Worship Matters

Anyone want to give my presentation on the German Heritage of Texans in my Conversational Business German class at the Helsinki Main Business School IN German on Thursday? No takers…not surprised.

I started reading the book “Worship Matters” by Bob Kauflin today. I have been waiting on Jere to finish it in order to have my turn. 2 chapters in and my heart has already been broken. Bob and his wife were at dinner with a pastor friend and his wife. Bob told the friend about how hopeless he was feeling even while leading worship. The friend said, “I don’t think you’re hopeless enough.” I read that and it hit me that the times that I break through to higher and deeper understandings of God’s love is when I have slammed into a wall of hopelessness. It’s there where He picks up the pieces through the actions of family, friends, or even people who step into your life for only a moment and then disappear into the mists from whence they came. Every time I thought I was low, I had to go lower to break that part of me that was blinding me to the truth that God has set out in front of me, the love that He had put into my life, and the path that He has forged for me. I have to understand Who I love, and love Him above all else, and THEN I can love others. My idols are the darkness before my eyes, who I THINK I am is stone to which I am tied, and uncertainty is the chain that has bound my hands and feet and gagged my mouth. So may it be done to me as God wills.

Back Pain

So, I hurt my back last Thursday during Liikuntakerho. I was jumping around and falling on the hard, wooden floor of the gym in which we were playing tag, “hippa”. I have been taking it as easy as possible, and have been trying to get as much sympathy from Jere and family back home as possible. I think that I’m gonna lay down on the floor again. That seems to help a bit. Hopefully, it will be gone by the time I have to go to class on Thursday. But hey, I got my Valentine’s package from home today, and am trying to not eat all of the sunflower seeds in one sitting.

