June / July Hartel Newsletter

Adam and Sarah have posted their newsletter for June and July. It contains highlights of our Team’s recent travels. You can download it here. Our final team leaves on Monday 8/4. Pray for salvations, safety, and growth in the Krsitiansand and Estonian churches. You can see more at the Hartel’s website.
- Pastor Pete

Video from the Hartels

The Hartels sent this video greeting over. Enjoy.

New Hartel Newsletter

Adam and Sarah have sent our their April newsletter. Click here to download it.
Also, check out the new look to their blog at hartel.com
- Pastor Pete

Hartel Update

Adam and Sarah Hartel have posted their March 2008 newsletter. Click here to download it. Don’t forget to check out their website at www.hartel.com

Adam and Sarah Hartel

Adam, Sarah, Ida, and Max have now arrived. They will be with us through the end of January. Adam will be speaking about Norway this week during both of our Sunday gathering times.

History of Religion

The folks at Maps of War are masters of mashup maps. Here is one on the history of religion.

Adam and Sarah Hartel Update

The Hartel Family in Norway: Quarterly Update Sep. 07

Visas and American Aliens…

At the beginning of August, we received a letter from the Norwegian Department of Immigration stating that they have granted us a working visa to remain in Norway! In July of 2006, our initial four year “missionary” visa expired. We applied for a working visa to remain in Norway, and after one year of waiting, were denied our request. However, with the help of a good friend here (who happens to be a lawyer), we sent in an appeal to their decision. We were notified that we should receive an answer some time in October or November. Now, about two months early, we have received our new visa.

This is a profound answer to prayer. Thank you to all of you who have been praying for this in the past year. God has truly gone above and beyond our expectations:

1. This visa is renewable yearly (without any predetermined limit).
2. Each year we live here with this visa counts as precedence to establish permanent residency in Norway. This could be possible after three years.
3. We have received an answer earlier than we expected.

When we followed up with the local department of immigration to find out what the “next steps” were, we were shocked and amused to find out that Sarah, Ida, and Max had technically been living here as “illegal aliens” during our visa processing! Apparently the government assumed that only Adam would be living in Norway during the process.?. They assured us that we would not be deported, but we had to immediately begin processing Sarah and the kids. They also assured us that they would get their visas because Adam had already received a “working” visa. Their papers are in Oslo for reviews. Please pray that all goes smoothly and we get their approval soon.

Quart Outreach 2007

We began our involvement with the Quart outreach five years ago in response to the Word of the Lord to us and the prayers of the local Methodist pastor, Michael Davey, who had been doing the outreach for two years on his own. The Lord directed us to respond to his invitation for help. This was within our first year in Norway, and the Pasadena Foursquare Church sent a team to work with us here to provide the needed people to serve the city through this outreach. What occurred was a partnership of the Pasadena and Kristiansand Foursquare churches with the local Methodist church with a commitment to evangelism in the city of Kristiansand. This commitment went deeper than the task at hand. We received a mandate form the Lord that we were to model missional and incarnational evangelism to the local believers so that they would rise up and commit themselves to the task of sharing the love of Christ with the people of their city. This year, we saw this come to fruition as 25+ local volunteers (representing two Norwegian Foursquare churches and three other local churches in Kristiansand) commit to working along side the team from Pasadena.

This year we shared the love of Christ through serving the city and the people who were attending the concerts for the Quart festival. We did this practically, through two outdoor cafes serving free coffee and waffles, by sending two teams to clean the local McDonalds, and sending out groups to clean the main shopping street while praying over the city.

For the first time, the Pasadena team helped us host a bootcamp on the nearby island of Flekkerøy. During the bootcamp, the Lord shaped a diverse group of Norwegians (from different cities and churches) and Americans into one, united missions team. As we progressed into the outreach this “core” team from bootcamp was joined by other locals to help provide staff for our outdoor cafes and cook meals for the outreach team. We were even joined by a group from Oslo who were wanting to come to Kristiansand at the same time to do street evangelism.

During the Quart outreach, eight people surrendered to Christ, two people received healing, and many others were open to receiving prayer as we engaged them in conversation.

