*exhale*

i always have ideas of clever thing to write down here. but those ideas come when i'm not at the computer and then they leave the second i put my fingers to the keyboard. so, i have some random thoughts about things i want to update everyone on, but i don't know how to connect it all. so now is the time that we thank the Lord for bullet points.

• i think i've told most people already...but for those i haven't: i've gotten involved again as a mentor with the youth group at my church & this summer (june 30-july 14) i'm going along with them to Vancouver for Mission Adventures! we've been getting together once a week for the last couple of months and it's so exciting! we'll be doing mainly street ministry while we're out there. the group of youth that are coming out are awesome! i'm so excited to be with them & learn with them. it's only 4 weeks away now. crazy how fast time closes in on itself.
• on the work front: i'm back at solomon's porch! i've been working there since the beginning of this month every wednesday, friday and saturday. but most weeks i end up working more than just those days. this week i've worked monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday and saturday. i had forgotten how much i love working with books. although it can be crazy & gogogo (like this week) i sometimes like the crazy days, because then i can enjoy the relaxing days so much more.
• last night i feel asleep on my back. why am i talking about this? i was laying on my back falling asleep (trying to) and suddenly i had this overwhelming memory of being back in my old room in Borgen. i think it's because while i was there i feel asleep on my back often (i believe this is because i was body pillow-less and so sleeping on my side was uncomfortable) so last night i'm laying there on my back & i could just imagine where Bex was asleep across from me, the desk by my head, Annika playing her music above us :), the sink dripping. everything. then i was thinking about my last evening there. i was packing up all of my stuff. it was 2am or sometime crazy and we had to leave at 5am. bex was asleep. and i was packing up all of my stuff. you know that feeling? like, knowing that you're leaving a place you love. and that you might not go back. hm, i hope this isn't getting depressing. but this is what i all felt while i was lying on my back trying to sleep last night. i miss you guys.
• last week-end i went to my uncle and aunt's cabin with my family. my parents wanted to bring my dog along b/c she loves running wild. so, not wanting to deprive my dog of 3 days of bliss, i said sure. the one thing about this that i wasn't too sure was a little 4 letter word. tick. it's tick season. my worst enemy. so i consented to letting my dog run wild through tick infested territory. what was i thinking? anyways, so we brought her home & i half-heartily check her for ticks. didn't find nothing. or wait...i found nothing. didn't find anything. then last night steph and i were hanging out in the kitchen and i was rubbing Buddy's head. stop. what was that? i think i felt something....NOOOOO! a tick had hid itself under Buddy's head and had been happily sucking her blood all week long. *shudder* i had heard that it was bad to just pull ticks off b/c their head gets stuck, other bad organisms get release, you know, all that gross stuff. so steph looked online for what i was supposed to do. this is what it said
  Remove the tick properly. Using sharp pointed tweezers, or specially made tick tweezers, grasp the tick as close to your skin as possible, as close to its embedded mouthparts as you can. If you squeeze the body or head, you risk compressing the guts and salivary glands and expelling even more organisms through their mouth into your body. Do not twist the tick or turn the tweezers as you pull out the tick. Pull out straight with a slow, steady motion. Twisting may force more organisms into your body, and may result in the head or more of the mouthparts being left in your body.
  Do not apply any substances to the tick before removing it - no alcohol or nail polish, no petroleum jelly or other ointments, and do not try to burn it out or otherwise convince to let go of you. It won't let go. It will just happily keep on sucking your blood and pumping pathogens into you.
  grooooooss. i hate ticks. they are even more terrible than any other thing. they're little, sneaky, hard to kill, and they suck your blood to get fat. so i decided that there was no way i was going to be able to get buddy still enough to get tweezers near her head & slowly pull that sick thing off of her. no way. so i left it for the night & dreamt about ticks (that is not a joke...totally serious) in the morning i convinced my dad to help me with it. so my dad held buddy down while i went to the root of this problem...but we couldn't keep buddy still enough. SO, i called up the veterinarian & said "WHAT DO I DO?" they said pull it. just pull it. so i did. i got kleenex & grabbed on & pulled that puppy off of my puppy. to end this story i'll just say two words: dead. done. ok, i never want to talk about this again.
• i am supposed to be in my room right now. it's calling my name. it's been doing that the last 2 months. just calling my name. a week after i got home from Norway i started redoing it. the combination of three things (me, my room, and redoing) may seem like a simple task....but i'm telling you: it is not! you see, my house is very old, and my room needs a lot of touch ups, then i come along with my perfectionistic ideals and try to get this room looking the way i want it to. it's a big job. for the first month of redoing it i'll admit i exercised procrastination like a crazy person...but this last month i just haven't had time. ever. ok, that's an exaggeration...but the precious time that i have had to my self i did not want to spend slaving over removing paint from my window sill. strange. but true. so i think it's time to go back now. i've wasted enough of my time doing other things, and this was my last resort.

