cant stand being.

Ive been so blessed during the last few days.
(allthough school started, but maybe that can be a blessing as well)

I love my new apparment. eventhough I still havent got a lot of my own stuff in.
but living with tytti and milka feels really good. yesterday we had a relaxed talk,
and the girls prayed for me and my praguetrip (the CE meeting there. http://www.connecteurope.org.) I was over-blessed :)
God spoke and encouraged. through obedience comes blessing, He will provide,
dont need to look to the circumtances and so on. and also strenghtening my inner being.
Father, strenghten the laura I am.

also, I met my muslimfriend from emirates on the msn. so I have been chatting with him a bit.
still gives me a heavy heart and lack of words to pray.
Jesus, open the eyes of a man born blind.
luckily Jesus has awesome plans for him. cant wait to see them come true.
I yearn to live prophetically in this as well. and defenitely need the wisdom from the Father to speak. in acts Steven speaks in such a wisdom in the Spirit, that no one knows what to say. that is what I think would be needed in meeting muslims. (meaning the knowledge loving muslims) otherwise it is only debating on religions.
and again then, the question comes, is it to better act in the old as long as you are learning the new, or not to act at all. in Jesus are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. may they be freed in my life.

also met with petra (http://www.followingtheway.blogspot.com). that was great!
hadnt seen her in ages. not since london and interrail. we shared and prayed about prague.
she and niina are actually at the moment on their way to go there. I am beginning to be very very excited about it. well, I´ll be on my way tomorrow as well.

you know the feeling, when you are so blessed and happy, that you can hardly be.

I have a hard time keeping myself together cause I feel such a joy of all the things going on.

during the last week..

..I have struggled with my lack of love

..I have realized the difference in living according to your own thoughts, or according to some commandments that come from other people and letting the Spirit guide you. I defenitely will want to ask Jesus how to fill my calendar and how to use my time.
weird thing is, that eventhough you might realize that some decision has not been the best, its so hard to change the direction, and then you just end up making more bad decisions.

Father, thank you that even in my weakness I am lovely.

something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.

my friend emma is getting married next sunday. and tomorrow we are going to helsinki to pick up a french guy from the airport. he is coming to the wedding. we got to know marc through an OM campaign in france couple of years a go. and I have promised to take care of him during this week before the wedding.

the weirdest thing happened today- I got a phone call from pakistan. dont know who it was who tried to call me. I answered too late, and when I called them back the only thing I heard from the other end was : hello, hello, hello. maybe the line wasnt working well. hopefully that someone calls again, it would be nice to know someone from pak :) I could even say hello to them in urdu.

I saw my dearest dearest hanna today. prayed, shared, shopped, ate.
thank you Jesus for sisters in you.
we talked for example about prophetic lifestyles and how to do it in practise.
then asked Jesus how we could do it in practise.
hanna saw an old oil lamp and though of the passage about how no one puts alight on a lamp and then hides it, so living prophetically (is that a word?!) would kind of be deciding to live in the light in different situations, willingly deciding to speak the truth out and kind of like putting yourself out there. (unfortunately I am not capable of explaining the idea nearly as good as hanna did..)
also Jesus spoke about giving out lives as sacrifices (romans 12:1), and that whoever is led by the spirit is Gods child. and also that when we do just what he commands us to do the lifestyle springs up from that.

let the children come

just had a nice talk with my brothers daughter, lotta 9-years old. it started from a card I had drawn. there was a Bible verse from the corinthians about how there can be no other foundation than Jesus. so I explained to her what it means, and we started to talk. lotta has a friend, who is a muslim, so we talked about that for a while, and how we can be sure about going to heaven by trusting in Jesus. lotta also wondered, is she really believes or not, cause she doesnt think about God so much during the day. she just plays :) and then, we talked about hearing the voice of God. oh Jesus, make her a woman of God!

living, moving and having my being

nice days in helsinki, I was really waiting for my time here, cause there are so many tourists cause of the worldchampionshipgames. I hoped I could meet people ant get the chance to talk english.
and Jesus did actually have some nice things for me :)

tuesday:

I hed to the town. think about taking the bus, but the bus doesnt come. so I get the train.
I checked if there maybe would be some foreigners in the car, and there was.
so I sat opposite them. and a moment goes, then we start talking. the two women are from barbados, and are mothers of some athletes. we talk about the nature in barnados and in finland. in the end I decide I'll give them a card I drew with a Bible verse on it.
and it just so happens that the women are christians. so I get invited to barbados and we change e-mail addresses.

later I still get the chance to translate a finnish e-mail to one guy in the library. small lovely things.

also had coffee with my dear friend lotta. had a really great churchmeeting there :) talked about the church, our lives and so on.

wednesday:

my friend maija from lahti came to visit me. just hanged around in the town, went to see the prayerroom and checked the earth from above-exhibition. relationships are nice.

thursday:

theres a girl from germany in the bus. we start talking, and change e-mails. I get invited to germany. invited in to two countries in three days. great, and doesnt happen to me too often.