The seeds for local evangelism have been planted and watered over the past five years through the consistency of relationship and serving that the Pasadena team has given. We are seeing these seeds grow and bear fruit. We had an unprecedented amount of local people and churches giving of their lives during the outreach this year. Key people in these churches were engaged and want to be involved next year. For the first time ever, all three of the Foursquare churches in Norway participated in local evangelism together in the same place. This occurred during an evening of worship, when the Foursquare church in Stathelle joined the Kristiansand and Asker Foursquare churches in the city square for street evangelism.

Of what the Lord did among us this summer, there are two things in particular that we would like to highlight. First, the outreach has always been about teamwork and unity. It has never hinged upon one dynamic person or polished event. Rather, the strength of what the Lord has done has flowed from the unity that resulted from surrendering to the Lord together, loving one another, and serving the community along side each other. Also, this year was marked by our having to be completely dependent upon the Lord. We had many people and resources in place, however the weather (not in our control) was not cooperating. Although, our plans and structures seemed to be in place we had to daily surrender to God and ask for good weather. This kept us in a constant place of prayer and dependency on His presence and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Although the weather was not always perfect, it never stopped us. The Lord even used the days with rain. We have already heard about responses from the community that they noticed us consistently serving – whether it was “convenient” or not.

Thank you to all who have served to faithfully and effectively with the teams over the years. Thank you to all who have partnered with what the Lord is doing through prayer and support. Please join us in thanking the Lord for His faithfulness!

Our Family

We are thriving in our home here in Kristiansand, and now with the prospect of our new visa and eventual residency, we really feel as though we now have a clearer long-term view here as a family. Ida just celebrated her 3^rd birthday on June 11^th, and Max will be having his first birthday on August 28^th. Max has just begun to walk!

We are planning to come back to Pasadena, California on furlough during the months of December and January. More details will appear on our website as we get closer to booking tickets, etc.

Youth

Last September, the Lord directed us to focus on working with the youth locally and helping to develop youth leadership in Norway and this region of Europe. We believe that we are to advance the Kingdom of God in this nation and region by specifically evangelizing and discipling the youth. The saved, baptized, Spirit-filled and led teenager who responds to the call of the Lord today will be raising and discipling their own children in the same way five to ten years from now. When this occurs, we will see the Kingdom of God manifest incarnationally and take root generationally within this culture. Within the past several months we have seen two youth receive salvation during our Friday night gatherings. More and more students are wanting to be water baptized and receive the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. This summer, three of our youth were baptized in the Jordan river during the Foursquare Convention in Israel. During our second annual regional youth camp (representing Norway, Great Britain, Ireland, and Estonia) six youth received salvation, fourteen were baptized in the Holy Spirit, and eleven said yes to a call to missions and evangelism. Adam will be responsible to plan and lead the regional youth camp for the summer of 2008. From the overflow of what the Lord is doing among the youth locally, we will connect with and develop youth ministers in the other nations of this region.

Prayer Requests:

• Just as local people here volunteered for the Quart outreach, please pray that part of the lasting effect of the outreach would be that more people would rise up within the Kristiansand Foursquare Church to give of their lives as children’s workers, small group leaders, worshippers, and ushers.
• In September, our church will be participating in a local evangelistic event for youth called Harvest Cry. This will focus on getting students to invite their friends from school to hear the gospel. Please pray that our teens would be bold and that we would see many salvations. Also pray that those teens who respond to Christ will be connected in relationship with one of the local churches in Kristiansand.
• Now that we have received our visa to remain in Norway, please pray for the processing of the individual visas for Sarah and the kids. This is more of a technicality, but please pray that we would receive approval and passport stamps from Oslo quickly and without incident.
• Sarah is renewing her U.S. passport with the consulate in Oslo. Please pray that we would receive her new passport quickly.

Thank you for your continued prayers and support as you partner with the Lord in advancing His kingdom here in Norway.

- Adam, Sarah, Ida & Max Hartel

Norway Team Video

I’ve uploaded the video from last week. Click the link to see the video.
- Pastor Pete

Norway Pictures

Norway 2007

Pictures from the Norway Team have been upload.
- Pastor Pete

Norway Team Coming Home

The Norway Mission Team comes home tonight!
We have the privilege of hearing from them on Sunday 7/22 during both services.

– Pastor Pete