Update from Norway

Here's Heather and my latest update...

Dear Friends and Family,

After our retreat in Austria, a long and eventful travel day, a crash course in running the hostel, and a roller coaster of a week, the six of us in Bergen, Norway continue to see God's faithfulness in incredible ways. We have all learned our shifts at the hostel pretty well, and God has blessed our team with incredible unity. It has been awesome, and our times each morning of worship, prayer, and then eating lunch together (it's always important to have food involved) have been great. Team unity has been one of the things we have been praying for, and God has definitely blessed us in that area. Please continue to pray that throughout the next 3 weeks, we will continue to grow closer as a team and love each other more, and that that will be a testimony to the travelers that come here.

Another incredible answer to prayer has to do with our finances. For various reasons, we were much tighter in our budget than normal. We were all a bit stressed about it, but God showed himself faithful once again. Through the help of the OCO at Wheaton and an extremely generous and unexpected gift from one of our supporters, God has provided all of the finances that we need. Thanks so much for your prayers and support in this area! We have been blown away by the generosity and support of so many people, so thank you for that!

We are really learning as a team what it means to be faithful day by day. Running the hostel looks very different than traveling, and we are trying to understand how minister best in this environment. We have not been able to talk to people and share the Gospel as much as we were hoping, and that has been a bit discouraging. In the midst of our discouragement, however, God is working. Grace and Jeff has been able to share the Gospel with a Hungarian guy named Andor. He has been really receptive, so please pray that God will continue to work in his life. He and his friend are traveling to Oslo tonight, so we won't see them anymore, more hopefully we will be able to keep in touch with them. Also, a few people on the team have been able to talk to a guy named Fernando and Jeff was able to spend a lot of time with him. While Jeff was not able to have as deep of a conversation as he was hoping, please pray that Fernando will seek after God and find Him.

Other prayer requests: Pray for opportunities to share the Gospel! We desperately want to share this message with people! Also, pray for Heather and I as we prepare to travel to Italy to meet up with Bergen 1 on a traveler's retreat. Pray for encouragement for our team...that we can learn how to trust God more and continue to be faithful and learn how to obey Him. Tonight, Grace and I are leading a Bible discussion night, so please be in prayer for that as well. It's simply a time where we discuss various questions related to God, religion, Christianity, the Church, etc. Thanks again for all your prayer and support.

Love, Sarah and Heather