braceplacecreations

  Shalisha BraceSeptember 3 at 8:31am  I made it to Nordtun safely. I took my boat around four and arrived in Gronoy at 6. I got to the base and had dinner,  and was introduced to the other students. Everyone here speaks very good english too.  Ok, so I do not have any trouble talking here.  The rest of the students are coming in today. 

I meet a german girl named Anne. she is very much like me. there are 6 people in her family, and her and her brother play music together.  She invited me to go with her to Germany for Christmas, but we will see. 

I will write more soon. I am going to go through the challenge course.

Oh this mornig we took a walk to the general store.  Its about 20 mins away.
Every thing is soooooo beautiful
love!!


Shalisha BraceSeptember 3 at 2:46pm I feel like my tongue is tied. I am trying to learn some Norsk...even the names are hard to say. Ah! I can't even remember how to say them!  How can I learn how the entire language?

I have met everyone pretty much. Not everyone on a personal level though. Kris is from Canada and is apart of the staff.  He even knows how to play football!  I can not wait to play, it will remind me of home a little bit.

I am excited there are a few students that know English fluently. David is from England origanally, so he has a very nice accent.  I didnt know that until lunch when I heard him talk.  I just stared when I found out....he kind of laughed.

We just finished out dinner about am hour ago - yum yum. Time change is sooo weird.
Love you,
shalisha

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I know it will be hard for Shalisha  to write everybody individually.  Thinking about all who want her to write them a letter is probably overwhelming her.  I know it would me. 
I've edited out some personal stuff. 

I've been wandering around the house today, doing small projects, but mostly checking for Shalisha's email and praying for the family in general. 

I received the following emails from Carm who was a co-worker in the ministry with us at Pine Ridge Bible Camp when we worked there in the late 90's. 
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From Carm:  Sure.  You may share on web.

Mary Beth and Nate and kids,

I love the place where Shalisha is!!!!  We have been to Bodo.  I have many relatives there.  My Great Grandma came from there, we saw her childhood home high on a mountain (2 hr. hike) under a cliff along a mountain fishing lake.  Her family made a living fishing and logging until they could afford to move back down and do crop share farming. 

When asking the Norwegians where we should spent most of our time, they said Bodo.  It's the most beautiful place in Norway...it's actually all beautiful!!  There's a glacier visible from Bodo.  When we were there in early August of 2004 the temps reached 80 degrees, unusual.  The earlier summer had been much cooler though.  I have lots of historical tales to tell of our ancestors in Bodo.

I sure wish I could be a mouse in Shalisha's pocket.  She's going to have a wonderful experience.  Those Norwegians are precious people and rugged people.  The old folks can climb mountains as good as the young ones...do it all the time.  We were the soft Americans.

Green with envy of Shalisha!!! but God bless her anyhow!!! :-)
Carm

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Another email from Carm:

I feel very attached to Bodo and surrounding area.

You may be interested to know some more of our experiences there. 

Actually, my 1st cousin from Michigan City was in Scandinavia 2 years before us.  With our long time close cousins in Sweden, she made a trip to Bergen, Norway and looked up records of ancestors on Great Grandpa's side.  She even visited one of those distant cousins.  She learned of Great Grandma's ancestry in Bodo.

When she got back home she emailed the newspaper in the Bodo area asking them to run an ad:  Any decedents of Ole and Grete Davidson who would like to communicate with USA relatives please email _____________.  She got 4 responses.  One of them she talked to on the phone and communicated often.

When we announced our 3 week trip to Sweden and Norway, she contacted the talkative one.  Subsequently when we met our close cousin in Goteborg Sweden and he shuttled us to Oslo by bus, 5 relatives met us for a 6 hour visit near the Kings Palace and train station.  The visit was wonderful even though we were very jet lagged and tired.  Didn't matter...we were too excited to be there and meet them.  One 3rd cousin was the curator of the Norwegian Resistance WW2 Museum and invited us back to Oslo after Bodo for a personal tour around Oslo (that was amazing she would do that, let alone that spontaneous part of our trip was indescribably wonderful).  At midnight we boarded the sleeper train headed to Bodo, passing through Lillihammer.  When we woke up in the morning, the scenery was incredible.  The train even stopped about 5 minutes at the arctic circle crossing as a special event!  Certainly special for us since we'd never been across the arctic circle.  

