Valentine's Day Update

I know it's a week after the fact, but I need to give credit where credit is due.

The three fellas from our team stepped up to the plate and hit a grand slam with us ladies last Thursday. So here's the story....

On Tuesday, the 12th we received a note on our door letting us know the "distinguished gentlemen of the Sweden STINT team" would be meeting us "honorable women" at 6:15pm sharp for a night of "fine dining and fun"....

OK fastforward to VDAY.

We wake up to the guys in our kitchen making us eggs, toast and pancakes! How amazing! So we're thinking, that's it. The note was just a trick. This is what they're doing for us... but NO!

They tell us at breakfast we should probably still be dressed up "just in case".

6:15 rolls around and our "distinguished gentlemen" show up in dress pants and sports jackets! We head into town and they end up taking us to "Domtrappen", "The Church Basement" for dinner. We're talking one of the top 3 nicest restuarants in all of Uppsala! We had our own cave-like section to ourselves, no one around. We were each assigned a fella and they wined and dined us. It was an incredible evening! They loved on us well.

Enjoy the pics and be jealous of our fellas!

Our wonderful guys cooking up a masterpiece!

Our AMAZING dinner!

Me and JRo all dressed up!

All smiles after an incredile vday!

Weekend in Bristol

This past weekend I was able to attend a conference in Bristol, England with our organization. The conference gathered more than 150 students from all over Western Europe for a weekend of fellowship, training, and sharing their faith. I had 3 incredible students join me from Sweden. Friday evening a fellow, Duncan, spoke on Luke 19:1-10. We took a look at what Jesus did in making disciples.

Here are some points mentioned:
*Jesus always drew a crowd, even if they don't agree, they can't stay away-they want to see.
*Jesus drew unlikely people. Hold out the Gospel to everyone - don't you, yourself, decide if they're going to be "receptive" or if they should get to hear it or not. (Here, Duncan told us that he was the unlikeliest of people to become a Christian, but after 18 months of being pursued by believers and asking questions, he came into a relationship with Christ).
*Jesus goes after lost people - He enters their world... He doesn't expect/wait for them to come into His world
*Jesus revolutionizes lives - people were radically changed when they meet Him.

In the end we find that Jesus' mission was found in verse 10...
"the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost."

If we, as believers, are becoming more and more like Christ, then we too are here to seek and save the lost.... what a thought to be in on this priviledge.

Here's a few pics from the weekend....

Me with my Swedish girls: Kristin, Myself, Satu, and Emmelie
Worship in English... yay!
Kristin, myself, Emmelie
With one of my favorite girls, Katherine, from the Salerno, Italy team
A little taste of home :)

Love actually

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!

In honor of this day of love, I thought I'd share with you one of my favorite scenes of love. It's the opening scene from "Love Actually". I love the line at the end...

"If you look for it, I've got a sneeky feeling you'll find that LOVE actually is all around..."

First Entry should be a funny right?

So I've finally given in to writing a blog. I'll be honest, I don't know if I'll be keeping up with it as much as I hope but we'll take it one day at a time. I never know what to write, I think that's why for so long I didn't have one. What do people actually care to know about my everyday life in Sweden anyway? And then today something funny and possibly blog-worthy happened. So here it is.... the first entry :)


Today my new favorite friend, Jessie came over for a little visit. She asked me, Stylist to the Stars, to dye her hair dark from the lovely blond it was. (This girl is beautiful and can pull off
any color by the way). I decided I'd go ahead and join her and dye my hair as well. She
was up first and it came out amazing if I do say so myself. As she began drying her hair,
I went ahead and put the dye in my hair. Fast forward 30 minutes. Hair is ready to be
washed out. For those of you not accustomed to hair dying procedure after dying you must
first rinse the dye out and then put in the conditioner they provide for you. So I rinse the
dye no problem.

Now 2 things you need to know before the story continues:
1. The hair dye I was using was a 2 part dye kit. First a dye for the whole head, and then a highlighting kit that's seperate.
2. All the instructions/labels are in Swedish.

OK so now we go on to putting the conditioner in. At this point there are 2 bottles and a package of powder left. One bottle is conditioner, the other mixes with the powder to make the highlighting dye. So I reach and grab the bottle that looks like the conditioner and put it all in my hair. I remember thinking it looked a little running, but it was still white and pretty thick so it had to be the conditioner. About that time my friend, Lael, who speaks Swedish came to check on the hair process. Something inside me pushed me to ask Lael what the bottle said, just to make sure it was conditioner. She reads and proceeds to tell me it is in fact the chemical bottle that goes with the highlighting powder! I immediately beginning trying to shampoo it out. She goes on to read the back which says the first ingredient is none other than, hydrogene peroxide!
Again for those who don't know, it's basically straight BLEACH! At this point I'm freaking out, imagining I'm going to have some crazy cheetah print hair color. All my roommates, plus Jess and Lael are watching the events unfold (this means 5 of us are squeezed into the bathroom). After several minutes of rinsing, washing, correctly conditioning the hair, we waited and watched, praying my hair would remain dark and splotches of blond wouldn't show through.

Praise the Lord it didn't. But wow what a crazy few minutes. Just another memory from living in Sweden....

Bless