Week 1!

This past week I’ve had fika, taken several walks, learned about 1st Timothy, spent some quality time with some quality people, enjoyed an Easter weekend, and so so so much more!

Fika: Up here, Fika is the word the Swedes use for hanging out, drinking tea/coffee, eating cookies/crackers/lots of food. I love how Swedish people make it a part of their life to invite friends over and have Fika. To just have a time of their day where they stop everything and fellowship (and eat)!

Walks: I cannot describe to you all just how BEAUTIFUL it is up here! We literally live in the middle of a forest, so taking a nature walk is as easy as stepping out your back door. I’ve taken walks with groups of people, I took one with one person, and I have taken some with just myself. They have a TON of moss here, so the ground is all green and beautiful! The trees haven’t started growing any leaves yet, but I can’t wait for them to! Last night is snowed… a good 4 inches, which literally makes it a winter wonderland up here! I really wish you all could see this in real life- it’s so beautiful you guys!!! This past Saturday a group of us decided to walk into the nearest big-ish town… Vetlanda. It took us about 1.5 hours to get there, and we ended up walking around the town for about 3ish hours (including getting lost...). The walk was long, but so pretty and amazing and BEAUTIFUL!

Our walk to Vetlanda:

Learn: The speaker we had this past week was named Rob Whitaker. He’s the principal at the Torchbearers school in England. He went over 1 Timothy 1-2, but really dug into 1 Timothy 2:11-15. It was so neat to dig into a passage like that. He brought up stuff that I had never even considered before… I can’t wait to go back home and go over my notes and inform everyone else on this passage! Our speaker this week is John Allen, and he's been speaking on Isaiah, which has also been very interesting!

People: The people, the people, the people... They are all awesome. They are all unique. They are all Godly. And we all kind of mesh together. I love how God is able to bring people with many different backgrounds from different cultures and just make it work. It’s so much fun to sit with people from Canada or Germany or Romania or Sweden and just discuss the differences in our cultures. Something that us North Americans found out is that in Europe, their main meal is for lunch, and their smaller meal is for dinner. So normally we have a big hot meal during lunch time, and a sandwich type meal for dinner. It was weird at first, but I’m getting used to it… and I might even like it better!

Easter: I wasn’t exactly sure how this Easter would go down… I mean, I’ve only been here for a week… but I was pleasantly surprised! We had a Reflection/Prayer time on Friday, a Good Friday service, and an Easter Sunday service. It was a great time to reflect on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and was also a great time to fellowship with the students up here. We also ate a ton of food. Like a TOOONNN of food. Sunday consisted of a big breakfast, big lunch, a big fika, and a big dinner. We continued the celebration on Monday and had a big breakfast, big lunch, a big fika, and a big dinner… and lots of chocolate in between. Ya, lots of food.

Our Easter Sunday picture:

Easter Fika:

Anyways, everything has been great so far, and it’s only been week 1! I get so excited when I think that this is only week 1 and just how much more awesome it’ll get as the time goes on!