A family visit

My family has come to visit me at my the YWAM base I work at, they have been here from the 21st to the 26st of October. Right in this time we also had our annual Home Days, in which we have been reviewing how things are going here at the base.

It was very nice to have my family visiting to celebrate my birthday and show them where I live and work. I had birthday last friday, and that day there was a big dinner with about 100 people because of the Home Days. The party was already arranged, so I did not have to do this for the people.

In the weekend after I was just spending time with my family, we did not go to visit many places, we went for walks and enjoyed the surrounding for what they were. Still the autumn colors were very nice.

Now I am back at work again, and we hope to be done with the pages about paradise. We have now made up our minds about how we want the layout to be, and there is lots of drawing to do now. I hope I will be in time with everything.

Putting Paradise on two pages

Yes, now we are moving on with the coming children´s pages for the YWAM magazine. The planning has take some longer than I expected. This time we want to put the lyrics of one of our songs over both the children´s pages. The song is about paradise and the fall of man. About that Jesus is the only one that can take away sin from us, and how we can live for him because of that.

These are all very big topics to squeeze on two pages. And it is my job to make all of this look attractive. And to have the children and families learn about this through different activities. I really like to do and make puzzles and mazes, and am very happy that I can put them on our children´s pages.

Some things that are a challenge with this job is that the whole things does not get messy. The children should always be able to know where to start and what goes where on a puzzle page. At the same time as I want to put lots of puzzles in there and are challenging myself to integrate puzzles in the text and in the background. Sometimes it is harder to come up with simple solutions than with complex ones. For us this meant that we have made the song text as visible as possible and let the puzzles lie around it. This way the children can easily follow back and forth from the text to the activities.

I really would like the children to get the message we put on our pages, instead of just doing our puzzles. There is more to it than just making puzzles about bible stories. Here we think it works really well to integrate the puzzles with the message. To have one topic per page or pages. And let everything be about this topic. For example the garden of eden.

The garden of eden is a thing we are currently working with. It is actually very nice to work with, lots of trees and plants and animals. And it is big, so then you can do lots of things. Everything needs to be done by the first of November, so now there is a lot of drawing left to do.

In two days my parents will come and visit me here at the base. I am really looking forward to having them here. My birthday is on friday.

New: posts in English and Dutch

Yes, the magazine books have come and I reserved a place where I can go to study all these different things about editing and designing and managing and writing. Since several people called me a autodidact in the last weeks, I have started to study about studying. (it is called Metacognition) This has been very interesting and helpful.

Last friday we had a very good meeting with some real editors, that gave us good feedback on how we should go about making the ØBOB (Øystein´s Biltur Overlevelses Blad). Being an editor is a big responsability, and I am still not certain how things will be. This time I have very little overview or control on the challenge ahead. Even the more reason to trust God on this. I am just a bit afraid I will end up working day and night to make a perfect product.

I have also been sitting with the editorial meeting of Mot Målet, which is the magazine that our missions organization YWAM is publishing in Norway. It was interesting to sit there and see how our people do the editing. I have a guess that I might be adding some things to their magazine too, in the future. Right now we are only making children´s pages for them in every issue.

Life is good otherwise, my birthday is coming up. This year my parents and my brother and his wife will come and visit me for my birthday. I am really happy about that. We have made plans about what we would like to do together. It will be great whatever it will be.

Ja, en nu in het Nederlands:

Ik heb besloten om hier ook in het Nederlands te schrijven ipv. op twee bloggen tegelijk. Dat is in het laatste een beetje veel werk geworden, en ik denk dat ik het hier en op deze manier effectiever kan doen.

Dus, met mij gaat het goed. De herfst is kouder aan het worden en we hebben al een paar keer sneeuw gehad. Nu schijnt de zon en de lucht is blauw. In het kantoor zijn we erg druk aan het werk voor de ØBOB Øysteins Biltur Overlevelses Blad "Øysteins autorit overleving blad" voor kinderen. De bedoeling met het blad is dat ze het op de achterbank in de auto kunnen lezen.

In dit blad vertellen we over God en het evangelie en hoe je als Christen moet leven. De manier waarom wij het doen is dat er allemaal puzzels en activiteiten doorheen komen. Dingen om te tellen, en te vinden, en op te lossen. En dat kinderen en families samen spelenderwijs over God leren.

Om mezelf als uitgever te ontwikkelen, ga ik in November een week weg met een stapel boeken om te leren over het ontwerpen, schrijven, beheren en redacteren van het komende kinderblad. Ook ben ik nu meer betrokken bij het redactieproces van Mot Målet, het blad van YWAM Noorwegen.

Ik ben een beetje een zelfstudie persoon, dat heb ik de afgelopen weken van een paar mensen gehoord. Ik word nu voor de komende jaren een beetje meer een redacteur, maar ik hoop dat ik nog altijd veel tekeningen kan blijven maken. Ik zal ook de meeste tekeningen voor het kinderblad gaan doen.