First Newsletter of 2010

Terveisin Suomesta! Greetings from Finland! Here is what has been happening since my last newsletter. Well, the short rundown is…Christmas with the Sivonens, New Year’s in Lapland, Gospel Cinema ministry, Liikuntakerho kid’s activity play club, Espoo House-Church, and my new university course in Helsinki. I wrote a newsletter just before Christmas giving a sneak peek of my plans of the holidays. Now, after experiencing it and looking back, I can hit the high points. And…here we go.
The Sivonens, the career family here in Finland, invited me over for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We had a blending of Finnish and American Christmas customs that I found interesting and that the kids found profitable. Starting with the meal, Mikko’s mother, Maria, and sister, Tuija, came over and we had the Finnish Christmas dinner minus the ham. Turkey was on menu instead, but it came with what are called laatikot, boxes. We had 3 different kinds, potato, carrots and rice, and some other “mush” of which I missed the name. The really Finnish part of the meal was the appetizer. I don’t remember what it is called, but the ingredients are easy enough to describe. First, you take a piece of toast, slap a little mayonnaise on top, sprinkle some diced onion on, get a piece of smoked and salted, uncooked salmon (better than it sounds) lay on the mayo-onion bed, and then top it all off with…caviar. Yessir, caviar, we had the good stuff, too. Second most expensive type. The taste was indescribable, but totally worth it. Sour cream is actually the proper topping instead of mayonnaise, but I’m not a sour cream guy, so that didn’t hurt my feelings. We ate until just before it started to hurt. Then, we moved into the living room to commence the second round of the evening.
Traditionally, the gifts are given and opened on Christmas Eve. I didn’t pick up on whether the game in which we took turns opening gifts was the typical Finnish approach, but I went along with it. It pretty much meant that you have to be patient while the kids were trying to figure out how to get their presents open. Presents of note, the Sivonen boys both got guitars, Timothy, an acoustic, and Barnabas, a toy electric guitar of which “Uncle Danny” had to do repairs on right out of the box. I received music, a CD and a song book, and a shirt that is “really Finnish,” as everyone has been telling me. The funniest thing that kinda messed with my head was that I bought a Muumi doll for Priscilla, the Sivonens 16-ish month old daughter, and when it was finally opened, she held it out, smiled a humongous smile, saw that Mikko had something in his hand, turned toward him, started running, then just tossed the doll…in the air…at me. I’ll admit that I kinda knew that she would do that, but it was hilarious how it played out. (Sidenote here: Something in their apartment was attacking my sinuses. I sneezed the entire evening.) Well, after the kids went to bed, I sat with Maria, Tuija and Mikko, and we discussed lots of different subjects in English. I started to nod off, but I could still hear the conversation. I lifted my head for what would be the last time for a while, smiled at them, said something, put my head down still trying to listen, and just before slipping off, I heard the exact moment when Mikko went from speaking English to full-on Finnish. I laughed to myself right as I fell asleep. Eventually, I made it to their guestroom/office. I could already tell that I was going to be sick the next day. Whatever dust had caused me to sneeze the entire evening was destined to settle in my throat, and my nose had decided to start running away from me. Christmas morning the kids opened a few more presents for the American portion of Christmas. Afterwards, I decided to run back to my apartment to drop of my presents and get a shower before Seppo, a member of our church, came over for lunch at the Sivonens. Mikko offered me a ride, but I was confident that I had a train lined up. Yeah, “Christmas peace” means motionless here. I stood at the station for 30 minutes waiting on a train that I thought would be there much sooner (nothing was wrong with the trains…holiday traffic, public and personal, all but disappears on Christmas). I eventually got back to my part of town. I did notice that the only people out moving around were of the Muslim population of the city. I had to swallow my pride and ask for Mikko to pick me up for the return trip because the last train on Christmas stopped running while I was still cleaning up. Keep in mind that I have a full-on head cold at this point, but I still enjoyed lunch with Seppo and Mikko.
After the festivities were somewhat officially over, I got another ride back to my apartment, wished the Sivonens a restful vacation at the lake-house they were soon to be headed for, and, once back home, started preparing for my trip to Lapland. I wasn’t leaving until Sunday, the 27th, so I just tried to eat all the food that would go bad during my absence, clean up the kitchen, and pack warm clothing. I managed several new experiences on this trip. First, I took an overnight train to Kemijärvi, the city in Lapland nearest to where the group I was meeting up with was staying. That meant that I shared a cabin with a guy, but if you remember that I had a headcold, I slept most of the time. I really only interacted with him when he was asking for the extra keycard to the room. I woke up throughout the night mostly because I kept checking the time as a way to determine how close we were to Kemijärvi. It was a 13-hour trip. I tried to look out the window, but nausea has a strange way of keeping you from doing some things that you want to do. At the final stop, the guy got up, packed his gear, and headed out. I was packing up at the same time, but there was still silence, which is typical so don’t think of it as being a problem. I disembarked from the train and looked around for the station sign because I just wasn’t completely sure where I was. In Finnish, I asked this lady – who was wearing an amazing, fur coat, if this was Kemijärvi. Her positive response and smile helped straighten out a bit of the confusion that I was having. I found Jere, my roommate and leading organizer of the group I was meeting, and we took the short drive to the cabins. It wasn’t as cold as I had thought. We found a sign that said it was -14C (about +7F). Later on that same day, Jere and I went to the Pyhätunturi where the main ski slopes were. He went off on his snowboard, and I tried to get as many pictures as I could of the scenery. At one point the hills in the west looked like they were on fire. The sun was behind some thin clouds and setting behind the hills, and this gave off a red glow that caught me off guard. Keep in mind that it was about 2 pm when the sun was setting.
