Missionary Work in Mexico

My daughter, Meghann, has just finished her DTS with YWAM San Diego-Baja and is starting her Outreach Phase tomorrow. She will be preaching in Mexico City about "Identity" and sharing her testimony along with practical work that expresses the love of Jesus to people who have not encountered His life changing love. Megs and her two children, Shya (5 yrs) and Hunter (3 yrs) will be able to experience this together which I think is a wonderful blessing! I love that my grandchildren are carrying on the family call to the nations!

Here is an update in Meghann's own words:

"Buenos dias" from Tijuana! We are blessed to inform you that after 12 weeks of Discipleship Training School, we are ready for outreach! I have grown so much closer in relationship with the Lord through my class lessons. Its so amazing to be living in the freedom of the Lord! He has exchanged the unholiness I had in my heart for purity, He has showed me what true love is, as a Bride of Christ, through the intimacy of hearing His voice and quiet times. I have traded my orphan spirit for a Heavenly inheritance and living daily in the truth that I am a child of God! He has been my provider for all I need- whether it be spiritually or physically. I am completely in love with God and am whole in Him. One of the best things I've learned is that the mistakes I've made in the past don't determine my value, my true value is just simply in knowing God and His love! Having intimacy with Him and reading His Word daily is so transforming that my identity stays firm in Him and having that Fear is so healthy and is awesome!!!! I now have 8 weeks to bless others with what I've learned. The kids and I will be going to Mexico City for two weeks to serve a church through doing a Kid's Camp & teaching a sermon on "Identity" and will give my testimony in the Sunday service and be evangelizing locally as well. Then we'll be back in Tijuana for the remainder to help out with ministries here. I will be helping in the Women's Prison, tutor English & Math to the poor youth in Circulo Andante Ministry, and also be a part of the Zone Kids Ministry that reaches out to the kids of the Red Light district community in Tijuana with Bible stories & crafts & games at the local park. We ask that you please keep us in your prayers as we commit our lives to showing God's great love to those in need! Thank you for your support and God bless! :) 

Please prayerfully consider sponsoring Megs for her Outreach by clicking on this link: Support Megs

Please search for her name (Meghann Walden) and follow the link to donate.

Blessings from our family to yours!

Good Things To Pray Over Oneself

I have a friend in Columbus, Ohio who is a man of integrity. He is just one of those guys who has an unshakable faith that really challenges me.  His name is Scott Osborne. This is his list of prayer points to pray over himself and I've decided to do this, as well.  Please consider joining me and making this a prayer-focus for your life for this season.

Dear Lord…

1. Please reveal any unconfessed sin in my life. 
2. Please forgive me of my sins. 
3. Please show me the way to escape every temptation and help me to choose Your alternative every time.
4. Please give me victory in areas of my life where I am weak.
5. Please help me to guard my eyes and ears.
6. Please help me to take care of my body; to eat, rest, and exercise with the discipline that will produce health and stamina. Help me to avoid self-indulgences and excess.
7. Please teach me how to pray. 
8. Please give me a desire to pray. Help me to become a prayer warrior…a true intercessor. Please help me discipline myself to pray and help me to pray instantly as You direct. 
9. Please help me to know You better and help me do my part to know You.
10. Please help me to have a deepening love for You.
11. Please help me to love Your Word and to discipline myself to daily read and study Your Word. 
12. Please help me to always, and only, allow Your Word to be interpreted to me through Your Holy Spirit.
13. Please help me consecrate my life to You each day.* Help me to be different, not distracted by or conformed to the things of this world.
14. Please help me budget my time according to Your priorities for me.
15. Please help me to be sensitive to Your Spirit. Help me to hear You in every way You communicate with me. Please help me trust that I hear You and act on it by faith. Help me not to ignore You when I don’t want to hear You.
16. Please help me to stop living by habit and start relying upon You for guidance on a moment-by-moment basis.
17. Please help me be self-governed to obey what You tell me to do. Please help me show my love for You through my obedience.
18. Please help me walk in righteousness, patterning my thoughts and behaviors after the character of Jesus.
19. Please help me walk in Your purposes for my life. Help me aspire to be only what You want me to be, nothing more, and nothing less. 
20. Please help me to be humble, never forgetting that I am nothing apart from You. Help me walk in the reality that my confidence and worth come from Christ in me.
21. Please help me only to seek validation and approval from You.
22. Please help me to understand and embrace Your power and authority in my life.* Please show me how to access Your power and authority to do Your will.
23. Please give me Your burden for the people in my life.* Please show me how to pray for them according to Your will and not according to mine.
24. Please help me forgive offenses done to me and to my loved ones.
25. Please help me not to be critical or judgmental. Help me to see others through Your eyes.
26. Please give me divine wisdom,* knowledge, understanding, and discernment to affect the way I think, speak, and behave.
27. Please help me to hold my tongue and my actions until I believe I have Your guidance from above.  Only then do I want to speak and act.*
28. Please help me to talk less and to be a better listener. Help me digest and retain what I hear.
29. Please help me to be Your ambassador of love. Please show me how to consistently express Your love to others. May Your love inside me open the door for others to know You more.
30. Please help me allow your joy to consume me. May the joy of the Lord govern my thoughts and emotions. Help me convey genuine, internal joy to the world around me. 
31. Please help me not to cause others to stumble or miss You. 
32. Please give me a greater burden for the lost. Help me to have a sincere, Godly sorrow for those who are lost and dying. Please don’t allow me to overlook anyone with whom I have contact. Help me not to dismiss any person who needs to know You or needs a touch from You. Please show me how to reach the lost and give me Your favor with them.*
33. Please help me to be bold in sharing and declaring what I know about You.
34. Please help me to be trustworthy with the keys to Your kingdom. I understand that I have a responsibility to help unlock the kingdom for those who need to enter. I also understand that I have a responsibility to prevent abominable things from defiling Your kingdom.
35. Please help me to be a true worshipper.
36. May You be glorified in me.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. 

