Base Demolition!

This is the story. So just recently YWAM Skien has become sole owners of its property and of the nice jail it has been living in for some years. As the summer has been just awful...rain, rain, rain this new purchase of the building has proved itself to be a good and horrible. We now own the building (or are trying to) and now we have the freedom to do what we would like to it----and what we have to do to save it. Since this rain has come without stop we are flooded from the 3rd floor and down. It's a little backwards here, I guess since we are so far north things flood from the top floor to the bottom. Well actually, the roof is rotten. Oh joy! And dripping and ruining the rooms below for months now. So what shall we do when students come very soon? We must fix it so the conditions are suitable for living. So at this GOFest...last weekend we asked for a special offering for the base and we were amazed at the generosity to repair the roof of this 1800's jail. What a rotten task that we do not hire anyone to do...but do ourselves a month before the students come. The repairs are about 1 million Krones in estimation---making that like $168,400. At the GOFest most of the people were full time missionaries and they were so generous. We raised over $47, 000 towards the repairs in one offering. We still have quite a bit to go, but it will come. If you want to contribute to the cause. Just send a letter and a check to written to Erika Hydeen : YWAM Skien Base Repairs. Send it to 518 Albany Ave. NE Orange City, IA 51041 USA. If the Lord knocks on your heart---let the gates open. We have a month to demolish the women's bathroom and fix the roof there and then finish the boys and then the whole upper floor. We are going to remove 6 large chimney's that have brought heat through this building to every jail cell when it was in use...now they are dangerous and almost toppling treachery looming high above the house. Any sort of special wind.....and its gone. We found hundreds of rotten wood planks that have held tight to thier job for this long, but now they would split in a few for years. We are blessed to get the base and now to be in the process of making it better. Rebuilding the ancient ruins and restoring the places destroyed. It is about building the house. In which the Lord will do. So, we trust him.

This is the girls bathroom on the 3rd floor last Wednesday afternoon. We started major demolition on Thursday and Friday. I used to get clean in this flood water madness. Yuck. The ceiling fell in by the weight of the insulation 'sponges' earlier this summer. We had actually just installed this nice 'leak free shower' in which we had to damage so that the water in the main bathroom area would drain. What a bummer to be so thrilled about no leaks and then make it leak a month later...not cool.

This is the same room as the above picture. This is Thursday and here is Marianne and Elisabet working on chipping thier way out of prison one brick at a time. The dust was just horrendous. It kind of felt like a bomb dropped here and we slowly took away the debris. The boys worked on the roof just above us preparing to take down the first chimney. They made a bed of wooden planks to catch the falling bricks from rolling off the 4 story building. Later we heard this 'dut, dut dutdutdut...dut CRASH.......hooray!!!' The chimney had come down, and no one died!!! Hooray!

How about a dust shower?

Friday morning before working on the bathroom. We had done some incredible demolition the day before. The whole roof was out and now as you can see it is obvious that this room is 'OUT OF ORDER' I had to laugh to myself...well really I laughed out loud with just me there...as I peeked in the room and saw the sky and the Methodist Church next door with the Norwegian breeze in my hair. Hmmm, shall I use the toilet? Shall I take a shower? They can't be serious that this room is really out of order. NO KIDDING! In the course of the day we took everything down. The tile, plaster, and shower back plus removing the heaviest door in the world between the toilet room and the shower room. This was my job. Dirt that had not been shifted in hundreds of years---was now all over my body.

Birgitte was just showing off her skills. Norwegians don't waste a thing. We just cut the wood and stacked it up for the winter. Like beavers.

Again. If you want to help out with our major project just let me know and I can get you more information. Otherwise just pray for us here at the base. We thank God for his faithfulness already. It will be so grand!!!

GOFest Pictures

Playing worship at the GOFest with Jan Honningdal and friends. A man pulled another man up to the stage and said to me....'Play healing over this man!' I thought he said, 'pray' so I stopped playing and prayed immediately----he said, 'NO! Don't pray! PLAY!' So I did and I felt that heaven came down in a whoosh! It was so amazing. I wonder if the man was healed. I know he saw heaven though!

This is Lene...she plays a soprano sax in worship and when she does its like going into the heart and pushing away all the mess and seeing a huge open space. Such prophetic music! Praise God!
This is Pølle. I really missed this dread-head. He is a YWAMer and has been in Perth for a half a year. Read his blog...it's good stuff (and it is in English, Yvonne)

And of course my lovely Latvian missionary princess...Anne Randi. The real question is....How can we stay together for the rest of our lives? What must we do when we were born worlds apart!

A shocker!

I am actually looking forward to starting this school and getting some people here to work with. The time I had before the GO Fest was perfect to relax and remember my time in USA, but now that I have had a certain weekend of inspirations for the upcoming years....to GO GO GO GO!! I am in need of putting my shoes on and doing just that. I don't feel like my freedom is taken from me anymore. I feel more bound being in solitude for three weeks. I have had people to talk to, but then I sit for hours traveling...alone and pondering and praying and wondering what the year will bring. I used to be afraid of the future...but now I can stop at the crossroads and look....remember how I got there and ask God for the best way. I was riding a rollercoaster of 'How did I get here' and 'This is my heart in Norway' and now I think I am finding that the balance will come---its just that I have waited to find out what I will be doing and I haven't actually just 'been' My good friend Pølle (Paul Andreas) said, 'I'm glad you are here, even if you are not *here* yet.' I thought about that and decided that this was a crappy way to be. I would love to 'be here' with my whole heart...and I think I just make a decision and do it. I AM here and there is really nothing I can do to change that....within reason. So. I might as well BE here. I just pray for that 'HERE' feeling and reality.