Once I had grown tired of taking pictures, I decided to climb the mountain. I managed to get a couple hundred feet up the mountain when I hit the snow that wasn’t packed down and with every step the snow came up to my knees. I abandoned this and did some kind of controlled jump and fall to get down the hill. I eventually met up with Jere again, and we headed back. The group were all believers and friends of Jere. We were 5 guys in the smaller cabin and 8 girls in the larger. We spent the week staying up late playing card games, sleeping late, going out into the wilderness, most of them skied, and we had evening meals together. On the Tuesday, I went with 4 of them to visit a reindeer farm. It was 5 euros to feed and take pictures of the reindeer, but now that I think of it, the way that it was set up, we could have just walked over to the reindeer without even realizing that we needed to pay. I didn’t feed the reindeer, but I took pictures of my companions feeding them. Man, it was cold…not so much the temperature itself, but the wind was blowing in that area. We stayed there until the Finns decided that it was too cold, went inside the cafe building to warm up, then went to the pulkkamäki, sledding hill. They went down just perfectly, but I, I would start out going straight, and then the turning would happen until I was going backwards and at that point, I bailed, or more accurately, I was ejected. I hope they were laughing. They tried to be supportive by saying that they had been sledding since they were young, but that didn’t keep the snow out of my face.
Anyways, on New Year’s Eve, we went to a service at the local Lutheran cathedral. It was an all-wooden building that had one design about it that frustrated me. One wall looked as though they had just randomly pieced logs vertically. I couldn’t handle the asymmetry, so I just tried to look elsewhere. The service was nice. They did that thing where you write down your concerns on a piece of paper and then put it in a basket as a symbol of giving it to God. I managed to get a yellow map color, so I wasn’t even sure what I had written after a while, but I do know that I wrote it in German, Finnish and English. Afterwards, four from our group decided to go to the Pyhätunturi to watch a special New Year’s tradition where a guy skis down the mountain with a torch and then sets off fireworks, but the rest of us went back to the cabins. When the clocks turned, we did that “we’re exhausted so we just barely acknowledge that the year just ended” thing. I did, though, walk out into the middle of the road to watch the locals fire off their own personal firework displays. One was especially good, and another was especially close to us. When the other four got back, they were a little disappointed that we weren’t as energetic as they were. So at about 1am, three of those four and I went out and shot off our own fireworks. It was a little pathetic, but it was fireworks. One girl was enjoying lighting them and then making fun of the feeble explosions. At the conclusion of the time there, the group left in rounds. I was in the last round. On the way to Oulu to drop of one of the couples, we drove past Santa’s house that was right on the Arctic Circle. After the short stop there, it was Jere and I for a 10-hour car ride to Jyväskylä. We spent the time reflecting on our lives, work with the church, and a bit of the future. I think we both enjoyed that trip back.
Now that the story-telling is somewhat finished, I guess an update on ministries is in order. First off, the Gospel Cinema ministry that we have in Helsinki has met twice so far this new year, but we are going to take a break until March 6th. The guy who heads it up has a new baby daughter, so he planned the break into the ministry. Most of the people there are a part of our church, but there are always other people who come. We really only have one, maybe two, unbelievers who come to the showings. We do distribute flyers at a Metro entrance near the university, but it seems that posters in the local churches seems to have been more effective. Pray that we can initiate contact with unbelievers as we seem to have assumed a role of supporting believers from other denominations in this ministry.
Secondly, liikuntakerho, the children’s activity time, was in danger of being discontinued. We really only had some kids from our church return for this semester. One day we only had one little girl from our church. We finally managed to find a game that she wanted to play. Slowly, it seems that some of the guys from last semester are starting to show up again. Pray that the liikuntakerho can continue to minister to these kids.
Next, we continue to have great worship in Espoon Kotikirkko, Espoo House-church. We are just a couple weeks away from moving into a new building closer to the Leppävaara train station, which means a shorter walk for me, but that all of our flyers will now have the wrong address on them. It’s a bigger place, so that means growth. We have also started a band for our church. We have 3 guitars, a jimbe drum, and 2 flutes. Jere leads that one, and I do all the paperwork, i.e., prepare the music sheets, organize, things like that. Our first meeting was in our apartment. We practiced two songs and it sounded great. We also had a practice after church this past Sunday to work on three other songs. We performed all five songs this past Sunday. I guess the main point for this preparation is that our church service is going to be broadcast on the radio in February. It will be a live show, and we have to get it over with in the allotted hour time slot. This…should be interesting. Pray for continued growth in this body of believers as they try to reach out to the community around them.
Finally, I managed to join a conversational business German course at the business school in Helsinki literally at the last moment. It started on the 14th, but late on the 13th I was corresponding with the university office and paying my fee. It was so last minute that I had no time to review any German for the first class. I understand everything, but I just can’t speak. The biggest problem for me is that I haven’t really done anything in German since being in Finland. It has all been focused on Finnish, so when I tried to say anything, the Finnish would come out. I think I’m getting the “he’s the American” kindness so far. I did have a conversation completely in German with one of the professors as we walked down the stairs. He was asking why I was in Finland, whether taking the class was a hobby, and other things. I explained how long I have studied German, about the fact that the Finnish was coming first now, and about the Germanic heritage of many of us in Texas. I had forgotten how close Germans stand when they are speaking to you. It took a little while before I remembered and stopped moving away from him. Pray that this class will open doors to share with the students there.
This turned out to be much longer than I thought I would write. Thank you for your prayers and support. I am still amazed at how opposed the people are to matters of faith here. I did get to share with a guy on the street on Monday the 25th, and he brought up that fact, too. Pray that the Finnish people’s heart will be opened to God’s truth.
I still have the blog nordictexan.wordpress.com running and I am trying to update it weekly now. The IMB now has a Europe-specific WordPress account that you can search through by tags for specific and timely prayer requests from Europe. I am in charge of posting for Finland. The site is www.imbeurope.org. I am still on Facebook under Daniel Barnett, the only one in Finland, I believe. Our cluster site is www.calypsonorth.com.

