Christina Swan

Going to festivals around Norway in a grey old Huundai from "Rent a Wreck" has worn me out, fired me up, and made me a bit richer on experiences and realisations:

I have been challenged to a closer relationship with my friend and master, Jesus Christ :-) 

I have become a waffle monster. Registering as a member of the Christian Union in Norway has had its endless benefits: free waffles every single day in the red "Bible bus" that stays put at all the Christian festivals. A waffle (or two, or three) a day keeps the sweet tooth away!

I have visited Sweden, which was only 30 minutes away from the OASE festival... never seen a candy paradise as big as the Swedish border, nor bought as many sweets in my life as I did in Sweden.

Camping is not as great fun as it sounds, especially when groups of teenagers find out that night-time is the best time to practice their social skills - right outside other people's tents. 

The life of a pizza delivery man is a good one. We got to know a pizza maker in Fredrikstad, who not only made us great pizzas, but spiced up our life with his interesting life as a Kosovo-Albanian Muslim in Norway.  

What will the next few days bring? I'm excited. Am heading across the North Sea tomorrow, with my good old friend Ryan Air, to an adventure in the capital of England. Ed and I will be staying with a Muslim family, eating Indian curry, and going to a fancy wedding of some friends of ours from Cambridge, before going up to Sheffield to sample the wonders of that place.

Summer really isn't the best time for blogging, and the beautiful weather confirms it. 

Christina

Time for a bloggy update. I now know what I am doing this coming year, and that is Something. I'll be working as a youth leader in Tananger church part time (yay - I got the job.... a proper job!), and I'll be doing a teacher's training course the other part time. The teaching training course is supposed to be part time for two years, but I'm hoping they'll let me finish it in one year..

Just got a letter from the doctor saying I've probably got whooping cough, which explains the lethargicness and heavy coughing I've been experiencing lately. Tomorrow I'm off to "Skjærgårds Gospel" - a music&mission festival in the South of Norway. I get to do it as part of my summer job, which includes being one of the two "managers" of the stand for Hald International Centre. Lots of internationally renowned Christian bands and singers will be coming to the festival, which I'm looking forward to hearing. The week after that I head to OASE, to continue the summer job at another Christian festival, at which the "Heavenly Man" from China will supposedly speak. So exciting times are coming up!

The sun is shining, so I hope you're enjoying your summer!

Christina

If I was a pessimist, I'd find plenty of reasons to protest round about now. I could protest against Hald, which just finished and left many dozen international students devastated by the prospects of probably never seeing each other again, ever. I could protest against my body, which hasn't only expanded by a few kilos in the wrong places, but also just added the missing ingredient: some predictable monthly stomach pain.... I could protest against my lungs which have been coughing up mucus for more than two months, or my nose, which has been blocked for too long, or my ear, which is still blocked even after the nurses cleaned it and I poured olive oil into it for too many days. I could protest against the olive oil that didn't work.

 

If I was a pessimist, I could protest against everybody who plays RISK with me, because they always conspire against me and attack my countries and want me out of the game. I could protest against the dice gods, who give me 1's instead of 6's most of the time.

 

If I was a pessimist, I could protest against the people in the Development Fund, who don't seem to want to hire me - or give me another interview. I could protest against myself for really messing up the interview. I could protest against the paradoxical saying that youth (late teenage / early twenties...) is everything, when reality seems to be that you've got to be at least 25 or 30 to have the chance and experience and supposed wisdom to get any interesting job. And even then you may not be wise enough. I could, for this reason, launch an attack on numbers.

 

If I was a pessimist, I could actually become Really paranoid.

 

But. I am not a pessimist. And I believe God has a plan. Put them together, and I will be relaxed about this coming year – even if I end up as a chimney sweeper (do they still have those?) or a cleaner somewhere. Hopefully I won’t, as  I was interviewed for the position as youth worker in a church in Stavanger yesterday – a position they’d had only one applicant for (me) but which sounds interesting. But I have reasoned myself to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter how many applicants a job position has, for it to be interesting. Even if 109 people apply to one job (like the one in Oslo) it doesn’t mean these people are right about the interestingness of this job. They may, in fact, all be wrong. And even if only one person applies to another, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad job – it may simply mean that I have discovered the treasure and should keep it to myself... hehe.

 

I’m confused because I thought I’d be working in development this year. But maybe I’ll be working with a different kind of development (if I get the youth worker job) – the development of young people in Stavanger. Never ever underestimate the leaders that make people what they are today or in the future... or the bus drivers, who drive important (and “un-important” people to work/job interviews/encouraging meetings with other importants every day). Never underestimate the “un-important” people either, who actually have very important jobs, like cleaning the floors of some nursing home, or Mc Donalds, to keep it hygienic and aesthetically liveable. Never underestimate the background people either, who do the washing up at some kind of gathering, or the housewives, who care for children and houses and husbands and create a nice home base from which the rest of life springs out.

 

The thing is, no job is useless if you find its meaning and if God uses you there. And whichever job you have, you can work with poor people or refugees or others in your spare time – which I believe to be just as useful as being the top head of UNHCR or having some other well paid job. Perhaps the most important jobs are those which pay the least? It’s a worldly dilemma in disguise, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

 

I’ll leave you with a question: What’s the world’s most useless job?

 

Christina