Christmas greetings from GRIMSMO / JOHNSEN
For many weeks we have heard Christmas music, and this year I pay special attention to songs like Driving home for Christmas, I wanna go home for Christmas…… In Norway, there has been a TV commercial for the Norwegian Railroad company saying that they will take us home to Christmas. Maybe we should contact them, buy a ticket and see where to they will send us? We are looking forward to getting home - where ever that may be?
Before we reveal where we will spend our Christmas holiday, we want to give you a summary of 2016 for our family. We - Elsa and PK - took a brave decision (we think..) which really has taken us out of our comfort-zone by selling our apartment in July and being "homeless" until our building project is finished.We have experienced that sometimes it is not easy to anticipate the consequences of a decision. We will get back to this shortly…
2016 is the year of relocation for the family Grimsmo / Johnsen. During this year we have emptied two flats and one cottage + helped both our children's families to relocate to Kolbotn just outside Oslo. They now live close to each other in a very nice area, and this means that no one in our family lives in Oslo any longer.
Many have asked us about what we currently are doing in our professional lives.
PK quitted EVRY late 2015 and have now joined my company Presenza. I have been working on my own since 2014, but have now turned Presenza to a corporation - Presenza AS.
We work with what we love to do - people at work. We work together with leaders and team that wants to develop their talents and mobilize their strengths to really work with passion and engagement - the most important factors for having a good work life and to get success in their business. We want to make a difference for people and build a better society. It starts with self-management, a conscious and passionate leader that challenges the individuals and knows how to build engaged teams and customers.
Getting back to our decision for 2016 - it has been a special time now approaching Christmas without having our own home. For 35 years we have had our Christmas traditions, decorating our home and making it ready for the holidays. We have been making Christmas cakes and food, drinking Julegløgg, eating dinners together with family in OUR home - a cozy lounge for peace and rest in a busy time for Christmas preparation. AND WE HAVE LOVED IT…..
We have our 365 days blog where we have been talking about being homeless. Right now we live together with my brother john Peder and his children in Sandefjord. When we visit Oslo we stay at one of the homes at Kolbotn and we are taken good care of by all the families there. Family and friends offer us to share their homes - an unlimited network of love and comfort. We are very grateful to experience this. For this is a part of what we are doing - to explore the edges of our lives and deliberately putting ourselves in a situation where we really need to get closer to our real feelings.
One year ago I volunteered for the organization "Dråpen i havet" at the Greek island of Lesvos. For one week I was at the shore receiving hundreds of people arriving in unsafe boats - driven to homelessness. On the run from violence, oppression, war and terrorism they showed such a relief when they finally reached what they percieved as a safe harbor - Europe. We all know that too many of them still resides in refugee-camps. 60 million refugees - they are the homeless people - not WE!

The injustice in this world is so large it may discourage us, but we know that ; no one can do everything, but everyone can do something. It was fantastic to see that a small contribution really can do a change as we visited our adoptees in India and saw how the organisation there took care of children and their families giving them hope of a new and better life.
PK and I have already opened our Christmas presents this year. After some days together with our family at Kolbotn, Lørenskog and in Sandefjord we will leave for Tanzania. The project "Sharing for Life" means a lot to the small town of Mlingotini - and there are still a lot of opportunities. We will post updates on our 365dager.no blog so you can follow us there. We will celebrate new Year's Eve together with the founder of the organization - Solfrid - and all the people in the village. Again we think - a REMIX year - blend together what we can and what is new for 365 days (maybe more…) We think as Mark Twain….
Twenty years from now we will be more disappointed by the things we didn’t do than by the ones we did do. So we throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in our sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
A star twinkles today - for you and your family. We will light more stars and let them shine for our fellow men - and especially for them who are on their way "home". 'Let the star shine for freedom, hope, happiness, and peace - but most of all for peace on earth - where the humans live their strange and different lives….
Christmas hugs from Elsa and PK and merry Christmas to everyone
GOD JUL TIL STORE - GOD JUL TIL SMÅ - GOD JUL TIL ALLE SOM BANKER PÅ!
Credits:
Elsa / Per Kristian