The Third Part of The Trinity

You guessed it - this week was Holy Spirit week and it was all about Holy Spirit not being a myth or a wind or a feeling but an actual person and just a much part of God as the Father or Jesus. The whole trinity thing still hurts my head when I think about it too much but that’s the thing that makes God God, I guess: He’s unfathomable, simply too big to be fully grasped, with Him, 1+1+1 can equal one and once you’ve accepted that He’s actually really fun to ponder about.

So, Holy Spirit…
We started on Monday by talking about His fruit (Galatians 5) where our speaker – who was absolutely amazing and so encouraging – went into the deeper meanings of love, joy and peace. In this case, deeper meaning basically means only more good associations than we already have with these attributes. Love, for example, is about a strong, life-changing and EVERLASTING love. A love that doesn’t just go on for eternity but also started an eternity ago. You, yes, you personally, were LOVED from the beginning of the universe and will be LOVED long after the universe seizes to exist. You were thought of and cared for long before you were even conceived. So if love comes from being so deeply love, where does joy originate? Being enjoyed! You are being enjoyed. Isn’t that an encouraging sentence? It became quite the affirmation here last week :)
Then again, God’s peace is so much more than just the absence of violence. The Hebrew shalom is a word with a very broad spectrum and stands for just about every blessing you can think of. As our speaker put it, that true peace is peace in the midst of chaos, security in the midst of turmoil, the kind of peace that only comes with the presence of the Prince of Peace. It’s a peace that makes to trust, that brings healing, a peace worth looking for. The other fruits, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, I haven’t actually looked into yet, but I definitely will.

On Tuesday, we had Outreach Prep (team culture and Vanuatu’s culture) in the morning, MedCom stream about all kinds of disgusting (but interesting) skin diseases in the afternoon and lectures at night on how Holy Spirit is the “with-us-ness” of God. Before lectures, we got to experience some more of that sometimes crazy “with-us-ness”, ourselves when a girl whose right leg was an inch shorter than the other got prayed for and – no, I am not kidding – her leg just grew to be the same length right then and there! Honestly, I’m starting to really look forward to a similarly crazy outreach...

On Wednesday and Thursday, our speaker talked about the gifts of Holy Spirit, told us to figure out our and each other’s gifts and I have to say: Both of those days were days of incredible lectures, revelations but also conversations. Everyone here has so much to say and I think this variety of input and opinions and backgrounds is what I’m going to miss most once lecture phase is over (I don’t dare to talk about it).

On Friday, the last lecture was all about what Holy Spirit wants to be and do in our lives, that He essentially is the power behind all we could do if we let Him. In the afternoon, my awesome outreach team took a trip to the Mount to discuss current information – I’ll be gone from April 5^th until May 26^th – have dinner and ice cream together and tell one another how we were feeling and what’s been going on in our lives. We had a very nice time and it made me feel pretty confident about spending 7 weeks and 2 days of my live with these 8 people.

Yesterday, I had a very random day but I ended up joining a team going outreach shopping and by lunchtime I had almost all my outreach supplies so I guess you could call it productive. In the afternoon we had a birthday bridal baby shower to celebrate – with bible verses and blessings, a giant cake and a piñata – and the birthday girl’s face was pure joy :D. Last night we watched the Lion King with everyone singing (and talking) along and so it was the perfect free Saturday.

Today, I didn’t go to church but spent 2 hours in the chapel with a podcast and my knitting needles instead. It was a very relaxing and regenerating time and afterwards I felt ready for an afternoon of journaling which turned into more theological discussions and biblical questions; I love it! I started this post after dinner and just returned from baking a raspberry crumble cheesecake for whanau time tomorrow and it does look quite delicious. It better is, the preparation took three hours…

On that note, I better get more than three hours of sleep and say good night and good morning now. Shalom and enjoy your week!

xx, Annika

Who Am I?

A question that you’d think I’d have figured out after 17 years, 7 months and 8 weeks of DTS but nope. Turns out it’s a question that you can only answer truthfully if you can answer the following question as well: Who is God?

