hafjell ski weekend!

hands down, THE best weekend since stepping foot into norway! but snowboarding vs no snowboarding makes for a pretty easy competition to win out =)

it really was an awesome weekend though... snowboarding, good friends, good sun and good fun, learning more norwegian... a girl really cant ask for much more! =) i love snowboarding, i really do, it makes me feel alive... i love cutting through new snow through the trees or feeling like im flying on a jump... i always have P.O.D's song "Alive" running through my head when i snowboard... me and my sister always used to belt out the song when we're carving through making first tracks in fresh powder. =)



and just something about being outside with the view and the mountains and the snow and the trees and the sun and the sky... and it's just beautiful. and then i realize that the God that made ALL of this amazingness... made me. somehow while He was busy putting together this incredible beautifulness, He cared to love me and sculpt a beautiful life for me! i think this psalm in the Bible captures it well...

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens...

When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars (and the mountains and the snow and the sky and the sun...!)
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?

in light of the bigness of what God has done, doesnt make sense that He should care about me, but somehow, in His great love... He does! i didnt do anything to deserve it, and i COULDNT do anything to deserve it... and that's just a testament to the awesomeness of God.

riding aside, it was really awesome to spend some time with a good group of Christians, get to know each other more than the hi's and bye's in passing, and love Jesus together, i'd really missed that. actually, chatting with a bunch of different people over the weekend about God and life and everything has made me all reflective & emo and its hard to keep my head in school mode. everything im reading im either thinking about something else, or reading about peace education for my paper, im wondering what it might mean for my life and so an hour later im still staring at the same page... oh dear. =) but its almost 2am and i have class in the morning so more to come about that later, hopefully soon... but anyways, for now here's some pictures from the weekend =)

(i worked so hard last time to get the captions and pictures to line up, and then i found out that it doesn't line up the same on your computers anyways, so im not going to bother and you'll have to use your imagination! =) )




snowboarding in norway?? yahhhhh we are!! (david, me, karin, laurent, debbie)




snow and sunshine... canada or norway, it doesnt get any better than this!!!





olympic dude with a torch carved into the trees for the '94 winter olympics in lillehammer!





my first ever ski posse! im ashamed to say i was riding with these guys all day and i dont know all their names... but the guy in the green pants is gunnstein, he's super fun, and a crazy good freestyle telemark skier!! and it was fun riding with all skiers actually, when we got to flat parts, they all pulled me along with their poles! =)






here's gunnstein skiing on his hands and knees... and actually making it down the whole run!!!


and debbie... hitting up the jumps and getting some big air!! yay debbie!! =)



lunch out in the snow... with toasty sandwiches on a fire bbq!




laurent's lunch... 8 sandwiches!!





warming up... =)



apres-ski game of Spoons! =)


and a little evening entertainment... Knut and Oddbjorn playing Chubby Bunny... FOURTEEN marshmellows!!


... ahhh.. i could do this every weekend. oh wait.. i am, at least for the next 2 weekends! =D!!!

on a more serious note though, one of the guys on the trip, john fredrik had a bad accident when he was riding... it was really God's grace that he's still alive and walking and made it out of the lillehammer hospital to come home with us. he's back in the hospital near here, but he broke his arm really bad and we heard just today that actually something in his back is broken too. so pls keep him in prayer - thank God sooo much that he's alive and well. pray also that God would take away his pain and heal him quickly, that by God's grace john f (& his family & friends) would know and trust God more and be more prepared for the things that God has in store for him and called him to in the future through this. life is God's hands as we trust it to Him... and how i thank God for that!