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits (Ps. 103:1-2, KJV). 

Blessed be the King who is eternal, imperishable, and invisible, the only God there is – let there be honor and glory to Him forever and ever (1 Tim. 1:17, CJB). 

Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might, be unto our God forever and ever. Amen (Rev. 7:12).

* Inspired by Pastor Torry Gligora’s Prayer Challenge, April 23, 2006

* Please feel free to email me at rjwalden@earthlink.net for the scriptures that go along with each point.

Check out Scott's app called The App of Blessings here

40th Birthday for Norwegian Royalty

The Crown Prince and Crown Princess both turn 40 this year. The Postal service celebrates this anniversary with four different stamps. More information can be found on the website.

Click here for more info about Norwegian Royalty

Beautiful Babies!

This is a video from the preschool my grandchildren, Shya and Hunter, attend at the YWAM base in Baja, Mexico. Enjoy!

Happy Syttende Mai!

Happy National Day to Norway!

Gratulere til hele Norge!

I Miss These People, Places & Things

I'm back home in Utah after spending seven weeks in Norway. The mountains are green and beautiful here and I have enjoyed spending time with Spencer and Chaddy BUT I really, really miss these people, places and things......

Megs, Shya and Hunter @ YWAM San Diego/Baja, Mexico

Elin @ Del Coronado Beach, Coronado, California

Ann Elisabeth & Ivar from Kristiansand, Norway

Astrid & Helga from Bryne, Norway

The Lighthouse on Flekkerøya, Norway

Syttende Mai - Norway's National Day on Flekkerøya, Norway

Knekkebrød, the best thing ever!

Alt for Norge!

'Nuff Said.....

Jenta mi

This is my granddaughter Shya and I think she is glorious. She is in Mexico with her mom and brother participating with the All Nations, All Generations DTS. This is her new 'pet' - - a cricket. You can see from her shining eyes that she is very proud of him. Shya has the kind of heart that is quick to love and see beauty in all things, even the smallest creatures. She chimed up a wee while ago that she knew what she wanted to be when she grew up. Her mom asked what that might be and Shya answered, "A worship leader!" 

There is a 24/7 prayer and worship room on the base that connects with IHOP in Kansas City. Shya asks her mom to take her there all the time and I think that's remarkable for a five year old. During her first visit to the prayer room, her mom looked up to discover that Shya had the microphone and was singing, "Jesus loves us and He knows just what we need." I think this is remarkable AND glorious!

Shya comes from a line of  Norwegian women who were intercessors and worshipers. Her great-great-grandmother was from Austad, Norway and she was a lover of Jesus, an intercessor, pastor and teacher. Her great-gramdmother is a praying woman who stands for Jesus no matter the pressures around her. She also has a worshiping, praying mother who has a heart for the nations and the oppressed. She is the fifth generation of worshipers and I am so proud and blessed to see the Light of Jesus shining in her eyes. 

