Relationships - A Recipe

It is Sunday of Week 5 which means that, firstly, my fifth week here is almost over (crazy!) and, secondly, I’m sitting down to write another blog post. As always I have to get my diary out because I struggle to get my memories of this week in the right order, as always I have no idea what to title the new post and as always I don’t even know where to start. 

Maybe let’s get started with the topic of the week and continue from there: relationships. Taught about by our first female speaker – that fact alone made it an entirely different experience to the weeks before. Our speaker Catherine had a curriculum that she talked about in the planned order, with slides to match her talking and stories to tell about them. The perfect setting to take notes that actually make sense :D. Besides, listening to a calm female voice was ear- as well as soul-soothing.

Her lectures weren’t focused on relationships in the romantic sense but rather an explanation of what every relationship (meaning to others, to oneself & to God) should really be based on. According to her, the ingredients for a healthy relationship are Honour, Love, Understanding, Trust (& Accountability) and Forgiveness and she gave examples to apply those to all kinds of relationships, from the general honour we should have for every being to the trust needed for a deep friendship to the willingness to forgive those who hurt us that we need in order to not become bitter.
Romantic relationships eventually came up on Thursday and Catherine managed to teach basic levels and functions of a journey to marriage without pressing her own boundaries and experiences onto us which was a very pleasant approach to the sometimes sensitive topic.
Personally, the past week’s lectures weren’t so much about learning new stuff but more about realising what people have explained to me before and actively processing it. 

Other cool things that happened this week were the “twinning” theme on Monday (see photo that I couldn't upload so see no photo), a night of prayer and prophetic words on Wednesday and of course the (more than 30) baptisms on Friday afternoon. Also, the sun finally decided to show up again after six days of straight rain that slightly strained the relationships between the girls in my room. Being forced to stay inside when everything is humid and smelling weird is definitely a special kind of patience test! However, it seems that New Zealand weather has only two settings and the rain has left as suddenly as it came and we are now back to 26 degrees and burning sun – crazy. What really helped lift the spirits in the pouring rain was this week’s honour project: Matching the lectures, everyone got a name of another person in the school and our task was to honour that person anonymously. It was so cute to see the joy all those little notes, gifts and chocolates brought to givers as well as receivers :)

What can I say? Now it’s Sunday again and I spent most of my weekend reading and marvelling at how fast time seems to go by. In an hour I’m going to leave for a church service organised by all of Tauranga’s churches so I hope that will be good. Next week promises to be pretty crazy again – there’s only so much calm in “Freedom And Deliverance”…

Until then, I hope you can sleep in just as well as I could on this beautiful Sunday morning. Have an awesome week and enjoy the (hopefully good) relationships you have with those around you.

With love,
Annika

Always Follow Your Nose

Or how not to follow the curriculum xD which was basically what we did the whole week – in the best way possible.
Instead of sticking to his slides on “The Nature and Character of God”, our teacher just jumped from topic to topic, occasionally going back to the week’s title but mostly doing what he felt was important for us to learn. And it was!
To be honest, I don’t know how to describe week four, let alone summarize it. It was crazy, intense, moving and revealing. It definitely put some knots in my brain that I’m still pondering about and I think it altered faith and the way we see God for everyone in their own way. We talked about romantic relationships, the concept of the Trinity and God’s fatherly love. We discussed our individual identities and how they mirror the nature of God, all the way learning the original meaning of several Hebrew words.
It’s very interesting and also rather sad to realize how much of the bible’s content has literally been lost in translation and distorted by people’s opinions. 

On the other hand: If there’s one thing this week has really taught me, it’s that every answer holds at least five other questions and that’s a good thing. We were made to be loved, not to fully understand the One that loves us so incredibly, unconditionally, endlessly, incomprehensibly. I seemed to run across that philosophy all the time during the last seven days: In lectures, while writing my identity poster, reading (and loving) “Captivating” by John and Stasi Eldredge and last, but certainly not least, watching (and adoring) “The Shack” last night.
Evelyn Underhill once said:
“If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped.”,
and I’m starting to really be at peace with that. Maybe sometimes, our job in this world is just to see love and make it seen.

On that note, I hope you have a wonderful week ahead of you and I’m sorry if this post is pure gibberish to you. With a two day first aid course going on, it’s been a long week end and my inability to form meaningful sentences is increasing proportionally to my tiredness :)

Good night and good morning to all the corners of this Earth,
Annika

The Best Things Come In (Week) 3

Tauranga with one of its many bays

With me finally catching that nasty stomach bug, my start into week 3 wasn’t exactly desirable. But, oh well, it could only get better from there, right?

On Monday, I spent most of the day in bed reading which was probably a good idea, concerning the fact that I still felt dizzy every time I walked for too long. Monday night was – as always when I’m tired – another little homesickness attack but after writing all my (very distracting) thoughts down and talking to my parents, I felt much better, not to mention a lot less insecure. The time here has been amazing and I’m learning so much about myself and my faith but sometimes, the lectures make me question everything I have believed so far, sending me down a slippery slope into slight panic. This week really taught me to reflect on everything critically, a process that actually helps discovering my faith and opinions more efficiently than just agreeing unquestioningly with the speaker. 

Our second lecture topic was “Hearing God’s Voice” and when I joined the morning lessons again on Tuesday, I very much enjoyed Cheyne’s views on that (very big and controversial) part of faith. Following the lecture and delicious tomato soup for lunch (The food here is amazing!) was the Medical stream afternoon. The teacher talked about “Transformational Development”, blowing us all away with her explanation of the difference between transformation and development and saying that, in order to make a lasting transformation, one has to restore things to their “original design”. According to her, the original design means that “the families, church and leaders in a community live in a healthy relationship with God and the rest of creation” which lead her to the four basic relationships and what it would mean for them to be healthy. I loved that idea not only because I actually knew of the four basic relationships from school but because it is a concept of respect rather than restriction. In the end, everyone was quite sad that the meeting didn’t go on for longer.

Wednesday passed without any special incidents and on Thursday, we had a practice of hearing God’s voice during lecture which turned out to be pretty cool and seemingly incredible (as is a lot that happens here, I guess). In the afternoon, I joined a trip to the city centre where I found an ATM (thank goodness) and a cute cotton shop. The experience was slightly lessened by the pouring New Zealand rain, though. Apparently, there was a cyclone passing in the Pacific and the South Island has been struggling with floods, landslides and destroyed roads for the past few days.

Friday was tired day for all of us and – as last week – it was a miracle that I didn’t just fall asleep during worship. The last lecture of the week was a powerful finish, contrasting the rather uneventful rest of the day. The only thing that can really be said about Friday night is that everyone was looking forward to the weekend, enjoying the free summer night and that the stars here look absolutely stunning 💕

On Saturday, Maeve, Leslie, Jesse and I (all from my room) took the morning and early afternoon to drive to Mount Maunganui and stroll around town where we ate sushi and ice cream and went souvenir and dress shopping – basically having a normal girls’ day in town that we all loved! Saturday night was journaling night just like Sunday afternoon is blog afternoon. It’s always nice to at least pretend to be productive – although reading this page, I actually was this time :)
This morning in church, I heard the preacher that is going to teach next week and I’m sure it is going to be amazing! I’ll tell you then.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and have a joyful, not-to-stressing week!
xx, Annika