Sunday, August 3, 2008

3/8 – Day 13: Faroe Islands – Vagar

I was brought to Mia’s house to sleep in the town of Sorvagur on the island Vagar. She is the lay pastor of the local mission house. Her husband is a sailor and he is not at home for long periods of time.

I had many dreams, some of which were very disturbing. But all in all I slept well, and with the closed binds I slept until 10am.

I only met Mia in the morning because she was at a wedding on the evening I was brought from Torshavn. She and I had breakfast and talked non-stop until it was time to go to her sister Hanna who lives in the next town Midvagur for lunch.

When they were children their family lived in Nuuk, Greenland for 9 years. They are both grandparents now, but they still have a deap love and care for Greenland. We spent a lot of time talking about what I saw there and what the Lord is doing there. I really believe the Lord wants to use these sisters to bring a Faroese blessing to Greenland, and the facilitate a Greenlandic blessing to the Faroes.

After lunch we came back to Sorvagur where Mia had to lead their outdoor service in the town square. The do this every Sunday afternoon in the summer instead of an evening service in the mission building. There were about 50 people hanging around to sing allong and hear the word. I was very impressed. From my experience in France and Germany something like this is almost unthinkable in a town in Europe.

As I listened to Mia’s solo voice eccoing in the valley as she was singing the old an faithfull hymns in Faroese I felt as if I was hearing the Faroese Bride of all the centuries, standing on the seashore between these mountains, longing for her beloved, waiting for Him to COME!

After the outdoor meeting we had a brief sightseeing trip and a little rest and then we went to the mission house where I shared my story again with the intercessors from here. Almost all of us cried this time, and I really had a sence that the Spirit is doing something very deap in the people that came. They also gave me a stone and blessed me, and sent me out with a blessing for Zion. Also they were seeing how God is using this Highway for more than what I was expecting. I was told about prophetic words they had about a revival that will start from Canada and go via Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroes to Europe and the rest of the world. One lady mentioned a dream that she had where she was standing on a hillside overlooking Midvagur, and where she saw a map of the Islands with a fire spreading from East to West over them. After the meeting Hanna took us to this place where the lady stood in her dream and the lady gave me a stone from there too.

2/8 – Day 12: Faroe Islands – Streymoy, Eysturoy & Klaksvik

It was past midnight when the pilot announced that we would land in 20 minutes’ time with turbulence common to the Faroes expected. What followed was one of the bumpiest rides I ever had in air. None of the other passengers looked worried so I assumed that it was normal for them, but I was very glad when we finally landed and came to a bobbing halt.

I had prayed about the Faroes during the flight and felt that they are a special flock in the heart of the Good Shepherd. He gave me Ps23 for them and I felt that while they knew a lot of darkness they had discovered the safety of resting in His arms.

The minute I came out of the airport and felt strong fresh wind on my face I had the sense that I had somehow come ‘home’. The peace that suddenly surrounded me in the midst of the wind made Iceland’s windless grayness look like a tornado of great violence. There was a silence and a clearity in my thoughts that stood in strong contrast to what now looked like a screeming confusion in Iceland. I almost did not feel the need to tell the Gosple to the soil, it seemed soaked with the good news and I had the sence that the Faroe Islands had been waiting for an opportunity to testify of this for some time.

I got onto the bus and when we departed to Torshavn I called Sanna to let her know when to expect me. It was almost an hour’s bus ride and long past 1am when we arrived in Torshavn. And there Sanna and a friend was waiting for me.

Sanna is the founder and leader of the YWAM base in the Faroes. She is 2 years younger than my mother and has spent her whole life in full-time ministry. She is a lady with great spiritual autority and yet she made me sleep in her bed while she slept on the sofa in the living room. Somehow this introduction was telling of the humbling honour with which everyone and everything I met in the Faroes seemed to view this mission.