Today, I am overflowing with thankfulness for a patient and loving Father who has freed us from a legacy of sin because of the blood of His Son and who has made a way for Shya to stand firm in an inheritance that is unshakable. Run with all your heart, Shya, after the purposes of God! May you love Him more and more each day and discover the truth that He is a treasure more valuable than anything you will ever know in this life-time!

Jeg elsker deg, jenta mi

Open Ancient Doors ~ King of Love & Glory Come!

“The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. "Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest "well pleased".”  C.S. Lewis

“You turn dark shadows into canopies of hope and dry grass into gold. My heart is spoiled and my breath consumed when the beauty of earth gives a glimmer of understanding to the beauty of You.”  ~ Amy Litzelman

“God has no needs. Human love, as Plato teaches us, is the child of Poverty – of want or lack; it is caused by a real or supposed goal in its beloved which the lover needs and desires. But God's love, far from being caused by goodness in the object, causes all the goodness which the object has, loving it first into existence, and then into real, though derivative, lovability. God is Goodness. He can give good, but cannot need or get it. In that sense , His love is, as it were, bottomlessly selfless by very definition; it has everything to give, and nothing to receive.”  C.S. Lewis

Waiting for the door to open...

Rustling Rumors

I am yearning for something more and there are rumors rustling inside my spirit that this is the beginning of a journey....

Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. At present we are on the outside… the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the pleasures we see. But all the pages of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get “in”… We will put on glory… that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch. We do not want to merely “see” beauty–though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.  C.S. Lewis

Pathway of Hope

Flowers in the Rock: Death to Self

Show Me How To Die

You could plant me like a tree beside a river

You could tangle me in soil and let my roots run wild

And I would blossom like a flower in the desert

But for now just let me cry

You could raise me like a banner in a battle

Put victory like a fire behind my shining eyes

And I would drift like falling snow over the embers

But for now just let me lie

Bind up these broken bones

Mercy bend and breathe me back to life

But not before You show me how to die

Set me like a star before the morning

Like a song that steals the darkness from a world asleep

And I'll illuminate the path You've laid before me

But for now just let me be

Bind up these broken bones

Mercy bend and breathe me back to life

But not before You show me how to die

Oh, not before You show me how to die

So let me go like a leaf upon the water

Let me brave the wild currents flowing to the sea

And I will disappear into a deeper beauty

But for now just stay with me

God, for now just stay with me

(Sarah Hart & Audrey Assad)

                           Click here to listen to "Show Me"

Interesting 'Tings' About Norway

Anyone who knows me well recognizes that Norway and I are having a most wonderful love affair. Every now and again, however, I catch a glimpse of some things that make me smile so I have compiled a list of Norway's peccadilloes for you to enjoy. American friends, have fun but be gracious. Norwegian friends, please cover your ears and close your eyes for a wee moment. I'll be back to my exuberant, devoted self soon.

1. What happened to 'th'? It seems to have gone away with the leprechauns because Ireland does the same thing, I mean ting. It's so incredibly cute when powerful, anointed leaders say, "And anodder ting happened...." Irresistible and I love it!

2. The toilet paper is unkind. It is mostly still bark. American toilet paper is softer than Norwegian bath towels (sun-dried, of course) so I'd say we're pretty spoiled on that score.

3. There are very few bathtubs in this country. I can think of one friend who actually has one but judging by the laundry and towels sitting in it, I'd say it goes unused. What a shame. I would probably sell my own mother to have a warm bath right now. I think Norwegians are so stoic that the thought of sitting down to bathe would be too comfortable and time-consuming.

4. Everything is SO expensive here. Ask Sharon. A McDonald's Happy Meal costs the same as a steak dinner at home. With all the cars, boats, sea cabins, mountain cabins, and gorgeous clothing owned by the average Norwegian, I think they can afford it. For an American Missionary of meager means, it is daunting. Jeg er sulten.

5. What's up with the language and its 100 dialects? I want so desperately to learn how to communicate here but how am I supposed to know the difference between one potato or three potatoes at the back of my throat? Or when to roll the r or obfuscate it completely until it is mostly a growl? When I tried to say something in Stavanger once, I was accused of speaking Chinese. Now, that's pretty far off target, I'd say. Also, if you speak a Norwegian word in the presence of ten Norwegians, you will receive ten enthusiastic corrections according to each dialect. Jeg er håpløs.

6. Speaking of håpløs.....Why are Norwegians so angry at their 'o' that they want to strike it out? In America it would mean NOT to say the 'o', right?