i must go now. my mom is looking at me funny. yep, back to the room i go.

it's someone special's birthday today!!!
CRYSTAL PYSTAL

speeeeecial :) i love you crystal. i have so much fun with you. you're such a joy to live with. i pray that God blesses you like crazy. especially now that you're the big TWO OH. it's crazy responsibility but i have full confidence in you. you'll be an awesome twenty year old.

yesterday in celebration of mother's day & crystal's birthday my family went to the park. so here are some pictures of my favorite people:

it's my mother's day!!

luke & i were listening to my iPod. he loves Toby Mac's beat :)

isaiah & crystal with their crazy faces

the shi-lar

joc, sherwood & ruth hanging loose

steph, isaiah & luke playing with "worms"....shiloh chowing down on some rollkuchen

i here to put to test the saying "better late than never"

woofie and i (some time in '05)

three long days ago it was my beautiful big sister, ruth's birthday and i FAILED to make a post for her. ah, i should have known! Ruth (miss queen blogger) admitted to me that she was a little hurt by my failings. so, here i am, tonight, late at night, after a long day, taking the time to say:

RUTH RULES

i will ditto what steph said: thanks for praying me into this world :) and also for continuing to pray for me as i walk around on this world. everything you do, you do with a whole heart. you're a great big sister...even though the line of big sister/mother role has sometimes been crossed, i always appreciate your love and care. you're an extreme person and i love you extremely much. *MUAH* ;)

i had written this big long post which i was going to entitle: "fear, adventure, and courage: the story of a power outage at 3 on a Sunday afternoon" but our computer FROZE moments before i was going to save it and i lost it all! i think everyone can relate to the frustrating feeling of loosing a post, or an e-mail. i've come to believe it is one of the most character-revealing tests of all times.
so i'm just going to start all over again. moving forward, no looking back! sorry, the story about our power going out is going to have to wait for another rainy day....it wasn't really that interesting. can be summed up in 2 words NO POWER. there. done.

so i'm going to start by thanking ruth, for the thinking blogger award. *snicker* i'm so honored.

:)

so what now? i don't really know. i haven't been up to too many adventures this week. My mom and dad are gone...so i've been filling in the mother role of our household. :) of course, i couldn't do it with out the encouragement of my 2 big sisters (aka: my 2 other mothers) but today, all by myself, i made banana cream cheese cake, and now supper is in the oven just waiting for when crystal comes home at 5. oh JOY! maybe tomorrow i'll make pistachio!
on the job front there is nothing new. i haven't started looking actually. i've been doing a little here a little there, but nothing permanent. we'll see what happens there.
ok, i've got 5 minutes before crystal arrives and i have to warm up the beans!

xoxox
mel

ok, so it's true. i've been avoiding this puppy the last week. and now the only reason that i'm posting now is because i'm avoiding the mess in my room. :) BUT, now that i'm here i'm happy. it just always takes the first push to get it started.