Terveisin ja siunausta,

Daniel Barnett
Team Finland – Helsinki/Espoo
CalypsoNorth

“Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, …” Proverbs 29:18

On the Streets

So, last night I went out to Helsinki. I knew that there were charity people trying to talk passerbys in to donating or joining or something in the streets. These are the only Finns who try to talk to you in the streets. All the other ones just look away, or look at you and then look away, or just act like you don’t exist. Well, I actually initiated a conversation with a guy next to Stockmann’s downtown. I passed him 3 times until I just stopped and asked him what book he was holding. The other people usually have colored vests on so you know exactly who they are representing (dark green – Green Peace, white – WWF [not wrestling], a kind of turquoise – Unicef). This guy was just wearing normal clothing, but it was the way that he was pacing back and forth over the same bit of sidewalk that made it obvious. Well, luckily, he spoke English, and we talked for quite a while. He seemed to know the basic answers (growing up Lutheran and all), so I just tried to share what my faith in Christ has meant in my life. After a while, it was time to move on. I knew this mostly because he said that he needed to warm up inside a building. I wished him luck, and headed back towards the bus station in Kamppi. In the square in front of Kamppi, a girl in a Unicef vest asked, in Finnish, if I had time to talk. I answered in Finnish that I didn’t speak Finnish very well, …so, she asked if I spoke English… We then proceeded to talk about Unicef for 15 minutes or so. I never really felt like there was a lead in to share my faith, which I find regrettable. I did make it obvious that I am a person of faith. It was funny, the first thing she asked in English was, “Do you live in Finland, and do you have a Finnish bank account?” I actually said in response, “Wow, that was subtle.” Well, after a while, I said that I would pray about donating, I wished her warmth standing outside in those temps, and departed. It took most of the bus ride back to warm up. So, I pray that God will work in their lives. I had decided to talk to these charity peoples a while back, but never was brave enough to initiate conversation. I was praying the whole time leading up to my first conversation, and the second was a surprise. Well, on a sidenote…I should have the text from the next newsletter up on this site at some point in the near future. Siunausta!

Hopefully the start of a weekly update…

So, as the title says, hopefully, I can start posting more of these throughout the month. I will try to use it as an addendum to any newsletter that comes out. That being said…
We are in the 3rd week of the year. The only reason that I know that it is the third week is that I have started a Conversational Business German class last week. Today was the second class period. It is entirely in German (auf Deutsch). I have been struggling to return to the German locked away in my head. It was locked away because I have had to learn Finnish in the meantime. I told one of the professors today, in German, that I haven’t read much or spoken German the entire time I’ve been in Finland. I’ve only read a little from Das Nibelungenlied (a Germanic epic myth, major inspiration for Richard Wagner’s music). So, I understand almost everything, but just can’t speak it. Which is a problem because we are to give 2 presentations this semester. I’m not really impressing any potential partners for the second presentation. So, we’ll see how that works out.
We had liikuntakerho today. Jere and I weren’t sure if we would have any kids. We only had one girl last week and it took a while before we found something that she was interesting in playing. But the 3 siblings who usually come showed up, and these two African brothers came. The brothers were fairly regular in the fall, but this was the first time that they came this year. This is a good sign because we were contemplating dropping the play time for something else. I spent a lot of the time trying to make crazy basketball shots. We did find something that everyone wanted to play, hippa, which is a variation on tag. One person is “it” and whomever they touch must crawl around on the ground and act as the chaser’s evil minions trying to touch those who are fleeing so that they will then be a minion. So, the more minions, the more dangerous it becomes for those who are fleeing. It was really fun. Everyone played, I note that because the brothers are older and the 3 siblings are younger and it is hard to find a middle ground for activities.
Well, time for dinner, voileipä, open-faced sandwiches. Let’s see how long it is before I post again, starting…now.

