Endings and Beginnings

It's the end of May and the end of the Bible school year at Holsby. It hasn't really sunk in yet. This month has been so full of adventures! This is a long one...

Launching Canoes!

Friday, May 4, was the all-school canoe trip. We drove about half an hour and put into the river and paddled our way back to Holsby. This time I was in a canoe with Corinna and Kat. It was a really relaxing day with some truly beautiful stretches of river. It had fewer lakes than the trip in the fall, which made it more interesting and felt like we were moving faster. We had a few portages when we had to unload the canoes and carry them around a dam or impassable section of river; one portage was at least a kilometre. There were more branches over the river and in the river compared to the trip in the fall, and as a result, five or six canoes tipped!

Paddling down the river

On Saturday, our Discovery team went on a survival trip. Right after breakfast, we were given five minutes to collect a water bottle, a Bible, a pen, a notebook, a knife, and a lighter. We were blindfolded and driven to a forested hillside by a lake. We were given a pot to boil water, a first aid kit, and an emergency cell phone. We spent the first three hours building a shelter out of logs, branches, bark and moss; luckily, the weather was nice, although not much sun penetrated through the trees. Then we built a fire pit, started a fire, and boiled some water. Our biggest 'enemies' were cold and boredom; we had some good conversations but most of the time we sat lost in our own thoughts. We tried to go to bed around 9:30pm, figuring the night would pass faster if we slept; unfortunately, although we lay close together, none of us could get warm enough to really sleep. After about two hours we returned to the fire and rebuilt it and spent the night huddled around it, dozing occasionally. The next day we slept in the sun for a few hours, once it got high enough to be warm enough. By the evening we had decided we didn't want to spend another night there, especially if it was just going to be a repeat of the last; we figured we had a whole week of lectures coming up and we wanted to be awake and healthy enough to enjoy the week. We called Timo on the cellphone and told him our decision. Although I'm sure he was disappointed in us, he came and picked us up and brought us back to school.

I am glad I started the week with as much sleep as I had because the lecturer was definitely one of the most challenging of the year. I think he pushed things to the extreme to make us think about what we was saying; he wanted to stir up discussion. His main tenet was that being the Trinity is not just a characteristic of God, it is his essence. Everything else, every characteristic flows out of that. We are invited to share in that family, that relationship experienced by the Trinity. Christianity is not about believing the right things, it's about relationship. He also said that Christ saved everyone, but until people believe, they don't experience salvation or its results. This point caused a fair amount of confusion, and I'm still not sure I really understand it.

Throughout that week we Discovery students were also responsible for planning our week-long canoe trip the following week. For this trip we took care of almost everything, planning the route, choosing and buying the food, choosing tent groups and cook groups, checking the canoes and dry bags, and gathering together the group gear. We split up the work, which was helpful, but it was also a little chaotic since it felt like no one really had the whole picture figured out.

We put the portage wheels on our canoes and wheeled them down to the Emån river after lunch on Sunday. We were lucky we wheeled them down rather than being driven down since one pair of wheels was flat and we were still close enough to school exchange them. Each day of the trip had a special adventure. Sunday we stopped at a footbridge across the river. It was basically a bunch of four-inch wide planks screwed together to make one long plank to walk on, and there was a cable above your head to hold to. We pulled our canoes up on the side of the river and walked out onto the bridge; we bounced around for a bit, hanging off the cable and seeing if we could sit down on the plank without falling in. As we were playing around up there, one of the canoes began to slide back into the river; it was pulled up at such a steep angle that instead of floating away, it began to fill up with water! A few of the bags began to float down the river! Steven jumped off the bridge to rescue the canoe and the bags. We arrived at our camp site that night with enough time to play some frisbee and kub and have a relaxing evening.

The highlight on Monday was a log jam across the river. We passed through it by a combination of ramming it as fast as we could a pulling ourselves along with the overhanging branches. One group decided to get out on a log and lift their canoe over. Another group tried the same trip and the logs began to sink beneath them! We managed to get through without taking on too much water. Monday was our longest day by far; we covered a total distance of 42 km!

Tuesday we had our first rapid that we didn't portage around. We stopped before it and sent someone onto the land to scout out the best way through. He came back and explained the route, which was a sort of S to avoid the biggest rocks. He and his partner made it through without incident. The next group wasn't so fortunate. They hit a rock that towered at least five feet out of the water. They hit it square on, too, and managed to get stuck, although they didn't tip. The next group didn't manage to turn one corner fast enough and ended up finding their own way out, taking on a fair bit of water but making it through without actually tipping. My partner Melanie and I were a bit nervous by this point, but Melanie did an admirable job of steering us through without hitting anything big!

We had about three portages per day ranging anywhere from 200 to 1500 metres. Since we had wheels, we didn't have to carry out canoes and bags, but we got really good at unloading the canoes, pulling them out of the water, putting the wheels on, loading them up so they were balanced, pushing them to the next entry point, unloading them, pulling the wheels off and putting them back into the water, and loading everything in again. If we were lucky we could wheel them close enough to the water to pull the wheels off without unloading them and then just push them in from at point. At the beginning of our trip, the portages were clearly marked with blue signs of to people carrying a canoe on their heads and arrows pointing out the way to walk, but the farther we got from Holsby, the less well-marked they were until we most of the time we couldn't see any signs and just had to guess where to go; this was sometimes quite time-consuming, especially looking for good places to launch the canoes again. On Wednesday we pulled out of the water just before a set of rapids we knew we were supposed to portage around. We found ourselves right outside someone's summer home; we planned to walk up the driveway to the main road, but when we got to the five-foot fence, we discovered that the gate was locked! After considering our options, we unloaded the canoes and lifted them over the fence! We managed to get all the canoes over and reloaded in about ten minutes!