Torshavn is the capital and it is on Streymoy, the biggest island in the Faroes. The first appointment for me to address a group was on an island to the east of Streymoy, called Bordoy. So even though we only got to bed after 2am we had to be at the bus station at 9am. The bus wove its way allong the little roads between steep mountains and long fingers of sea that seem to penetrate each valley. They say you can never be more than 5km from the sea on any of these islands. Everything is very green and there are sheep everywhere. The islands are quite close to each other and are either connected by bridges, undersea tunnels or ferries.

The bus brought us to Klaksvik on Bordoy where we joined a breakfast prayer meeting at one of the ‘free’(as anything other than Lutheren is called) chrurches on the island. They also experienced a revival here recently and most of the group were young people. After enjoying some breakfast with them, I explained my mission and my request to them. While I was talking one of the young men went out and drove home to fetch a specific stone the Lord reminded him of. He had been to an open-air worship meeting on the island Eysturoy at a little town called Eduvik. While worshiping a little stone cought his eye and he felt he had to take it as memory of what he was experiencing. The minute he heard about me taking stones to Jerusalem he knew that that stone had to go allong. They also gave me a stone from Bordoy and prayed for me and blessed me. Sanna then told them what I had told her about the ‘spiritual tornado’ I experienced in Iceland and she encouraged them to pray for Iceland.

After the meeting we had some more coffee and took the bus back to Torshavn. After a quick lunch at Sanna’s place there we went to the next meeting that was hosted Ossa, by a lady who has a big love for Israel. Here the young people were in the minority and as Ossa prayed to open the meeting I felt that the people assembled where ones with great spiritual authority in their nation, and even amoung the nations. They heard my story with great and very humbling interest. It felt as if they understood some things about what I was telling them that I have not even grasped myself. They agreed to my requests for a stone and for a blessing and for a message for Zion from the ends of the Earth. When they prayed for me in Faroese I could feel the different types of weights that their prayers had. It felt like one lady layed a big heavy thing like a cloak on me in the spirit, and then the prayer of another one lifted the weight off my own shoulders and put it on Jesus shoulders. I got Isa 52:7 and a young man, the only man there, had a vision about how the stones where building Israel into a very big mountain.

They blessed me in every way until I felt I could not contain it anymore. I really had the sence of being in heaven somehow, even though I did not understand much of what they were saying in the physical, it felt as if I could understand them in my heart, and my heart was healed and grown by it. Everytime one of them touched me it felt as if they emparted something, and as if something went out from me to them in return.

My soul was satisfied in a specail way as we drove over the mountain in the beautiful golden sunset to go to Vagar, the island where I would spend the rest of my time in the Faroes.

Briefly about the Faroe Islands

The Faroe Islands are a group of 18 Islands about halfway between Iceland and Scotland. Inhabited by just less than 50000 people these islands have had a strong identity of their own since they were originally populated by vikings more than 1000 years ago. While they are a Danish principality like Greenland, they have their own language, flag, parlaiment and priminister. Their Christian heritage goes back to Irish monks who lived as hermits in the solitude these islands in the later half of the 1st millenium AD.

1/8 – Day 11: Iceland - Koerleikurinn

Throughout the night my room-mates were coming and going. They all did it as quietly as possible, but I woke up every time. And every time I just enjoyed the fact that it was dark in the room (I did not have darkness at night since that night in Copenhagen) and that I could just turn around and sleep again. For some reason the matrass and the pillow were particularly comfy.

I delayed getting-up until all the others had gone. I felt like I could stay in bed all day. My ears did not open during the night, and all the hollow places in my head felt blocked. At about 8:00 I tried to call Gudrun, the lady that I was told had a key to open the house of prayer for me, but she did not answer. So I prayed a bit and just lay there wondering what to do. At 9:00 I called again and this time she answered. She agreed to meet me at prayer house at 11:00 and I said I’ll go down to reception to ask them to speak to her and get the directions for me to get to the prayer house.

