Days 10 and 11

Monday, January 26

Today was the first day of official lectures (the first week was mainly orientation). This week’s concentration is about grace. The teaching is being done by Holmsted’s base leader, Daniel Susenbach. This morning he told us his story of finding God, and man has this guy got some stories to tell.
He also has a ridiculously comprehensive knowledge of scripture, so he is always quoting relevant passages and showing how they connect with each other and the ideas he’s trying to communicate.
We got to have curry for lunch again - joy! It was Haley’s birthday yesterday (she was away with family) so today there was a table set aside for her with a lace tablecloth and fancy place settings and a “Happy Birthday” banner draped over it - I got to join the birthday table, which means I got to have a piece of the lovely chocolate birthday cake that the staff gave her.
After a couple of hours of cleaning and peeling potatoes (which was actually kind of fun; it gave us a chance to talk) it was time for “Sport”. We got several choices: jogging, going on a walk, intense weight training or pilates. Jogging is not my thing, the slots for weight training filled up pretty quickly, and a lot of my muscles were sore from playing soccer yesterday so, I am embarrassed to say, I opted for pilates to try and work some of the knots out. Oi. Thank goodness no one took it seriously - the whole time we were basically mocking the video instructor, but still…. I shudder to think that Debora’s photos will make their way to facebook…
After dinner I had my first weekly one-on-one with my small group leader, Alex. She and I spent a half hour talking and praying together. Each week we’ll be handing in “journals” that tell about any revelations and musings we have during the week - we’re able to make it as personal or academic as we like. For this first week, though, we just had to put down a few of our goals for our time at DTS, so during our one-on-one I went through my four goals and explained why I have them.
After the one-on-one the rest of the night was off, so Nika trimmed my hair - Ruth and Philippe helped.
I spent a few hours writing in my blog and editing photos for y’all while playing my music through the stereo and hanging out with the rest, which means it took ten times as long as it should have.

Photos: Monday, January 26

Tuesday, January 27

Today we had the usual quiet time. Hanna suggested that we spend the hour just being quiet before God, which I have a hard time doing, so I decided to see how an hour in the prayer cupboard by the boy’s dorm would go. It was quite nice, actually…
We learned about the different nations Holmsted focuses on praying for and aiding, and spent an hour in prayer for the peoples of those countries and the missionaries that are currently working there.
Today’s lesson was pretty impactful for me. I hope to write a whole essay on the topic to help me better order things in my mind… what happened was that Daniel taught about how we are saved by faith in God alone, not by any action that we take to better ourselves. I raised my hand and asked “What about people who believe in God, but not in Jesus?”. His answer was over an hour long.
He explained how the predominant idea - that before Christ you could only be forgiven for sins through sacrifice - was false, and that even during the period after Moses and before Christ people were only ever saved through their faith in God - the sacrifices and rule-keeping were acts of faith. The sacrifices didn’t cleanse the people of their sin, they made them aware of the fact that they needed a savior and pointed toward the Christ who was to come. The rules were there to be carried out as acts of faith, an outward expression of their faith in God. He was exhaustive about it, giving reference after reference to the scriptures in both the Old Testament and the New Testament showing exactly what he meant. All along he’s been asking us to think hard about what he says and challenge him if anything doesn’t sit well or isn’t consistent with the scriptures, but every time I think I’ve found a flaw in his explanations I find the answer in the notes I was rapidly scribbling as he spoke. I’ve always wondered why on earth God required sacrifices and had such a legalistic rulebook for the Israelites in the time before Christ, and he explained Anyway, like I said, I hope to write a lot more about this later. Oh - and over lunch he told me that that was the longest answer he’d ever given in a lecture. I think God may have been working through him to help me along with things a bit because this idea has been one I’ve been wrestling with a ton lately - in fact, making peace with this issue is one of the four goals I put down for this DTS. I was literally dancing around while standing in the lunch line I was so excited to have had so much clarified.
Work duty today was interesting because the four of us needed to make 35 toasties (toasted subs) for dinner and I was the only one without a cold (there’s been an epidemic sweeping the base; thankfully I haven’t gotten it yet). That meant I was the only one could handle food, so while the others cleaned I sliced and portioned baguettes, buttered them, and started slicing cheese. I was left alone to finish putting the sandwiches together, but Nika heard I was on my own so she joined me and we listened to music and raced to see who could make the subs the fastest.
At 4:15 there was a “seminar” in the coach house - it turned out to be a trivia competition (once again, Peter Susenbach’s American spirit of competitiveness comes into play) where we broke up into our small groups and found out which group could answer the most questions about Paul’s writings and life correctly. My group was neck-and-neck with Peter B’s small group up until near the end, but we ended up in second place in the end. It was alright - the winners shared their prizes of chocolate bars with the rest of us anyway.