One Last for 2009

The snow is falling, the wind pushes is across the landscape, but this is only the south.  Tomorrow, I head to Kemijärvi, a city just north of the Arctic Circle.  I am spending New Year’s with a group Finns (about half of whom I have met, the others get to learn how to put up with me).  Hopefully, there will be a few clear nights (I know this means that the temperature drops off significantly, but hey, looking for the reward) so that I can see the aurora borealis, or revontulet (Fox-fires) up there.  May just have like 20 minutes of daylight, but hey, I’ve managed 6 hours of daylight, a little less is totally within sustainable limits.  I’m taking an overnight train from Helsinki directly to Kemijärvi, so I don’t have to get off and change at any point, bonus.  And I have a two-person cabin on the train in which I can hopefully catch a few z’s.  Not really much to see up there, apart from snow, apart from nothingness, but I think that’s why the Finns like it up there.  You can get away from the culture of mass consumerism in the south to the solitude and simplicity of the north.  Oh, and the reindeer is a bit cheaper up there.  Well, enjoy your New Year’s, as I hope to do with mine.  Hyvää Uutta Vuotta!

Christmas ‘09

Howdy from Finland!

So, this is the first newsletter that I’ve written with 6 inches of snow on my balcony ledge and more coming down. The forecast is snow all this week but Friday, but then snow after that. It snowed about 2 inches during the time we were at church yesterday. I sure am glad that I get to go Christmas shopping in this.
New Thing: There is a blog set up by the IMB to post prayer requests from the European Affinity. I am responsible for posting from Finland (I’ll go ahead and admit that the first time I was posting, I was trying to have more posts than those from France just so the tag, Finland, would be bigger than the tag, France, on the starting page). The site is www.imbeurope.org/explore. On it you can look through prayer requests for the entirety of the European Affinity. Pray as you are led.
Perhaps now is a good time for a rundown of what has been happening since my last newsletter. I believe that I had mentioned a trip over to Tallinn for Thanksgiving. Well, I went and loved it. All but one of the members on Team Estonia are from Texas, and that one black sheep is from Louisiana. There was also a couple serving in Moscow that joined us. They had endured a 14-hour, overnight train ride to get to Tallinn, but didn’t seem phased by it. I didn’t suffer that much as compared to them. I just had to get up at 4:25am on Thanksgiving day to get ready to catch the 5:42am commuter train to Helsinki to catch a 6:15am bus to the West Terminal (Länsiterminaali) to check in and get on the 7:30am ferry to Tallinn. I arrived in Tallinn at 9:30am. I should have had more breakfast because I was feeling a little sick on the ferry, but other than that, it was an interesting ferry ride. You just found a chair, or the decent spot on the floor, and chilled. I managed a nice chair at an empty table in the bow of the ship. I fell asleep as best I could. I woke up a few times, twice just to look around or at the clock, the third time there was a guy sitting at my table (not sure if he was Finnish or Estonian), the next time, he wasn’t there, but the time after that, he was back. Oh well, he didn’t smile at me, so I know that we were on good terms. On to the feast… This is an excerpt from my blog, http://nordictexan.wordpress.com, visit there for a more complete telling of the trip.

We had 9 American adults, 3 American kids, and a Finnish-American chica for the feast. Every typical Thanksgiving fare was there, pumpkin AND sweet potato pies. I was recruited at the last second to seek and purchase cranberry sauce…like, if I would have gone on the next train, it would have be a close call to get to the store on-time. I searched two large supermarkets before slowing down. I finally found it in, of course, the first market that I searched. Well, anyways, we ate our fill, shared crazy stories, ate a little more than our fill, kept talking and hanging out. That hanging out went until 3am. Yep, 23 hours awake on Thanksgiving, would have been nice if my body would have not tried to start the day at the normal time.