After getting dressed and packing slowly, I went down to reception at about 10:00 and asked them to call her. Some sort of misunderstanding evolved between the lady at reception, Gudrun and me, resulting in me having to explain to the lady that I was only in Iceland for one day and that I wanted to pray at the prayer room and that Baldur had said that Gudrun would open for me. From the barely visable frown on her face and the fractions of words I could grasp of her side of their conversation I came to the conclusion that Gudrun was not told about me at all, and that the thing that kept on trying to close the door in my face at the airport when I arrived was at it again.

With something that looked like frightened disgust covered with a thin layer of professionality the lady finally ended the conversation and explained to me where the prayer house was and how to get there from the youth hostle. She also confirmed that Gudrun would meet me there at 11:00.

I put my things in the luggage room and started walking. My rout took me through the youth hostle’s campsite and an almost blue-green park under a bleek cloudy sky. As I walked I kept on singing the Fisherfolk song: God has called you, He will not fail you, so trust in God, and obey Him. I really wished my soul would ‘get it’ and stop fretting.

The explanation I got from the lady at the youth hostle took me to a retail area of sorts with various large warhouse-like buildings. As she predicted I found the entrance to a place with a logo that looks like praying hands at the back of a furniture retailer in one of the warehouses.
It was about 10:40 so I quickly went to the supermarket nextdoor to look for some Vitamin C and some drinking water (The tap water in Reykjavik tasts of sulfur).

I came back to the door just before Gudrun arrived. To my supprise she hugged me when she greeted me, and I knew right away that she was a sister in the Lord, and that all of my internal turmoil that morning had been caused by a bit of smoke and mirrors from the enemy.

She took me through the door, and up the stairs and into the largest ‘prayer room’ I had ever seen. Taking up about half of the loft above the warehouse, the room was bigger than many churches I have seen. It had more than 100 chairs arranged in rows to face a stage with musical instruments. Before the stage there was a large ministry area with pillows and blankets and flags. In the back there was a fellowship area with a coffee counter and some tables where papers and bible study material and things for drawing was laying around. The whole place had a very user-friendly homly kind of feel to it.

Gudrun made some coffee and we sat down to explain ourselves to each other. She was glad to find out that I’m a believer (not even this was a foregone conclusion for her) and we soon discovered that we are spiritually on the same page. Their whole group/fellowship, allong with almost every other believer she knows in Reykjavik was at an out of town event. The only reason she did not go herself was because God did not tell her to go. But she had the feeling that He was busy with something, because the previous evening the Holy Spirit kept on waking her up to pray in toungues at various intervals.

When she heard my story she understood that this was the reason she had to stay. She was willing to give me a stone from Iceland, to bless me, and to send me to Zion with a message of salvation from Iceland.

She felt that the Lord had been very particular in leading me to this fellowship, since it is a unique place of revival in Iceland. Baldur is 29 years old and only came to the Lord one year ago from a background of drugs and abuse of many kinds. He was saved radically and started a fellowship for his friends in his house soon after he was saved. God has been using him powerfully with many miraculous healings and deliverances taking place almost daily. Within one year they have about 100 people coming on a weekly basis to this prayer room where they meet and minister Mondays-Fridays. On Saturdays he is at a fellowship in Keflavik (where the international airport is) and on Sunday everyone goes to their own churches. Normally the place is almost always open, they get food donations and people are free to hang around as long as they want. The ministry remains focusses on people trapped in various adictions, and they have a vision to start rehab/decipleship homes for people who want to leave the street to follow Jesus. It is called Koerleikurinn, which as I understand is the Icelandic for Agape or the love of God.

After we shared Gudrun prayed for me for the journey and for my health too. She prayed in Icelandic and I could not understand what she said, but I could feel waves of power going through my body. When she was done I felt much stronger. As I prayed for her I really had a revelation of her as a representative of the Bride of Christ in Iceland. I felt so honoured to have met her.

