Well, the school here has finally begun! Yesterday about 4pm, students started pouring in, transforming the base from a quiet retreat haven on the sea, to a hustle-bustle of new faces and excitement. Around 4:30, my roommate arrived! Gunhild (who I call Gunna for short) and I hit it off immediately, and the fun hasn't stopped since. She is 20 years old, and just finished her DTS in Scotland and Morocco in January. From the moment we met, she couldn't stop expressing her excitement at having an American roommate. All the students on her DTS were Americans and converted her to a Saturday Night Live sense of humor, which apparently cannot be matched by Norwegians :-). And what are the odds--she also likes to run! We took our first run together this afternoon, and tackled some pretty steep hills in the process. I'm looking forward to becoming great friends with Gunna over the next 3 months. It's a relief to know that we are going to get along fine.
There are 2 schools going on at the base here concurrently. The first is the school I'm doing--the School of Intercession, Worship & Spiritual Warfare--and the second is an Intro to Biblical Counseling school. The SOI only has 6 students, and Gunna & I are the only 2 who are living on the base (another reason it's a relief and a blessing to get along so well!). The IBC has about 20 students. All the students besides me in the SOI are Norwegian, and the IBC is all Norwegians as well with the exception of one girl from Denmark and another from Sweden. So I am the only American student in both schools! The girl in the IBC from Denmark is Line (pronounced like Lina), and we have hit it off as well. I think we are going to become good friends as time goes on, even though we are in different schools.
So my attitude for these next 3 months is to just jump in to everything! I'm trying to focus on taking every opportunity presented to me each day, and not to wait until I am comfortable or feel "ready" to try new things. For those of you who know me well, you understand that this is at times a challenge! I definitely tend to take my time easing into things, and not jump into anything without lots of thought and cost/benefit analysis :-). But I realize that I only have a limited amount of time here to learn, develop relationships, and experience new things, and so I am doing my best to take advantage of TODAY, and not wait to jump in until later. So part of this attitude make-over involved "Jofrid-cise." "What in the world is 'Jofrid-cise?'" you are wondering... Well, this afternoon about 6 of us girls joined our school leader, Jofrid, in a beautifully coreographed aerobic workout, leading me to reflect that girls have such silly ways of excercising. Why do we do this? Why do we insist on standing in rows and performing pseudo-dance moves in time with high-tempo music? Well, I don't know, but I can say that despite the silliness--or perhaps because of it--the 6 of us had a lot of fun, and I will most likely be a regular participant in "Jofrid-cise" in the future. It's part of the experience, right? And I refuse to stand on the outside and watch this time around.
So there you go--my reflection on the first 2 days of class. I'm excited to see what God has in store as I am obedient to jump into what He has prepared for me. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers, and much love to you all! Until next time...
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