We arrived in Bodo at 7:30 PM with 17 relatives there to meet us!!  They were as excited to meet relatives from USA as we were to discover them.  No one had ever been there from there family they didn't know existed in USA either.

Oh my, the quaint house we stayed was at the bottom of a high waterfall using that water directly into the house for drinking...no pollution.  The house was painted red like 3/4 of the houses in Norway, cheap paint, a bi-product of iron oxide red dye.  We hiked to Great Grandma's Davidson cliff dwelling, still there!  Then had a potluck outdoors with very old time traditional foods and 36 relatives.  (Many of them didn't know each other either and some were from 5 hrs. away).  Each relative had on a name tag with their lineage to Ole Davidson.  The older folks were 2nd cousins to my Mom and couldn't speak much English, but understood more than they would let on.  Then 3rd, 4th, 5th cousins could all speak English, some very well.  Together they celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary, one second cousin sang "Ten Thousand Red Roses" in Norwegian and gave us a huge bouquet of red roses from the back of his house (Norwegians like red), and then they gave us a wooden hand carved large bowl hand painted with Old Norwegian design...Beautiful!  If you come visit us remind me to show it to you.  

Next 2 days we toured the entire area including a 1000 year old church where Ole Davidson family went to church.  We toured cemeteries where ancestors were buried.  We visited family homes & farms with so much history family history that it was truly nostalgic.  One 3rd cousin who had spent 4 yrs. in Kenya on humanitarian mission spoke English really well and had planned our personally narrated tour immaculately every where we went.  Truly amazing.  We visited his Mom, age 94 in nursing home.  She held a picture of herself when she was age 4 wearing a dress my great grandparents had sent her from the USA.

Another amazing thing I forgot about our 6 hours in Oslo...a 2nd cousin historian of our Norway family, brought along pictures.  He had no idea who they were.  I recognized the 4 young women immediately...my Grandma and her 3 sisters!!!  He was delighted to identify the family picture he had just kept...because!!!

We took the coastal ferry (like a cruise ship) from Bodo down to Trondheim, then the train back to Oslo.  Our Norwegian family even though they'd never known us treated us like royalty!  They made all arrangements for our travel by phone (speaking Norwegian helped much better than our English would have) and saw us off and greeted us on the other end.  

Back in Oslo, that 3rd cousin even took us on a sailboat sunset cruise out in the Bay of Oslo where we ate unlimited shrimp out of huge tubs.  We tramped 2 days seeing a lot in Oslo also.  Then we took the train to Stockholm and enjoyed relatives and travel just as amazingly all over Sweden for the next 1 1/2 weeks before leaving Goteborg for home.

It was truly an anniversary trip made in heaven!!!

Although another group of Americans on the train from Oslo to Stockholm were very disappointed in their relatives in Norway, cold and calculated, charged them for everything.  Go figure!

Sadly we could not detect any believers in our group of relatives.  Just seemed so friendly, loving, yet so secular.  Most the churches in Scandinavia are state churches where people are baptized as infants, married, and buried.  They value their churches mainly as historic architectural landmarks.  The churches are the center for keeping genealogies though and are open to looking up anybody.

We'd go back to Norway in a heart beat as missionaries.  People need the Lord there!!!

If Shalisha falls in love with that country you may find her a missionary there.  Wouldn't that be wonderful?

If you ever get the chance to go there by all means do.  What an experience!