I wrote it right after getting back, so the memories and the retelling fit together better than what I could do now.
I completed my Finnish language course on December 2nd. That is all that the IMB plans for with Journeymen (/persons, to be politically correct). I was 4th this time instead of the top of the class on this test. And you know, I think that I can live with that. Now, I just need to speak more. There are a few people that I am forced to speak Finnish with, and thankfully, they are very patient with me. (kärsivällinen = patient, I learned that word last night.) I will try to take another course this Spring, but it will most likely be a Finnish course about some other language. I’m aiming at German. I figure it will help my abilities with both of the languages. I’ll update more about that class once I can get enrolled.
Continuing Ministries: We took a break from the children’s activity club (Liikuntakerho). Floorball, the non-contact, gym version of hockey, was the game of choice. I was reminded again that being on the team opposing a guy who plays on the back up squad for a major Finnish team is a bad idea. Sampa lit us up after running around us in full control of the ball…embarrassing. All I could hope to do was to get my body in the way of his shots…no matter the consequences. The kids were much better during this last meeting. We had to quit early the previous time because of fights and bad language. We warned them during this last meeting that we could just as easily have the same activity time with 20-year-olds as with them. It seemed to do the trick. We gave them a bag of licorice and a chocolate bar each after Mikko shared the Gospel with them (the majority of whom are Muslim). I’m pretty confident that they will come back during the Spring.
Also, we are taking a break from the Gospel Cinema ministry. We will have 3 weeks off before beginning the Spring showings with Ben Stein’s “Expelled”. Saturday was the last showing for this year. We presented “The Star of Bethlehem,” a documentary about the astronomical evidences surrounding the star of Bethlehem and the darkness during the Crucifixion. We took the opportunity to have somewhat of a Christmas service. Jere, the Finn doing his national civil service with us, and I led the crowd in three songs (yes, in Finnish). After that, we showed the movie followed by our typical kahvila, coffeehouse. There were many more people than what I had expected, as in…I was nervous that we wouldn’t have enough of the traditional Christmas drink, glögi (pronounced like glug-ghee), for everyone, so I headed off to find more. I first went to the store that I had bought the first 6 liters from, but it was closed. That meant that I had to get/run to the tram and head back up towards the lively part of Helsinki. I fought the crowds in an S-Market to get 8 more liters of glögi and two boxes of pipari (gingerbread cookies). I showed back up with a few minutes left in the movie, so I helped prepare for the kahvila with Jere’s fiancée, Elina. I find it funny that this being the only movie that I hadn’t been able to watch resulted in people asking my opinion about it. I had to sheepishly admit that I had left to go to the store. Mostly, I was being asked because the presenter in the film had a Southern accent and spoke 90-to-nothing, so many of the Finns were having trouble following it. But the whole evening rocked.
Last night, we held the church’s annual joulujuhla (Christmas celebration) with juhlapuuro (celebration porridge, made from rice and milk). The service was a little different than usual. Tommi and Maria, the couple that the Lord led to start the Gospel Cinema ministry, presented an animation that they had made in its entirety. Tommi is a graphic designer and Maria is an artist, and you can tell from the video that they showed. It was an adaptation of Noah’s Flood, but using their lives as a connection point. It was filmed in a sort of stop-motion manner using simple materials for the scenes and characters. The main point they were making was that Christ had saved them from the flood of this world. I was really impressed. I think they should post it on YouTube. After that, we sang two songs, and then three 4-7 year-old girls (not sure of their ages) sang while being accompanied by flute. They did wonderfully. Mikko shared his sermon on the historicity of Jesus’ birth, Lordship, and manners in which He changes the lives of his followers. We concluded with three more songs and moved right into the joulujuhla. It was a great time to share with each other, wish “Hyvää Joulua!” to one another, and to eat too much. I ended up with 2 liters of the juhlapuuro to bring home. Yeah, I don’t think that I will be able to eat all of it, and with Jere going back home for Christmas, there is one less mouth to contribute to the cause.
Finally, you may be asking, “So, Danny, what are you doing for Christmas and New Year’s?” And I might be answering, “Good question.” And you might then say, “Of course, it’s a good question, but what’s the answer?” And then me again, “Oh yeah, sorry. You wanted more of an answer, didn’t you?” You – “That’s why I asked the question.” Me – “Guess we’re going nowhere with this.” You – “Yep.” Me – “Yeppers.” …and scene. Maybe that was funnier in my head. Anyways… I am spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with the Sivonens, the IMB career family here. They want me to stay the night on Christmas Eve in order to take part in the morning awesomeness. I do believe we are then going to Mikko’s mother’s apartment for a party. I still have to get Christmas gifts for the whole lot of them, and it looks like I’ll be doing it in the snow that is still falling. And now, you might ask me, “So, what about New Year’s? Where could you possibly go or do that far north for New Year’s?” Good question… … … … Oh yeah, uh, I’m heading up to Lappland, or Lappi, on the 27th or 28th and staying until some point after New Year’s. Yes, I know that this makes me miss a large portion of the football bowl games, but hey, Lappland…LAPPLAND! I am meeting up with Jere and some of his friends near Oulu. I get to take a 10-hour, train ride to get there, too. Yea! iPod Touch and iPod Touch charger. Not sure if I’ll ski. Still bad memories from bloodying Alice’s, my sister’s, nose getting off that first ski-lift so many years ago. We’ll see though. Let’s hope that God will clear the clouds away in order to see the Northern Lights (revontulet, fox-fires). Not sure how much sun there will be, but hey, LAPPLAND!
There you go. Hope I didn’t lose you at a few points. Remember to check out www.imbeurope.org/explore for prayer requests for Europe. Again with my information… email: breatheonmespirit@yahoo.com; I’m on Facebook, the only Daniel Barnett in Finland; my Skype account is daniel.barnett710, again the only Daniel Barnett in Finland; http://nordictexan.wordpress.com is the blog, and I will try to post more often now; oh, and snail mail address is…

