Gramsbergen, the city that I´ve taken along

We all take a part of our village with us,
wherever we go in this world.
(The story of the monkeys is the oldest of our city)
 

From there …

Gramsbergen, my hometown, has their weeklong town-festival this week, and I´m not there. And it´s now I have not been at the festival for almost ten years that I see what I am missing out on.
The week is simply called «party week», or «city of lights». Every single street of the whole city is creatively decorated. Every street chooses their own theme, and sets puppets, flags, stalls, and whole installations in the their front-gardens. All the decorations are lighted at night, and there is a route through the whole city that people can follow by car or bike to see all the decorations. See the pictures here.

Besides decorating our streets and gardens, we dress up ourselves and make the whackyest parade-wagons. Sure, it´s an honour to win the prize for the nicest decorated street, but that honour is forgotten as soon as the week is over. The most important thing is that everyone participates and has a good time together. It´s a party, and we´re not trying to change the world.

… to here

You can imagine that my hometown is a very creative community, with all the streets getting together to work on their craziest ideas. When I was thinking about that this week, I starte dot wonder how much of Gramsbergen I have taken with me to our communities I am a part of in Norway; to the YWAM base; to the youth café; and to church.
I think that I´ve mostly done that what my hometown has taught me to do: show up, participate and have a good time.

I´ve been super proud to see my dad making radio again with the old crew from our city´s former radio-station. I have taken after my dad in the way that I am someone who is happy to just help out with the technical and creative skills God has given me.

Café UNO, our youth café.
 

And right here

Back in Hamar, we got some good news from the major. He let us know that the city counsel had decided that they were going to financially support our youth-café. We are super happy, and the extra money is going to come in pretty good for when we have to move out of this old place and start renting a new place in the city-centre.