Be blessed again,
Carm
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Carm and Lysle JohnsonMissionaries at: Camp Michawana

We will sleep tonight trusting God to take care of Shalisha.  At the time of this writing this Shalisha should be ready to take off across the Atlantic on her way to Oslo, Norway.  Her departure time from Newark, NJ is 8pm and her arrival in Oslo is 9:45 am. 

That isn't the end of the journey.  She will board another plane to take her to Bodo.  This departure time is 10:45 tomorrow morning, and she arrives in Bodo at 12:15pm.  She then has to catch a city bus to the boat station down town.  She will take an express boat to Gronoy.   I do not know how long she will be on the boat.  I hope she blogs about it.   Then, I understand it will be a 10 minute drive to her destination.  

We have been enjoying texting.  We've been sending messages back and forth all afternoon.  It took  awhile to figure out the buttons, and there are still things to learn, but we are trying.  

We will pray much for her over the next 24 hours. 

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After the airport, we went to Wendy's for lunch and then on to the college to get Shiloh settled into her dorm room.   It took a long time to go through the registration line at the college.  She is excited to get her new laptop.  We about dumped everything on and next to her bed, then went out to Meijer to purchase a few needs...hangers for one.  We didn't hang around too long.  Shiloh was already tired from spending the night with her cousins and then time at the airport. 

Shiloh is probably arranging everything in her space in the room.  She has two room mates.  Shana is from the suburbs of Chicago.  We didn't find out where Elizabeth was from.   

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That's it for now...except to say that Ethan is having fun in Grand Rapids with camp friends.  It must be quiet here at Grandma Brace's house without his sisters. 

"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.  Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."  John 14:27

What a good verse to sleep on.

It's that time of year that we go a traveling to visit family and friends and churches.  We had a very late start yesterday.  We were going to take care of the horses early and be on our way, but two coal trucks hit each other going around the curve near our house.  No one was hurt, but one truck went over the bank a little bit and held up traffice for two hours.  There was no way out of our driveway.

After saying goodbye to the horses and making sure there was enough hay and water (Franklins and Backs - please take good care of the horses for us.), we drove home and packed the van.  This took awhile. Wow! There is a lot of stuff!  We had the car top carrier also.  We drove into town, stopped at Walmart for a bag of apples, carrots and gas.

We were on our way...a little later than we had expected.  A mile or so past Fugate's on 15, the car's engine started thumping.  We stopped immediately.  We found the surpetine belt partially shredded.  Nate pulled at the shredded pieces  and cut off what he could.  Half of the belt was still in place.  We turned around and found a mechanic that we had just gone to two days before. It was just a mile away. 

We stayed at the mechanic shop for about an hour while replacing with a new belt.  The owner of the shop slipped into the front seat and looked around.  He was amazed at the amount of "stuff" and the three teens in the back seat.  He found out what was going on in their lives...that all three were going off on adventures in life.  

The mechanic was almost finished with his job.  Nate took the checkbook to pay.  He came back and plopped the checkbook on the seat.  "That was fast," I said, "how much?"
     "Nothing. He's not charging us."  

I found a thank you note in my bible bag and had the kids sign it.  What a surprise, but then...God is so amazing.  

The rest of the trip went uneventfully and we arrived in Detroit at 9 pm to stay with college friends for the night.  Today we go to a reunion.  I really look forward to seeing the childhood church folks...and seeing my mom.
 

It's Wednesday afternoon.  It's been raining all day.  The time at camp to feed the horses was very messy.  My clothes were covered with mud splashes.  Typical of rainy days.

This afternoon Ethan asked to go check out the new coffee shop.  I'm not much of a coffee drinker, but I sure like the frozen caramel latte.  The shop is new and located just across from the hospital in Hazard.  We're hanging out here for awhile before we go to prayer meeting. 

The grand opening is around November the 1st, but the soft opening is coming up sooner. The place is huge!  It doesn't look it from this picture, but the other room is amazing.

Ethan brought in his guitar and violin and sung the first songs here.  Simeon sang too.  Ethan also brought in his computer for repairs.  It died (the computer) this morning.

