Counting down hours…

…43 hours left. Wait, WHAT?! 

That’s when my team is going to jump in a van on the way to Auckland International Airport. As a matter of fact, this is the last time I’m updating this until at least May 24^th. I could tell you all about the things I’ve been doing for the last ten days – like our incredible week of open discussions on moral dilemmas, finally finishing outreach shopping, having the most meaningful conversations with the lovely people here, watching Lord of the Rings, going out for a birthday dinner, taking a random town trip just having coffee, medical and Bislama lessons, trying not to stress between sadness, excitement and packing – but honestly, I don’t feel like that’s what I want this last post to be. I want it to mean something, to bring some of the things I’ve learned in the past 12 weeks to that world out there, to carry the feeling of love and value that my newly appointed siblings have shown and granted me.

 

This one’s for you, my friends; namely Megan and Timothy who are sitting next to me right in this moment (that I will hopefully always remember).

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you His peace.

Der Herr segne dich und behüte dich; der Herr lasse sein Angesicht leuchten über dir und sei dir gnädig; der Herr hebe sein Angesicht über dich und gebe dir seinen Frieden.

-Numbers 6: 24-26- 

Roomies <3

 

With this I say: Thank you for reading my creative outbursts and accompanying me on this journey of faith. Be blessed and enjoy every moment!

See you soon, love, Annika

 

Future roomies aka my outreach team :)

Photos: Megan Nahirny & Chris Olsen

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