Dehli where we will spend the whole Friday. Then we're leaving this amazing and crazy country.

Be blessed

India team through Lovisa

Yes here we are, the beautiful India-team, in front of the beautiful Taj Mahal.
Our dear leaders surprised us with an extra day off in Agra! We celebrated Mindas 21st birthday and had a good time!

It was sad to leave Hyderabad after 5 weeks. We have had a really good time together with the people there! We've tried many different ministries and we've been experiencing a lot. God has been good to us and encouraged us!
The last two days we went one hour from the city to a smaller town for a youth retreat. We expected around 40 people but about 10 came. And both days we were 2,5 hours delayed with the program because people just didn't go outside because of the heat (42 degrees celcius). But we had a good time! It was niceto get to know some youths. We hade some teaching and dramas and we got positive feedback afterwords from those who were there. I believe God is at work!

So Tuesday morning we left Hyderabad, although it's sad to leave we're all excited about the two weeks in Himalaya! We spent 22 hours on the train to Agra where we were yesterday. Today we've been in Delhi and tonight we're leaving for Himalaya, we'll arrive tomorrow morning.

It's good to read all the other team-blogs! We miss you!

God bless you
Lovisa and the team

week 5

Je hey!

India is still very hot, but we manage good. The food is also spicy, but we still like it. This week we have worked with this pastor named Daniel in his church planting ministry. Personally I was a bit worried because we have met this guy before, and I guess I got a wrong first impression.
He and his wife took good care of us, gave us good food and not too packed days. They was really funny people as well, and we had lots of fun. During the week we mostly did house visits and prayed for the people in his church and got soda and biscuits and tea and stuff like that. It was really nice for us, and I think we got to encourage them good as well. On Friday (yesterday) we attended a baptism service were we went away out side town to a small lake where a married couple was baptized. Some of us are from Lutheran backgrounds and it was the first time we had attended anything like this. We all liked it I think:)

Tomorrow and Monday we are going away to a smaller town to lead a youth retreat, and on Tuesday we're going north with the train. We have had a great time here, but we all look very much forward to the new experiences we'll get the next weeks when we're going to the mountains.

We're still thankfull for all prayers and other encouragements we get. Please keep it up.

Love and peace from the team trough Anders for real this time.

teaching the waterbottle drama (ex bananadrama) to the dts

week 4

Hello everybody!
We are still alive and good in India. We have enjoyed some fun days this week. On our day off on Monday we went swimming at a hotel. We had the pool to ourselves and came back nice and pink! The next day, the staff we are with at the office took us out for a day at a park and yesterday they took us for a city tour of Hyderabad! We went to a zoo and saw elephants, tigers, bears and all that jazz. We ate at a proper indian restuarant which is actually very like the ones at home, only completely packed with Indians. And then we went to see a really big and beautiful fort. We climbed the many steps to the top in the hot hot heat, preperation for the Himalayas I think!
Today the office staff are leaving for a weeks conference in the South. (I think this is why we've been treated this week.) And so for the next few days our team will be home alone! I think we will be doing some prayer walks, helping with some church planting ministry and we will have a youth retreat at the end of the week. However the plans often change around here.
We've had ministry this week too. We have been some more with dts students from Hyderabad, teaching dramas fro their outreach. We have done programme at a couple HIV aids orphanages. I think we all really enjoyed to go their and be with the kids and we made good contact with the leader who was a westerner :) Last night we did slum ministry for prehaps the last time! which was a bit sad i found.
As a team we are doing good. We are very thankful to God who has kept us mostly in good health! God is continually working in us as individuals and as a team. He is the best ever!
God bless from the India team, through Lucy.

Our forth week in India is already started, and it's crazy.
Last week started really tough with ministry in villages outside Hyderabad from the very morning to the evening. Therefor we had some time off the next day and were given an hardly needed breath. Later we finally got to meet more people at our age. Both saterday and sunday we took part in youthmeetings and I think we all were very happy about it. In these days, we are meeting some indian dts students, in fact no more than three, and we are preparing them for their outreach. What a pleasure! It is still very warm, maybe even warmer, and the indian culture hasn't changed a bit after we arrived the country. We are getting used to it, because we have to and because we are here to learn from it, and are therefor getting more relaxad about it. We are happy to stay at one place, where we are able to build some relations.

Please pray for us! For good helth, sleep and for inspiration and wisdom for the coming saturday, we will have a hole day with teaching other people, hopefully about the same age as us.

Greetings from the team through Peder

Monday 31th March

Namaste!
Today we have our day off, so I'm sitting in a windy internetcafe, with the heat waiting for me outside. The last days have been very hot, but we try to enjoy it and not complain so much. One week of ministry has past and we have all liked the places we have been to. We have mostly been playing with children. We visited 5 slum areas where we held a program for everyone who wanted to listen (mostly singing). We have been singing a lot of action songs, such as Who's the king of the jungle (Anders' personal favourite I think). We have performed the gospeldrama in slum areas and in two churches. A success every time. Especially our contact person is very excited about the drama and he is very impressed by out acting skills. =) We try to communicate the best we can with the children, by learning some phrases in Telugu, the spoken language in the state Andra Pradresh (where we are=)). We can say My name is and Very good. Ragnhild is writing down everything she hears, very good role model in language learning ;). We are happy to meet so many beautiful children. They are always so happy to see us and like to listen to us. In the end we always get to pray and bless everyone who wants, which is most often everyone =). Except from the slum areas we have also visited one school, one orphanage and a couple who works at the base who have some children with HIV infected parents coming to their house to learn English. It is so good to see all the work people are doing here, I'm so impressed by those who give their lives to give the children education and a hope in Jesus. God is really working in India, more than I knew before. It's cool to see! He's been faithful to us and he always encourage us. He has healed some of the people we have prayed for and we are very grateful for that. We have also been to prayer walks in muslim areas.

The team is doing fine, we have been tired and haven't still really adjusted to all the culture differences. But we enjoy our time very much although it's tough sometimes. We fight against the mosquitos who seem to love us very much. (As an example I can mention that I counted my mosquito bites to 160. 57 of them on my right foot.) The food is very good! We have some problems understanding their views on time, but we're working hard on it! It takes a lot of patience for us who are used to that everything goes fast and is effective. Everything just takes time here!

I hope you're not too tired of reading now! But I will stop now.

I hope everyone else is doing fine! God bless you!

(Och tack Johanna for kommentaren =) Vi kommer ha mycket att prata om sen)

Greetings from India team through Lovisa

Namaste!

We are in India!
After a long trip we arrived Deli, India 1.00 (lokal time, we are 4,5hours before Norwegian time) and was met by some guy. He drove us to a hotel nearby the trainstation. It's very warm here!! India is exiting and there is alway something happening. People everywhere! We woke up, had some breakfast, and went out to the most crowded, warm and noisy street I have seen in a while! Such a contrast to Norway! We had a little time in Deli city before we went on the train to Hyderabad. The train took 26 hours and we was met by our contactpersons. People here are very friendly.

We try as best as we can to addjust to the culture by eating with our hands and for the girsl wearing punjabi (wich is very warm when its around 35 degrees here! We mostly enjoy thew time. Yesterday we started with the ministry by visiting a slum area. We gave them food and had a little drama for the children about Jesus calms the storm. It was nice, but also hard to see how unfair this world is!

We will come back with more updates later.
Many greetings from the Indiateam, rep by Minda :)

Welcome

This is just a start, we have started to look forward with great to the trip from Skien to India very much now yes;) Soon more to come.