7. The washer and dryer scenario here is bleak. Really bleak. Like a good Norwegian, the dryers don't feel it's worth their time to dry anything so everything comes out warm and wet. I think the dryers would rather have you hang it out in the sun where it belongs. The washing machines are teeny tiny wee tings. They can accommodate one pair of jeans, a t-shirt and one sock.  (Big points to you, Astrid, for your beautiful American washer and dryer! My pants love you for that!)

8. Chocolate distribution, which is supposed to be so valuable a part of society that it is available upon request, is relegated to Saturdays in Norway. This is part of an actual conversation: "Would you like a piece of chocolate, Ivar?" "No, it's only Wednesday." And he meant it. It's the 11th Commandment and dutiful Norwegians don't break it for fear of punishment. I'm not exactly sure who is doing the punishing but it is a heinous crime to break the Chocolate Sabbath Rule.

9. Norwegians are jet-propelled and they walk everywhere. Good luck trying to keep up with a Norwegian, or a Seevinck, for that matter. My Norwegian grandmother could motor her way around the Mall, let me tell you! I remember thinking she was bionic when I was a child because she could go so fast. She marched up and down hills to the store and back until the day she died in her late 80s. She was a marvel. Also, Elevator is a four-letter word in Norwegian. Just sayin'

10. And last but not least, where do they keep the ice around here? Really, McDonald's dude, will plopping one mostly-still-watery ice cube into my cup actually cool down my Pepsi Max? Is it because Norway is a cold climate zone that you have an aversion to ice? Did your (my) ancestors get so tired of trudging through snow that you just can't bring yourself to embrace the idea of a cold soda? I wouldn't mind so much if the store refrigerators kept the temperature cold enough to chill the drink but, alas, that is too much to hope for. If you see a woman desperately clawing through the Pepsi Max bottles searching for the ONE that may have been put in there first and has the best chance of being the coldest, THAT'S ME! I am an expert at finding it. My addiction drives me.

Ok, so that is a list of ten tings that I mostly love about Norway. Vivien is probably the only other person who thinks this stuff is hilarious, by the way. If she gets a laugh out of this then I'm happy.

The next list will be all of the awesome things that make Norway so easy to love.

Ja, jeg vil elsker dette landet!

MISSIONARY SPIRIT

It gives me great joy to announce that five out of the six members of my household are now missionaries serving in the nations. My daughter, Megs, and her two children, Shya (5 yrs) and Hunter (3 yrs) are headed to YWAM-Baja to start the All Nations, All Generations DTS. They will live on the Baja campus for five months and then participate in an Outreach either within Mexico or perhaps Eastern Europe. We will find out as the time progresses and the Lord directs Megs' decisions.  You can learn more about YWAM-Baja here

(If you'd like to contribute to Megs' support, email thelordismystrength@rocketmail.com)

Please pray for Meghann and my grandchildren as they begin this amazing adventure with Jesus. The missionary experience is not for the faint of heart. It is for those who are passionate for seeing cultures changed into Kingdom cultures and it requires many sacrifices along the way. Living in faith is an adventure all of its own and I rejoice to see how the Lord has already provided for Megs.

We will be in Norway for another two months and have loved being back in the Motherland. We have set aside the first weeks to work on a recording (a 'soaking' worship CD) and we are looking forward to hearing the final product. 

Please continue to pray for protection and anointing for all of us as we minister abroad and also for Chaddy who is at home in Utah holding down the fort and keeping Spencer, the dog, happy and cared for.

Shya and Hunter wearing their Norwegian Bunad, the National Dress

Our island home, Flekkerøy

Blessings to you and Happy Easter (God Påske!)

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ALT for NORGE!

We are back again in the Motherland, this time for about three months.

We will enjoy Easter and 17th of May, two wonderful holidays in Norway.

This is Flekkerøy (outside of Kristiansand), our island home when we are here.

It is lovely and peaceful and I enjoy being here so much.

Vivien has been recording a 'soaking' CD and is finishing up with bits and pieces so that Per Kjetil Farstad can master and mix the project. It has been a privilege to pray through this project with such beautiful, excellent and anointed musicians. There were times during the spontaneous sessions that I couldn't do anything but weep, it was so amazing!  I will post pics in a couple of days.

Please pray for this beautiful city, a city in my heart.

I love Kristiansand, I have family history here,

and I believe the Lord is going to do something amazing!

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it; for he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the rivers. Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully. They will receive blessing from the Lord, and vindication from the God of their salvation. Such is the company of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Selah 

Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the King of glory may come in. Who is the King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.Selah ~ Psalm 24

Jeg elsker deg, Norge!


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