Highlights

When I wait this long to write, the days start to blend together and I forget what has happened. I was planning to run a half-marathon in Gothenburg in May, but we found out on Wednesday that it is already full! So instead of running there, the RAs and a few other people are going to put together the first-ever Holsby half-marathon. Some people were disappointed but I think I'm just as excited to run here as is Gothenburg; I don't really care that we won't be running with 59,000 other people.

Yesterday I went running again in the morning with a few other students; we ran a flatter route than on Tuesday but we ran almost twice the distance in approximately the same time. Since most of the people I ran with have also signed up for soccer intramurals, which run Thursday afternoon, we've decided to change our running days to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday instead of Tuesday and Thursday. In the afternoon I went for a walk with my prayer partner; we haven't talked much before this and I felt sort of like she was only doing it because we were supposed to, but it is good to pray for each other. After that we had our first intramural soccer game. Each team has a good mix of experienced players and new players and I think I fall somewhere in the middle. I managed to take a few shots on goal but none went in because I'm not a very good shot. It was a lot of fun, though. There's one guy on our team who really knows what he's doing and he kind of acts like the coach too, telling people where to go and calling them back on defence and stuff like that. We started out strong and made the first goal but then the other team scored, too and the rest of the game no one managed to score at all. In the evening we had a class on Sweden: a little Swedish history and some basic Swedish phrases.

Today was our second work day of the semester. This time my duty was cleaning the guest cottage and a few rooms in another building along with two other girls. This afternoon we (finally) had our second discovery meeting. We got to learn about the stoves we'll be using and practice lighting them. We also got mini cookbooks that we used to plan our supper menus for the four days of our first trip in a week and a half.

After dinner my room mate Sarah, Hannah, EJ, and I listened to a sermon on Abraham and Abimelech (Gen 20). The whole point of it was that God is in control and working behind the scenes, but he doesn't usually choose to reveal exactly why he's doing what he's doing. When he does, it reminds us that he's working even when we can't see him. Therefore, when we get frustrated, we need to remind ourselves that God has his reasons for what is happening even if we never find out until we get to heaven; then, instead of being frustrated, we can thank God for what he has done and what he is doing. This was a really good reminder for me since I found the second experiential learning exercise we did on Tuesday kind of frustrating because it was taking so long; I kept thinking how we had already gotten the point of the exercise and wouldn't have time to try anything else. I was disappointed afterwards to hear of the other exercise we didn't get to do. Now I'm thinking that even though I may have been done with the log exercise, God was probably using it to teach me and others lessons and we weren't done yet. Maybe not, or maybe my lesson was just a lesson in frustration. If God's been teaching you cool, interesting, or just downright boring and basic things, I'd love to hear about it. (Are God's lessons ever boring?).

From the land of 100,000 lakes,
~Megan