I hope you all like this song.  I had quite a time looking for pictures.  I need to actually take some pictures of the roses on the trail!  :)  Now to put this song on other places on the web. 


Thanks for listening and watching.  

For the past two weeks Shalisha has been busy feeding the fawns for the Murrs who have been on vacation.  She's been faithfully feeding twice a day.  Once she needed me to fill in for her.  I had to go with her about 5 times to learn.  You know, it's very confusing trying to figure out who's who to feed a bottle?  (They like their own bottle and refuse if not their own).  


The fawns are kept for 180 days and are to be released.  The Murrs are licensed to rehabilitate wildlife. Sometimes they get baby opossums.  Sometimes raccoons.  It's interesting what comes in. 


One more special thing done at Camp Nathanael. 

No pics this time.  I have things to say and it's late for me.  11:30 is way past by bedtime, but felt I must write a bit and catch up.  


Camp is over.  The mission trip is over.  It's all been great.  Tiring, but great and I feel satisfied.  Satisfied because I know I was in the places God wanted me to be.  I can't say things were easy.  The trails were hot and dusty and sweaty and my feet hurt a lot this summer, but it was all worth it to be able to give a lot of campers what they wanted.  


Now, tomorrow we start a new week...and I'm doing a trail ride for a reunion.  Nine people want a ride so here goes.  The horses are wanted and used a lot.  That's good!   


Schools start this week so soon we start character traits again.  I look forward to that and perhaps this year I will do more teaching because my own children will be out of the house.  AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!  


 ....God is in control and I will trust Him for taking care of my loved ones.  Simeon will be teaching science.  Ethan will be in Indy. (more on that later).  Shalisha  will be on a huge 9 month mission trip across the ocean.  Shiloh will be in college 10 hours away.  Nate and I will have an empty next.  

Nate and I are our children's biggest prayer warriors.  Better to pray than worry!  Better to pray and yield and serve the Lord. Such blessings in this thought.


I have less than a month.


Then it's just Nate and I.  Hmmmm.

I must get used to this.  The house is quiet.  Ethan and Shalisha went to camp.  Nate and I are experiencing something new...empty nest.  I can't say that I like it very well.

It was a great time last Tuesday night camping on the mountain.  The seniors left after the last activity and walked up the mountain to the designated spot.  Dwayne, my nephew, comes each year to take the seniors.  I go to be the lady counselor.  


When they get to the site, they set up tents and then start a campfire.  They have to make their own hot dog and marshmallow stick.  After supper they slide/hike down the mountain to the creek.  The contest in on to catch crawdads and "minners" (minnows).  Dwayne says that he will eat a minnow if anyone catches one.  (not this year).


The time wading in the water was fun, but watching Ethan eat a boiled crawdad whole was very entertaining (better than survival).  After smores there was a contest to see who could fit the most marshmallows in their mouths.  Dwayne, Isaac, Ethan and Erin tried.  I laughed so hard my sides hurt.  


Dwayne settled everyone down and a time of praise singing started.  Isaac and Ethan led the singing with their guitars.  Dwayne had a nice devotional and encouraged the seniors.  After the devotional they played a few crazy games.


As I lay in the tent that night I was very away of huge trees around me.  What if one fell on the tent?  I had to pray for peace in my heart and remember that God was in control.  Later in the night I heard a 4 wheeler in the distant trails.  I wondered about my van parked along the trail a ways back and envisioned some person breaking in.  Again, I had to stop thinking and fretting over something I could not control.  


Prayer is a powerful.  I thought of the verse in Psalms 37:7,8  "Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him; do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass.  Cease from anger, and forsake wrath; do not fret - it only causes harm."


In the morning we had a gong sound wake us up.  Dwayne hit the huge frying pan.  We had eggs and sausage over the fire, then the campers headed back to camp.  Ethan and I stayed back to help take down tents.  Next year we plan to camp on the ridge and do some star gazing at night.  (too many trees at present location).  It was  great time on the mountain.