Ah, home life! so, for all you overseas peeps, i'm going to summarize for ya what i've been up to. my last week has been one of relaxation, hugs, and great food! i've realized that i really need to relearn how to do things on my 'time off'. like, during the dts, we'd had a schedule for everything, and then whenever we'd have time off, we would just lay around, chill, do NOTHING. but now, all the time i have is either hanging out with people or free time. and last week i did almost nothing during my free time!! it was nice for a week...but definitely not something i'm wanting to keep up! so this week is the test...the fact that i'm on the computer before 11am is already a sign that i'm not doing too good....but i'm updating my blog! that's work, right?

well, i guess i haven't talked about my flights home.....it was pretty uneventful. people don't talk to me in airports, i'm not sure if i look scary or what. but anyways, the funniest thing was waiting for my flight from frankfurt to toronto (and by the way, frankfurt airport wasn't as threatening as i was anticipating it to be) so i was waiting for the flight and looking at all of these people waiting for the same flight. and i couldn't believe it. so many of them looked SO Canadian! it was insane! and then everytime i saw a canadian flag on someones bag i was tempted to go up to them and ask them where in that beautiful country are they from.....but i would resist.

what was the first thing i did when i entered toronto? (of course after making my way across the toronto airport, through customs, picking up my luggage, dropping off my luggage, and finding my gate) i went to TIM HORTONS of course! ah, the double double is still so tasty.

it's the roll up the rim to win season and i was SO convinced that i was going to win something. i mean seriously, i've been out of the country for 7 months and i spend i first $1 something on their coffee....so OF COURSE i should win.............nope. i was crushed. i'll be honest, it hurt. but, i won't give up on Tim, never. he'll let me win one day.

and i think that's pretty much all, folks. questions, comments? well, i best get back to my room. PRAY for me! i'll need all the help i can get!

hello young and old,
i'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! for those of you who were wondering where i was: you can check out the link on the previous post. i haven't been posting on this blog because i was in charge of the team blog and really didn't feel like updating 2 blogs. *sigh* so this one suffered.
well, i am back in Norway! i've been at Borgen for the last week, busy graduating :) and now i'll be hanging around the base for one more week before i fly all the way home! i'm excited to be home again. to give hugs to those that need hugs. but for now it's 1:15am and i'm hoping to get some sleep now, i do regret that coffee at supper tonight......

to the Kehler's,
if you guys read this i just want you to know that i love you guys so much & i wish i could be at home right now to support you. i'm supporting you from Norway with my prayers. i love you.

you guys can now check out our outreach blog for updates

borgendtsoutreach.blogspot.com

tusen takk!

bonjour bijou! okay, i'm going to attempt to update you on the last 2 weeks. trrrrrry. with my leaking eye, running nose, sore throat, and tired body i might peter out near the end. ok, i'm just being dramatic now....my eye has actually stopped leaking.....but it was yesterday, HONEST!

here's a narrative of my vacation to the tropics of England.
So a trip that really only takes 4hrs of flying time ended up taking Bex and I 2 days. We left Borgen at 10am on the 22nd of December to drive down to Tromsø. Spent the day in Tromsø and then spent the night at Audhild's cute apartment (Audhild is a friend we met during the lecture phase when we had classes with the bible school in Tromsø) Bex and I were SO tired (explanation: because of the darkness our eternal clocks were a little messed & we hadn't been sleeping properly for approx 3 weeks) anyways, so we were tired and ready to go to bed at 6:30pm. We had to get up at 5am the next morning to catch our flight, so we crawled into our beds and waiting for sleep.....and waited and waited and waited......8hrs i waited, until 2am when my body finally decided to let me sleep! so we got up the morning of the 23rd, caught a bus, and were flying through the air by 7am. We arrived in Oslo at around 10ish and our next flight didn't leave until 8:30pm. so we caught a bus into the city of Oslo to meet up with Turid and Cherob for the day. We were SUPER excited to see the sun....here I am searching for it:

THERE SHE BE!!!! i don't think that anyone can fully understand how beautiful and lovely and important the sun is until you're away from it.

Bex sees the sun

I see the sun :)

Bex and I waiting for our train into Oslo. this is how i interpret the next couple of pictures:

"Mel, put the camera down."

"fine, then i'll just be cute."

"take this."