Thursday we had our longest portage of the trip – 11.5 km! It was not nearly as bad as we thought it would be, easier than backpacking since we could push our stuff rather than carry it on our backs. It was even easier once Melanie and I figured out that when we pushed at the same time, most of the work was actually pulling up against the other person who was pulling up at the other end of the canoe. After that we took turns instead. We told riddles to make the time pass quicker. Here are two for you: “When I'm fat I'm slow. When I'm thin I'm quick. Wind is my enemy.” “You have three light switches. One turns on the light in a room on the floor upstairs. The other two do nothing. You cannot see whether the light is on from downstairs. You can only go upstairs once. How do you figure out which switch turns on the light?” We thought that the portage would be our event of the day; little did we know that more was still to come. Like the portages, the camp spots were also no longer clearly marked; we were searching for a spot on the left side of the river and so chose the left-hand channel of the river, which was barely wider than the canoes were long. Since it was narrow, it was quick; towards the end of the channel there was a rock in the middle that stuck out of the water. The first canoe made it past without incident. Our canoe was second; I yelled to Melanie, “Right, right!” so that she would turn right to avoid it, but she thought by 'right' I meant 'correct' as in 'keep going the way we're going' so we hit the rock a glancing blow but continued on. The next canoe wasn't so lucky; it hit the rock rather harder and got stuck. It slowly turned sideways and the fast current pinned it to the rock. Then it slowly tipped over so that it began to fill up with water and the gear began to float down the river! We managed to rescue everything but one sweater. The next canoe in line slammed into the one that was stuck! They tried for forty-five minutes to get the stuck canoe out of the river. The water was so fast that the keel of the canoe began to bend around the rock! After a while they gave up on getting the canoe out in a usable condition; they tried levering it out with logs, tying ropes to it, throwing rocks into it to give it some momentum, and breaking the struts but eventually had to leave it where it was!

Friday, with one fewer canoe, we loaded up two canoes with three people instead of two and the other two canoes with extra gear. We paddled the last two kilometres to the Baltic and then five kilometres up the coast to our camping spot for the night. It was so nice to arrive early as spend the day relaxing on the beach. We played some frisbee and jumped off the dock in the Baltic! We had a barbecue that night with a few people who came out from Holsby. The next morning we packed up and drove home. The whole trip was about 160 km.

The canoe was a really great ending to our Discovery times; we worked really well together and felt more like a team. We were able to spend some time having fun together, too. Being in a canoe with different partners every day meant we got the chance to talk one-on-one with quite a few different people. Our school principal, Luke Thomas, also joined us on this trip, and he taught us about the Lord's Prayer for about an hour every day; it was really neat how he was able to use some of our experiences to connect with what he was talking about. His lectures also gave us things to think about and talk about as we paddled.

The day we got back to Holsby was the day of the first annual Holsby Halfer (Half Marathon)! I didn't run because my knee has been giving me trouble, and I had not run for more than three weeks before that. However, I did help Corinna hand out torches to the runners 500m before the finish line so that they got to run in as torchbearers. This has further significance since the Capernwray schools are known as Torchbearer school in Europe. The one unforeseen complication to the race was that one of the signs that marked a turn had fallen down! The first five runners ran right past it before it was set up again! Eventually they figured out that there was something wrong but not before they had added another 30-45 minutes to their race!

For our last week of school, the weather was absolutely beautiful – sunny and warm! I think it even got up to 27 one day! Our school director did a lecture series on pilgrimage. We took a pilgrimage to the Holsby Land; we spent the entire time outside visiting significant places at Holsby which symbolized different places in the Holy Land: the creek behind the chapel became the Jordan river, the unused stretch of train tracks was the wilderness, 'Calvary hill' became the Mount of transfiguration. At each stop, the lecturer talked about different events that happened there, mostly from the life of Jesus but also Paul and Peter and other NT characters. The last morning we spent reflecting on our Bible school experience and how we felt God was calling us next. It was a fitting end to the year.

Thursday night we had a barbecue in honour of our last night together. Corinna and I spent a great last evening together. We played tennis, went to the Bik for ice cream, and took a last walk up Sunrise Hill. Then we played several crazy versions of fooseball, using our feet, our chins, our armpits, and our forearms instead of our hands to move and spin the players. Then we went and roasted marshmallows on a huge fire. We ended the night with a midnight snack of granola.

Friday morning at 5:00am the heart-wrenching goodbyes began. It is Holsby tradition to create a circle so that the people who are leaving can go around and give everyone hugs. Then we all move out front by the traffic circle and as the car leaves, it circles the traffic circle three times and the person who is leaving sticks their hand out the window to high five as they go by. At 11am I went to the train station to see Corinna off. The last big group of people left at 11am on Saturday; the last few people have been trickling off so that almost all are gone now.

At the same time, I'm gearing up for summer! A few new people have arrived to work on the hospitality team and the Summer Adventure Team (which is what I'm doing). In a way it's refreshing to interact with people who aren't so depressed over the people who are leaving. Tomorrow we start our training! I'm so excited to find out how things will look and to get to know the other SAT interns. Our first group arrives on June 8 so we have quite a lot of time to train and prepare. Please pray that we will be united as an SAT team and also as a Holsby staff team. Pray that we will serve with willing hearts and keep our eyes open to how God is leading us. I'm looking forward to an awesome summer!