I played violin at the weekend conference. I wept on stage as God was tugging at my heart---sitting on the ground with my violin at my side I waited for the Lord's embrace. I soon raised up and played with vigor...and even later had actually put my violin down and began dancing on the stage. I haven't experienced God in his realms of joy like that before. When you worship you are pulled from despair and given a crown of beauty and a garment of praise. That's the goal....Isaiah 61.

Speaking of that.

Do you want to buy a cd.......only 8 dollars. Just leave a comment and I will get you one.

Songs from:
Isaiah 58
Isaiah 61
Psalm 139
Psalm 25
Luke 10
Psalm 42
...and more


So tomorrow. Community. Goals. Filling in the gaps. Creatively

help me remember

I am leaving for the great city of Hamar at 1 today. I wanted to leave a blog message because to me this is not worth sending in a mass email, but it is a crutial moment of my year. I will be leaving this time of quiet, and peace and Erika time for the rest of the year. I have been able to do what I want, when I want and for whatever reasons I think I should. In this time (the last 2 weeks) I have come here hoping that God would allow me a bit of his heart to even desire in my deepest parts to stay. I was severely homesick for a little while. Upon visiting my good friend Karen and her family in the south of Norway I was welcomed with open arms and good food. I then came to fix my VISA and that was a challenging time.....I hoped it would all work out, which it did PRAISE GOD. As I was back here in Skien, I had this break down sort of.......do I go to Bergen, do I stay here and relax? I was tempted to call my plans off, but then at the last minute I had this feeling that I 'needed' to go to the West Coast. So, despite curious thoughts of how I would pay for it....I went. And very true.....I needed to be there. My friend Janelle, also a foreigner was open and willing to help me transfer my heart from the states to Norway. She is so knowlegable and her experience is true....she has had to really fight to be here and she knows the system by now. Her friendship really made me see that beyond myself here in Norway is a vast landscape of hearts not always unlike mine, but very close to it. I lastly visited Ingebjørg, a girl that will be coming to the Skien YWAM DTS as a student this year. She lives in Voss....a very beautiful place in the heart of the fjords. My visit to her helped me see that the ministry is not mine, but God has it all planned. I was excited to meet the students and very excited to see God move in thier hearts in the course of this year. It will be challenging and sometimes I won't believe that I can do what I am asked to, but like I said God has it all planned out. A little note in Ingebjørg's room says this 'Lord help me remember today that I will not face anything both you and I can not handle.' What a great reminder.

And so now....I am here...just 2 hours away from leaving for Hamar and turning the last couple pages of this chapter----'With Wind in the Wings' and I go to write the next. One that seeks quiet and sees peace. There is much deliverance in a heart that finds the hiding places in God. So I do not have quiet outside of my body, but I have quiet inside of my soul. Let it be stirred oh Lord.

Erika

Southern Tip of Norway

The fjordian gulp

it's hard for me to describe the incredible sights and
feelings that come up when i ride through majestic
mystic mountains.  thinking about who could have made
such an amazing world.  the way the 9'o'clock light
flows through the low foggy clouds.  waterfalls trail
great white paths recklessly down the craggy
mountains' edge. a wet coat of paint spilling down the
rocks, dancing clear fresh water to the salty fjord'
mouth, swallowing--gulp, gulp.  it's uncanny how close
this bus gets to the sharp rocks that have been
roughly blasted away.  curiously i lean in--shocked at
the bite.  Had it been a troll coming out of the
rocks--from the smooth rounded face of the jagged
rocky base, those that live in this fjordian-face.
Permanent puddles that made the map and have names and
have visitors, and make money.  No one bothered,
annoyed, or put out....just strolling with the trolls.
just as I go to put a thought on the
paper---darkness---no use writing poetry on the ins
and outs of mountain tunnels.  Cutting through their
insides, without shame.  How rude to demand--'Open up
big mountain let us in, let us pass, take me to the
other side of this insurmountable canyon.  We skip
around corners in this huge living room on
wheels---not always on all of them taking corners at
gale wind speeds.  And just to buy milk....living way
out here in the midst of water, mountain, and heavens.
Only then does it make sense to own a cow---and a
dairy---and a slaughter house, and dress in the
skins---but only if you lived out here, in a mountain
or in Cameroon.  And so they do...but that doesn't
explain why they tuck your pants into your socks or
never do the hair.  And when you live in Oslo, its
cool.  But when you live on a fjord, you're back of
the bus, back of the classroom, and back of the woods
redneck setting the style.  I prefer them home grown.
Why not, I mean the houses have grass atop....grown
from the ground up, why not the people too.  Mmmm, I
just wonder what sound the fjord makes as it gobbles
up the 'Danger falling trolls'...into a crisp cold
bath.  Gulp, gulp....