Daniel Barnett
Kirstinmäki 11 A 15
02760 Espoo, Finland

It takes like 10-ish days for letters. If those two dots over the “a” are too weird for you, just put a straight line over it. Quick address towards “coldness” concerns…the coldest it has been so far is -4F, right now, it’s about 12F. I have a warm coat, sweatshirt, long underwear, insulated snowboarder pants, a knit cap, a scarf, gloves, warm socks and boots…I’m good to go. Thank you for your concerns.

Well, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Hyvää Joulua ja Hyvää Uutta Vuotta!
Thank you so much for your continued prayer support and love. Pray that God will break the hearts of the Finnish people so that they will finally understand the true meaning of Christ’s birth, life, death and Resurrection and desire to worship Him instead of material things and addictions.

Siunausta! God Bless!

Daniel Barnett
Serving through the IMB
Team Finland – Helsinki/Espoo
CalypsoNorth Cluster
European Affinity

P.S. Some winter pictures at… http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2042864&id=1371714760&l=a31ee71cc7 : Just select from the h until the last 7, right-click on the selection, copy, then paste into the address bar of your browser.

Thanksgiving in Tallinn pics… http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2040743&id=1371714760&l=79f88a8f6d : Just do the same thing as above.

Eve of Finnish Final

So, yeah, less than an hour of study for Finnish final today. I figure that if I know it, I know it. I want to do it perfectly, but on reflection, the night before the mid-term test I was at a Muse concert at Hartwall Areena in Helsinki, so…I don’t think I studied then either. Within the 30 minutes I spent on the test, I got a 151.5 out of 155 points available…Perfection is within my grasp, but I went shopping instead. New towel (big, honking one, too), new warm hat, and a Christmas ornament. We shall see…we shall see.

So, I have some glögi on hold until Jere gets back from a quick trip home. Got the gingerbread cookies to go with it, too. Glögi is like wassal, or to those who don’t use the Germanic term, cider at Christmas. Yes, I’m getting the non-alcoholic kind (alkoholiton is the magic word). Less citrusy than our wassal, and really good. All the lights are going up around the Greater Helsinki area, just waiting on all the sales to start happening. Got to share the Gospel yesterday, took a long time before I could get the chance. Praise God for it, too. Let’s see if the guy ever talks to me again.