I have coffee with my muslimfriend ahmed. at a turkish coffeeplace. there really was a nice kurdish man working there. had a bit of a talk with him as well. maybe I could go there again some day.
almost got a bit frustrated cause of all the talk about religion with ahmed. the question in my mind (one of the many) still is is it better to act in the old, or not to act at all.
cause I know that talking with muslims I really need and yearn something new, but well. maybe this is learning by doing and trying to figure out little by little how things work out in the Kingdom. somethimes it is just so hard when I realize how stuck I am in some old mindsets.

after coffee with ahmed I see my dear friend sanna, and we end up talking about the same things again. church, baptism, christians and so on. it´s quite exciting to see God stirring up the same things in different people.
later the same evening we end up sitting a while with two guys in their living room. sitting there, drinking wine from my plastic cup I really ponder how to get through to these people. to really meet them, love them, not to judge them and show the reality of Jesus to them.

I defenitely have a longing in my heart to live life differently this autumn. dont know quite yet what it would be in practise. luckily Jesus knows.

friday:

God speaks to me through ants :) there was a small girl at the bus stop singing a song about ants, and then on the bus I suddenly saw there was an ant climbing at my leg. and even one point it was in my hair. it got me to read from proverbs;

go to the ant, you sluggard: consider its ways and be wise! it has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. pr6:6

ants are creatures of little strenght yet they store up their food in the summer. pr30:25

Jesus, grant me the mercy that I wouldnt be a sluggard, that I could be obedient to you, disciplined. and give me the wisdom to gather and store all the things I will need for the winter.


and then, finally. as I arrive to lahti with train I spot the two guys at the railwaystation. (the ones from the livingroom on thursday :)) and I end up having them a bit more on my heart. Jesus, you can do something, cant you?

Ive been kind of thinking

recently Ive been reading New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton. and it really makes me think :) one of the paragraphs that speaks to me is;

The saint knows that the world and everything made by God is good,
while those who are not saints either think that created things are unholy,
or else they dont bother about the question one way or another
because they are only interested in themselves.
The eyes of the saint make all beauty holy
and the hands of the saint consecrate everything they touch to the glory of God,
and the saint is never offended by anything
and judges no mans sin because he does not know sin.
He knows the mercy of God.
He knows that his own mission on earth is to bring that mercy to all men.


couple of days later:
it still makes me think. stirres something in me. and gets a whole new dimension when I am sitting in a livingroom with people who are a bit high and are telling stories how they broke the law .
Jesus, tell me how to do this!

feeling the fall

actually I would prefer using the british word, autumn, but I kind of like the sentence cause it has two meanings. not that I am actually feeling any kind of falling. well yeah, anyways. today I slept really late. read a magazine wich had some info on the religious situation in former soviet countries and some about israel. had a bit of a cry cause of the hopelesness I feel in me and cause the love Father has for them. sensed the summer starting to change to the autumn. ate some gooseberries. went to the library and borrowed couple of books about all the countries of the world. so nothing much achieved today. just happy being.

God makes things grow

back home after one and a half a month. have to say, it feels good.
allthough at the same time it feels grazy, cause I just run into this weblog, where a mission team is going around in europe and doing stuff, meeting people and praying. http://sohowiseurope.blogspot.com. had a hard time keeping my heart in. it wanted to leap out and fly to all those places with those people. Jesus, it seriously is something I so much want to do some day!
well, maybe this summer was a good start. practising. and at least I know where I want to go back to. Streets of Amsterdam and Ljubljana are defenitely places I could imagine being, sharing with people, praying with a team and so on. well, God only knows.

so, it was a good trip for me. from england to france, romania, bulgaria, turkey, greece, italy, slovenia, austria, netherlands, germany, denmark and sweden. many different kind of people, histories, landscapes, athmospheres and so on. still kind of har to put my finger on how it affected me, but I am quite sure it did. lets see how it bears fruit in the future. the seeds are sown.