Chapter 2, in which I begin to settle in and discover more of what I'll be doing here
The last two weeks have been filled with many, many seminars. To clarify, a seminar is up to six and a half hours of theology, which of course is completely in German. I ended most days completely exhausted from a combined course in Theology and German, but it was a good kind of exhaustion. The kind you get from working (thinking) hard and accomplishing a lot. I won't bore with in depth summaries of each topic, but here are a few stories from these past two weeks.
Early on, we, the FSJ team, visited a café run by the local Baptist church every Tuesday. I will be helping out with this café as well as with the junior youth and youth programs at that church. We were able to speak with Thomas, the pastor, about what my role would be to some extent. It was a rather cool experience. Unfortunately, the rest of the day did not go nearly as well given that we spent four hours waiting outside the city hall for an appointment to file some paperwork which ended up lasting all of five minutes. That was frustrating, but at least I didn't have to think quite so hard.
A pretty cool experience that I had was last Friday, rather than having a regular lecture seminar, we did some interesting team-building activities. A new member of the team, Kris, another American, arrived at lunch that day and we headed off to to a high-ropes course and some hiking. Now, expecting the hiking to maybe last an hour or two, I naturally went all out on the course and had a great time. I began to suspect that everything was not as I had believed when I was told we were hiking back to the house. No big deal, I worked at a summer camp, I can handle a little bit of traipsing through the woods, right? Five and a half hours later, I realized that I might have underestimated the difficulty of the challenge. Everything was going well until we got lost and stumbled across some barbed wire that was of course a military base. After finally finding our way again, we managed to hike all the way back to Kaiserslautern, where we spent an hour hiking up a mountain to a really neat lookout tower with 162 steps, which I only know because each step was excruciatingly painful. There was a lookout over the whole of Kaiserslautern, all lit up because it was about midnight at that point.
It was a rough day, but it really got me thinking. As I followed Mike, our fearless leader, with no idea of when I would finally see my bed, I began to think of Jesus's disciples, of the kind of trust it would take to follow him to new places everyday, not knowing where the next meal would come from or how long the walk would be. I began to realize how much they must have loved Jesus to give up the comfort of a home with a warm meal and a warm bed to travel throughout the country and follow him. I was challenged to think that I had such a hard time following Mike even knowing that I had a warm bed to sleep in, and am I truly willing to follow Jesus even when it means going out into the unknown and not having the guarantee of the comforts to which I have grown so accustomed?
Early on, we, the FSJ team, visited a café run by the local Baptist church every Tuesday. I will be helping out with this café as well as with the junior youth and youth programs at that church. We were able to speak with Thomas, the pastor, about what my role would be to some extent. It was a rather cool experience. Unfortunately, the rest of the day did not go nearly as well given that we spent four hours waiting outside the city hall for an appointment to file some paperwork which ended up lasting all of five minutes. That was frustrating, but at least I didn't have to think quite so hard.
A pretty cool experience that I had was last Friday, rather than having a regular lecture seminar, we did some interesting team-building activities. A new member of the team, Kris, another American, arrived at lunch that day and we headed off to to a high-ropes course and some hiking. Now, expecting the hiking to maybe last an hour or two, I naturally went all out on the course and had a great time. I began to suspect that everything was not as I had believed when I was told we were hiking back to the house. No big deal, I worked at a summer camp, I can handle a little bit of traipsing through the woods, right? Five and a half hours later, I realized that I might have underestimated the difficulty of the challenge. Everything was going well until we got lost and stumbled across some barbed wire that was of course a military base. After finally finding our way again, we managed to hike all the way back to Kaiserslautern, where we spent an hour hiking up a mountain to a really neat lookout tower with 162 steps, which I only know because each step was excruciatingly painful. There was a lookout over the whole of Kaiserslautern, all lit up because it was about midnight at that point.
It was a rough day, but it really got me thinking. As I followed Mike, our fearless leader, with no idea of when I would finally see my bed, I began to think of Jesus's disciples, of the kind of trust it would take to follow him to new places everyday, not knowing where the next meal would come from or how long the walk would be. I began to realize how much they must have loved Jesus to give up the comfort of a home with a warm meal and a warm bed to travel throughout the country and follow him. I was challenged to think that I had such a hard time following Mike even knowing that I had a warm bed to sleep in, and am I truly willing to follow Jesus even when it means going out into the unknown and not having the guarantee of the comforts to which I have grown so accustomed?
This is part of the high-ropes course to which we went. It was a great experience, and it was cool to be able to encourage one another to meet the various challenges.
This picture is of the German Autobahn, while hiking we had to cross over it. Had I known what lay ahead, I may have refused to leave the security of civilization.
The lights from the top of the tower overlooking Kaiserslautern are somewhat visible here. Kaiserslautern is a fairly decent sized city, but I hadn't really gotten a good grasp of the size until this point.
This was a cool little museum place that Kris and I found while exploring the city. There were bibles here in over 140 languages, representing the number of languages spoken in Kaiserslautern.
As I move into more of a ministry phase of my time here these next few weeks I should have more stories and pictures. Until then, you can contact me if you'd like to hear more about my experiences or have any questions. Thanks for reading!
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