Dinner at Topi’s tomorrow. I know that Jere and I aren’t the only guests, but it will be nice to meet new people if there are new people coming. It may just be other church members there. We shall see…We shall see.

Thanksgiving in Tallinn: The Recap…

Well, I got up at 4:25am on Thanksgiving to get ready to make the 5:37am train to Helsinki to catch the 6:15am bus to the western terminal to check-in for the 7:30am ferry to Tallinn and on that, the 2 hour trip on rough seas to Tallinn. Totally worth it. We had 9 American adults, 3 American kids, and a Finnish-American chica for the feast. Every typical Thanksgiving fare was there, pumpkin AND sweet potato pies. I was recruited at the last second to seek and purchase cranberry sauce…like, if I would have gone on the next train, it would have be a close call to get to the store on-time. I searched two large supermarkets before slowing down. I finally found it in, of course, the first market that I searched. Well, anyways, we ate our fill, shared crazy stories, ate a little more than our fill, kept talking and hanging out. That hanging out went until 3am. Yep, 23 hours awake on Thanksgiving, would have been nice if my body would have not tried to start the day at the normal time. We did some sight-seeing on Friday in the Old Town part of Tallinn (the way I thought Helsinki would be instead of this modernize monster), did some more hanging out, and did some more going to bed at 3am. Saturday, we packed up and headed to a castle to the east of Tallinn, called Rakvere. No idea what that means, but I bet if it were in Finnish, I would know. It was cool. You basically got to mess with anything you wanted, except the swords but they were put up. If you saw an opening in a wall, you went through it. If there were stairs, you climbed them. If there was a door, you took pictures with your camera, looked at the screen, and used the picture to figure out where the door handle was because it was pitch-black in that stairwell (or, that’s what I did). On the way back we stopped at a local favorite Russian restaurant for some Shashlik, 3 of us ordered in Estonia, 2 in Russian, and me in an attempted Estonia but got English price in response. It was pretty awesome. Once we got back, we went and bought tickets for the new Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey…in 3D. Again, with the 3am bedtime. I got up on Sunday morning thinking that I had to get to the ship terminal for the trip back very quickly…uh, yeah, the 1pm and 2pm ships were full, so I bought a spot on the 5:30pm ferry. That meant that I had to go back to my friends’ apartment, but I didn’t remember the apartment number, so I went to the building where other friends live because I knew their apartment number. I got the info I needed, and got back into the apartment. That meant that I got to have Vietnamese food with my friends and walk to the President’s house. A nice added bonus for not buying my ticket earlier. Well, I said my good-byes, hugs all around, and walked to the terminal to get on that 5:30pm ferry to take the 2 hour trip to the western terminal in Helsinki to catch the bus to get back to the train station to catch the train back to Espoo to walk from the station back to my apartment. I had some sea sickness on the first trip over (I blame lack of sleep and food), but the return trip gave me no troubles, even though I was sitting in the back of the boat…the place with the most vibration. I good. Had my last full day of language class today, test on Wednesday. Not sure what I’ll be doing starting Thursday, but we will cross that bridge when I eventually wake up sometime on Thursday. Hope your Thanksgiving rocked. Blessings!

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from Finland!

As I sit and count my blessings, I have to thank God that he has put family, both related and church, into my life. I have no strength in myself to work for the Kingdom. I must rely completely on His grace and your prayers and support. Thank you for those. Prayer is definitely needed to break down the walls that have been constructed to keep people from the Gospel. Only through God’s power and His people calling out to Him will those walls shift, crack, and come falling down. These are both joyous and difficult times of the year for everyone. Please pray that both in the States and abroad that we can share the Good News of our Savior and Lord with those who are lost and perishing. I ask God’s blessing upon the lives of you and yours. Have a Happy Thanksgiving! I am blessed to spend mine with some fellow IMBers in Tallinn, Estonia. God Bless…Siunausta!

Daniel Barnett
IMB CalypsoNorth Cluster
Team Finland – Espoo