Ja, en dan is het al weer October, en mij verjaardag komt er aan. Dit jaar komen mijn vader en moeder en Mattijs en Alice pop opverjaardagsbezoek hier in Noorwegen. En daar hebben we allemaal erg zin in. Niet alleen om de kadootjes, maar ook omdat we dan elkaar weer kunnen zien.

We are planning: ØBOB

Well, the nice month of September is gone and now we are in October.

Sadly the colorful autumn leaves are falling off the trees and the weather is getting colder. I am still jogging now and then, a few weeks ago I went jogging for an hour after the stars came out. That was lovely.

In the last weeks we have been processing a lot what we want to do with the children´s magazine. The name in Norwegian is "Øystein´s Biltur Overlevelses Blad" which translates into "Øystein´s Car-trip Survival Magazine" or something. We have started to call it ØBOB.

Yes, me and Chris, my project leader, have been having a lot of brainstorm and planning meetings. And at the moment things are already looking quite concrete. I don´t like to sit with idea´s or concepts for too long time, I want to make something real.

We are going to make a 24 page magazine that will explain about God and salvation and how to live your life as a Christian. It is not just going to be text, but there will be lots of puzzles and activities integrated into the "teaching". We have have experienced that we are never done explaining the basics of the Gospel, neither to children nor to their parents. Neither to believers nor to non-believers.

The magazine is meant to be read (or done) on the backseat of the car. The children can be busy with it while they are being driven to their holiday destination. We hope that the magazine will bring the families together, that´s why we will have a boardgame in the middle of the magazine.

I am done with the PCYM, and the next study project is coming. This time I will study by myself, people told me I am kind of a autodidact. I have ordered some books about editing magazines, designing magazines, writing articles and managing a magazine. Some time in November I go through these books and study them. Some of them will be fun, some of them will be a headache.

We ordered the books from Magazine Training International, which is a Christian organization that wants to train people to make Christian magazines. I have been thinking to join one of their courses that was in Manila last week, but decided it was too much to get book flights there on such a short notice. Now the country is struck by a flood, I would have been in the middle of it.

I´ll be in Norway

Yes, last weekend I came back from Switzerland, where I have been for the last block of the PCYM. We all graduated, now I am a children´s and youth worker (?) or something. Well actually I still work as an illustrator for the Øystein project with YWAM in Norway.

In the last weeks, I learned a lot about how I go

about making our own magazine. After the GoFest I prayed and talked with some more people, and decided that I want to see this magazine happen, and I have committed to be working with this for the 5 years. In Switzerland we had teaching about leadership and teamwork and lots of other things that are involved with that. That gave me some good tools and understanding of what I can be doing how I like to do it.

The coming week, I will spend some time to plan the next years. That is quite a step and a challenge, I feel ready for it and really want to see it happen.

It is so good to be back at the base again at Grim

erud, where we can enjoy the final days of the summer, September can be such a nice month. The new DTS has begun, and that means

22 students, a lot more life.

This is a big drawing I worked on the two weeks between the GoFest and our school in Switzerland, it was a lot of work and I worked some evenings, I am very happy with it.

Summer holiday is over, back to the small things

Yes, I had a very good time at the GoFest, which is the summer conference of YWAM here in Norway. Because I work with the children´s ministry, we also got to do some children´s work this year at the conference. Two times two hours with 11 to 13 year olds. Our project leader was sick, so we were planning and doing the things without him, which was a bit different, but very good and the children were happy and also the parents.

I have never been such a conference person, but now after having been in YWAM Norway for four years I finally liked to be there and knew enough people to hang out with. We had the option to sleep in a tent, but I thanked for that, instead I slept in a sleeping hall, with a lot of other guys. The first evening after we arrived there, we went to the skerries to listen to stories and eat shrimps.

Eating shrimps is a Norwegian tradition, where you peal the shrimps yourself and eat them with white bread and mayonnaise. I don´t like any of those ingredients, and night my nose was running and my stomach was aching.

This is a birthday card I made for my mother before I left for the summer conference, my parent collect small elephant statues.

During the summer I have been asking God about what I should do after next summer. God answers prayers for real, just this story is not the best example of that you get your answers fast. I have been praying and thinking, I have been thinking of settling in Norway for a undefined time. Again just like about two years ago, I want to go were God wants me to be and doing his work. I am happy to stay in Norway, and happy to be traveling to other countries. And staying in Norway means that I am far away from my family in Holland.

Well in the end, I believe God spoke to me, though another person. The eventual message was that he knows me and sees me and that I should should focus on the small things and I eventually will see the big picture.

I have really been thinking and worrying about if and how I want to work with the children´s magazine that we want to make for Norwegian children. Now we just make two children´s pages in the existing YWAM magazine, and I had some idea´s of things I wanted to do with that magazine.

Now I have a lot more peace to do the things I am doing, and I have the solid faith that God will show me how things will be when the time is there.

Horses

Now I have holiday and I thought I´d start to draw some random things, these are all drawn after reference.