My View

The start of a new year always gets me thinking, evaluating the year that’s gone. And it makes me pray and think about the coming year as well. Last year (2005) has been an interesting year.

When I spent some time in prayer before 2005 I felt the Lord say to me that 2005 would be a year of (slowly) increasing fruit, and (slowly) increasing resistance in my work as one of the leaders of the Oasis movement in Finland (in Swedish, link here). Increasing fruit, what could that be?

Increasing fruit

My vision and dream for the last few years has been connecting/building a network of people who have a vision to see God doing someting more in the Lutheran church of Finland. During the last year a lot has happened in this field:

• First and foremost our 3rd child, Daniel, was born on July 15th, 2005. I feel extremely blessed by all my children, they’re all great personalities!
• First conference for church staff in February, 2005 with a team from St Thomas Church, Sheffield, UK and Denmark (Willer, Holmgaard & Søndergaard)
• Met with and huddled leaders and pastors in various parts of the country; at least Helsinki, Kokkola and Turku.
• A growing number of participants in our network meetings
• Joined The Order of Mission together with my wife. Count this as a blessing.
• Established Figtive Works Ltd, a publishing company that is going to publish Lifeshapes in the Nordic countries.
• God has developed the business (Jaagon) he helped us (I am a partner) start 4,5 years ago. This year has been a year of steady growth for us, with an increase in turnover of about 25 %.

So a big thank you to all the people I’ve had the privilege of working with during the past year. Enjoyed it!

Growing resistance

The main resistance for me up to this point has been sickness. My appendix burst in the last weeks of September. Could have been fatal, but thank God I’m alive. After this someone in my immediate family (me + wife & 3 kids) has been ill for the last 3 months in a row. Our baby Daniel is in his 3rd round of infections, with trouble breathing during the nights.

It seems that putting on the TOM uniform (figuratively speaking) has led to an assault on health. Many friends all over the world seem to be struggling with this as well. One friend who is on the top of my mind at the moment is Andrew Dowsett, a member of TOM, who has seen his sister Rachel have a brain tumour at the age of 27. Please pray for the Dowsett family. I would also appreciate your prayers for me and my family, to get a breakthrough and relief in our health situation.

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I’ve decided to enter the world of blogs, much to my wife’s demise.

This blog will hopefully evolve into something about me, about my work, about my views on life and issues bigger than life.

We’ll see.

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