"and THIS"

train station in Oslo. ruffin' it

backpacker bex

and mel

an Oslo park

there's Cherob in the bottom right corner :)

So Cherob and Turid took us around the city of Oslo for the day and dropped us off at the airport a couple of hours before our flight was supposed to leave. It was a really tiring day, b/c of the lack of sleep earlier, but Bex and i prevailed! our flight down to London was supposed to leave at 8:30, but because of the fog issues in London in was postponed until about 10:30pm. so bex and i just hung out in the Oslo airport. took a short flight down to London and arrived there before midnight. we had to wait at the airport until the next morning when Eric's flight came in....SO, we wandered around a bit looking for a place to hide and sleep....almost all of the benches had people on them! it was crazy, finally we found an empty bench and settled in:

we didn't really want to ask anyone to take pictures of us....so you have to use your imagination and imagine these next two pictures together as one. we had 2 seats each :) comfy.

so after our LOVELY evening at Heathrow airport (actually, we were quite blessed, because of all the fog issues they were having they gave us blankets to sleep with, free sandwiches, and cookies) we met up with Bex's friends Mez and Ryan (whom we stayed with in Nottingham) at about 8am, then waited for Eric's flight. He came in, we drove out to Nottingham & then made PIZZA for Christmas eve! now THAT made me happy.

Christmas brunch Mez and Ryan made us a FEAST! So much good food, it was crazy!

We were in Nottingham from the 24-27. Over those days we slept in, and then spent the days relaxing & wandering a bit around Nottingham. like the time we ran into Robin Hood:

the view from our window

playing settlers! YES family, i played and didn't do too bad!

Bex and I...roomies

Nottingham at night

on the 27th we had to go to Birmingham to get Eric a new visa for Thailand. so Mez and Ryan lent us their car & Bex bravely and confidently (as you can see in the picture) drove us there. the Embassy was only open from 8-11:30am and b/c of car insurance issues we only left Nottingham by 9am. The drive was only supposed to take an hour......buuuuuuuuut we got a little lost and after a lot of searching we found the building and rushed in there 15minutes before they closed. the processing only took like 5minutes, so it all ended up good and Eric got his visa.

what my lap looked like on the drive there and back

WHERE IS THIS PLACE?????

after our adventure to Birmingham we came back to Nottingham and then caught a train down to London! here are some of the sites of london:

they don't like you feeding their birds alcohol

haha, ok, so that's Buckingham Palace and i look delirious

you can't see it too clearly...but it's a picture of a cross walk for horses.

LUKE BERGEN: we took this picture for YOU. can you find in it London??

the FRONT of Westminster Abby

sometimes Bex goes into fits of rage and then ends up in tears......ok, really her camera battery died and she was in mourning.

BIG BEN

the Tower of London

the new and the old

the London Bridge

Where's Waldo (aka where's bex?) piccadilly circus...INSANE

didn't want to waste a cent :)

Eric had an interesting convo with Sarah Michelle Gellar, she was kind of rude.

and i met Spider Man

it rained, it poured

Peter Pan!

there was a bag of coins behind the Peter Pan statue...we were confused by it, so we just left it.

Eric left the morning of the 31 & in the evening Bex and i met up with Mez and Ryan again, got dressed up and went to a ball for new years eve :)

we're afraid and intimidated

after the ball we spent another night at heathrow airport & left at 8:30am. we arrived in Oslo and look at little bex, no sleep and she still looks beautiful :)

ok, i'm so sick of working on this blog right now..kafsakljajfdkanvaewklfawjeflsdfasfa.....ok, ok, i'm OOOOOK!

anyways, so we took a train from Oslo down to the Grimerud base for a conference, we were reunited with everyone, i got to talk with other Canadians (Laura Hedlin for example :)) it was busy, but good. on the 5th we all flew back up to Tromsø . yesterday and today we've been getting ready for leaving tomorrow (got that?) and that sums it all up!!

this is what my room looks like right now:

a couple of us caught a bad cold, so if you guys could pray for quick recover, it's appreciated. tomorrow morning we're leaving at 9am for Kautokeino! woo! run run run!!

much love, mel