That’s what this last week was all about – two questions whose answers are equally easy to find, hard to believe and numerous. God is infinite and so are His names, characteristics, roles, ways and acts. And if He created us in His image, doesn’t that tell us a whole lot about ourselves? The problem is that eternity is a concept that’s basically impossible to grasp for the human mind because it is everything that our world, our life, our TIME isn’t. So we think of God as we think of this world, we put Him in the box of our minds, of our surroundings, our standards. But what if we chose to think the other way around? I once heard someone say that we actually become the way we think of God so what if we chose to embrace that concept of infinity? If we didn’t put God, and ourselves, in a box but instead just thought of Him as the limitless Creator He is and then listened to the limitless things He has to say about us? Hans-Joachim Eckstein put it this way: We only know our own identities by what others tell us about them, so wouldn’t you want that other to be someone good and unjudging, someone that actually knows you because He gave you your identity in the first place?
And if we believe in the goodness of the universe, doesn’t that encourage us to be good ourselves? If we think of ourselves positively, doesn’t that inspire us to call out the fundamental goodness and beauty in those around us? If we love our creator we love ourselves, so doesn’t that empower us to truly love others in the first place?

That’s what we did this week: Smashing the box and its lies and beginning to replace out eternal space with truths – truths that we’ll hopefully never seize to learn anew.

Outside of the amazing, emotional and very revealing lectures, the past seven days have very much been days of fun and just hanging around, being a community.
We had a cosy girls’ night of prayer, dessert (fruit salad & ice cream) and dancing on Tuesday, Scottish country dancing night on Thursday (both interesting and absolutely hilarious!), a Lord of The Rings 2 Extended Edition movie night on Friday (without the staff because they were on staff retreat), an extremely calm housework day on Saturday (with about 50 people on base, I loved it) and an outside game night last night. The only negative thing that can be said about that is that I now have a scraped knee because I slipped in the dark. Childhood memories…

I wish you all the best for your next week :)

Good night and good morning to all edges of the world,
xx, Annika

Week 8 – And Eighty-Six Days Left

My crazy roommates, left to right, top row: Jesse (Singapore), Leslie (Kalifornia), Maeve (Maryland), Jessica (England), Emily (England); bottom row: Lauren (Canada), me, Kirsty (Scotland), Nicole (Brazil) and Victoria (Canada)

Honestly, guys, I could start every new post with the following words: It’s Sunday afternoon, I’m updating my blog and I don’t know what to write. So let’s hope I can think of something in the next five minutes :) 

This week was very controversial for me. The lectures were challenging – the topic was called “Love For The Word Of God” or “Study The Word” – and I had trouble understanding some of the interpretations the speaker explained to us but also accepting said interpretations and views. Then again, being challenged isn’t a bad thing and even though I don’t necessarily agree with the man in the front, he made me think about the Bible in a different way, widening my horizon in the process. Sometimes I think that DTS is just personality development in time-lapse mode.
Apart from lectures, I felt very restless at the start of the week which got better with time and processing but kept me from being very productive. Then again: I might not have read as much as I meant to during the last seven days but I certainly did have some good conversations with people I hadn’t talked to much before. Plus, I am now officially over the three month mark of keeping a diary :D
Now that I’m trying to remember everything, I have to say that this week has been pretty quiet. On most nights, I just stayed at the base, either reading, talking or watching a German movie with Lena.
Wow, I’m sorry, this is becoming really boring and reflecting my tiredness today. I don’t know what’s wrong but maybe I’m just going into hibernation…Anyway, let’s get to the fun stuff:

On Wednesday night, we had our first outreach prep night where Cheyne talked about expectations we should and shouldn’t have, as well as telling us some stories of his outreaches and showing us videos of children learning to catch Tarantula for dinner (NOT on Vanuatu!). Afterwards, we met in our outreach teams and talked about our expectations, as leaders and students, and apprehensions, such as lice, food and giant centipedes. That night, we found out we’re going to the island of Tanna which is the island that my host father Rod told me about four years ago – isn’t that crazy? Overall, my worries are turning more and more into excitement, with just a bit of nervousness remaining that I’m going to call healthy for now ;)

For Saturday, we managed to organise a trip to Mount Maunganui (lovingly called the Mount) so after having slept in, eaten a nice breakfast (banana pancakes) and a leftover lunch, we got into a van and mentally prepared for the usual two hours outside the base. But the amazing Aimee offered to let us stay out for dinner and just pick us up at 8pm giving us six wonderfully long hours to go to the beach, shopping, take ocean photos and eat in the cute coffee shops lining Maunganui Road. From the afternoon of looking into the little shops to watching the sunset at the beach and conquering the playground in the park next to it, yesterday afternoon was practically perfect in every way!

Today, I spent most of my time reading, resting and writing, I guess you could say mentally preparing for the coming week...

I hope I can get this uploaded before the dinner bell rings :)

Have a lovely leftover weekend!
xx, Annika