I told her I had to read the book of Revelations and asked if I could stay to do it. She showed me how to lock the place behind me, and then she left. When we hugged and said goodbye I felt as if I was greeting bloodfamily. I could not stop thanking her and blessing her and thanking God for her. I’m looking forward to seeing her again, even if it may not be in this life again.

I was left alone in this big place to read Revelations. I was tired and it was hard. At the end of chapter 9 I lay down on the floor in the ministry area and slept a little. I don’t know how long I slept, but I woke up fresh and strong. I finished reading the book and when I came to the last chapter I again felt the urgency with which the Spitir and the bride are saying ‘COME!’
When I walked back to the youth hostle in the late afternoon the sun was shining and I was suddenly able to see how beautiful everything is. I had the strangest feeling that I will be back before too long.

At the youth hostle I quicly went onling again to get all the info for the people I would meet in the Faroes that night. Then I took the bus to the little domestic airport in the heart of Reykjavik from where the Atlantic Air flights also depart.

The flight was delayed for about an hour. And when we finally flew the 80minute flight was ear-torture again, but I did have a beautifull view of sunset on the desertlike volcanic interior of Iceland aswell as the little icecap and what I think must have been one of the volcanoes.

The Door to Iceland

Making contact with the churches in these Nordic countries required God’s hand from the start. I did not know anyone in these nations and the people I knew, who thought they knew people here, were not able to connect me with them. I knew that the way in which the doors to Greenland and the Faroes were opened for me was grace from God.

I never felt I had the right to expect hospitality or blessing from anyone. But after seeing what God did in Greenland it was really strange for me to see how the contact that I had with believers in Iceland seemed to deminish, rather than increase. When I did my google searches while still in SA the only prayer related person I could find in Iceland was an American. From his blogs he seemed to be a missionary of sorts that was involved in a 24/7 prayer initiative in Iceland. I wrote to him and he responded so positively that it seemed as if the door was open.

Off I went to Greenland, and while there I started writing to him to ask about arrangements but did not get any responce. Three days before I left Greenland I wrote to him again in one last attempt. He answered with one line saying I should contact Baldur. He gave me Baldur’s facebook link and when I asked him he also sent me a phone nr for Baldur and one for Gudrun. I wrote to Baldur on 30/7 and told him I would be in Iceland the next evening. I also tried to call him on the number the American gave, but was told by a friendly Icelander that I had the wrong nr.

Baldur wrote back on Facebook to say he was not in town but I could ask Gudrun, who doesn’t speak much English, to open the prayer room for me. So when I arrived in Iceland I had Gudrun’s number and that was it.

SMS 13

2008-08-02 17:34:19.0

Very beautiful & peaceful here in Faeroes after short intense time in Iceland. Spoke to group this am. Again tonight & tomorrow. Back on my SA cellnr. Thanx for prayer.J

2008-08-02 07:38:22.0 27824610460 Liefde en volharding jou toegebid t WIESKE
2008-08-02 17:38:58.0 27827529994 Ons is so bly dit gaan goed met jou. Mag di mense met wie jy deel di grootheid vd HERE ervaar. Liefde marinda gerrit. X
2008-08-02 17:47:24.0 27836331919 Met j jansie
2008-08-03 10:35:59.0 27834082294 Bly jy voel beter. Pas jou op. Sterkte! Dankie v d kommunikasie x Miekie
2008-08-03 22:36:09.0 27827845465 Jou oulike ding mag Abba jou toevou met omgee + liefde sienuit om laaank met jou te praat lief jou 1000- and may the dust of ur Rabbi cover u this week x elsa

Friday, August 1, 2008

SMS 12

2008-08-01 20:23:24.0

The Lord opened every beautiful and good door!I could
pray with an Icelandic believer in place revival.Im
feeling much better. Tonight to Faroes.Thanx4Praying!J
2008-08-01 22:10:36.0 27827529994 Ons dink aan jou en vertrou v groot deurbrake v jou. Kyk mooi na jouself. Sterkte v jou tog verder. Liefde gerrit en marinda