Our first group arrived at 6:00pm
today, signalling the end of our training for the the summer.
Training was broken down into two components: technical skills and
ministry skills. For technical skills, we learned to tied the
figure-eight and rewoven figure-eight, the bowline and rewoven
bowline, the girth-hitch and prusik, and the double fisherman. These
are all used to help us run the ropes course, the giant swing and the
pamper pole. For the ropes course, we learned the responsibilities of
each station; we are responsible for watching the guests change their
safety ropes from one event/challenge to the next, instruct them to
lengthen or shorten their safeties, and sometimes to hook them in to
special events. We also greet them, encourage them, encourage them to
let go of their safety ropes and trust that the ropes will hold if
they fall, and judge which sections of the course each person has the
strength and stamina to be successful at. For our training, we also
practiced rescues from the ropes course in the event of an injury or
panic attack. The ropes course training was probably my favorite part
of the training because, like I said before, I just love hanging out
in a harness above the ground. I managed to climb the far left side
of the climbing wall, too, which was one of the more difficult routes
and which I failed to complete when I tried it a couple months ago.
For the giant swing and the pamper pole
(a 10 m pole that people climb and jump off to try to catch a
trapeze), we learned how to hook guests in to the rope system. For
each we got to practice on each other so we also got the chance to
try the giant swing and pamper pole quite a few times. Yesterday we
gave the other summer interns the opportunity to go on the giant
swing so we could practice a few more times. I was surprised how I
was more nervous to hook them in than the other SATs, maybe because I
know that they won't catch it if I hook them in wrong.
We also got to experience quite a few
initiatives, which are activities with a purpose. In one, we all
stood on top of a small sheet, which was barely big enough to fit us
comfortably, and then we were instructed to turn the sheet over
without touching the ground. In another, we were split into pairs and
one person was blindfolded. The blindfolded partner was put inside a
circle and the other partner was not allowed to enter that circle.
There were several soft balls on the ground inside the circle and one
red circle just big enough to stand on. The partner outside the
circle had to direct the blindfolded partner to pick up some balls,
stand on the red circle and throw the balls at the other blindfolded
people to try to get them out.
After each of these activities, we have
the opportunity to talk to the groups and discuss life lessons and
Biblical principals and truths such as trust, fear, failure,
communication, and freedom. It depends on the groups whether we
mention God directly or not. Our leader has told us that this is
primarily a seed-planting ministry since many of the people who come
have never connected God or Christianity with anything fun or
interesting. The hope is that they will think about their time here
and be interested in finding out more. Our ministry skills training
gave guidelines and suggestions for debriefing the activities, and we
brainstormed different topics to connect them with. Tomorrow I'm
going to have the opportunity to debrief the ropes course with a
group of seventh graders from a public school. I'm a little nervous
for how it will go.
Our SATeam this summer is awesome!
We're quite a diverse group. Yiska is a German girl from South
Africa. Stefan is a chef from Austria and Germany. Timoteo (Tim) is
from Spain, but also speaks French, German, and Catalan. Joel and
Judith are a married couple from Switzerland. Dan is from the
Vancouver are, too, and has just finished his first year of law
school. Marie-Claude (MC) is from Quebec and was a student at Holsby
last year and part of the SAT last summer. Andrei is from Romania and
plans to stay at Holsby next year to work in the kitchen. And last,
Jonathan, our fearless leader, is from Texas and the father of
one-year-old twins Hazal and Huxley. The different personalities
combine to make us the loudest team on campus, and we have lots of
fun planning, working and hanging out together.
In addition to training, we have also
been spending time hanging and getting to know each other. Some of
the are students who decided to stay and extra few months to work
either on SAT, in the kitchen, maintenance, or hospitality. Others
are either past students or staff or completely new to Holsby. Much
of our free time the first week was spent passing around a volleyball
or a frisbee. On Tuesday last week we went to a lake and played some
games together. We played Danish long ball, passed around a volley
and a frisbee, went for a walk, and had a picnic supper. After supper
we came back to campus and played some get-to-know-you games and ate
ice cream together. Thursday night was Dan's birthday so we surprised
him a cake after dinner and played some rounds of Mafia in the Bik.
Friday night I played “Apples to Apples, Bible Edition” in the
Bik with a few others. On Saturday I biked into Vetlanda with Yiska
and Tim and spent a long while looking for the second-hand store. I
really enjoyed the biking so on Tuesday between work and supper I
took a bike and just biked down the road for fun! On Saturday I also
took a walk with MC and asked her if she'd be willing to speak French
with me so I could practice my French. Even though she had to speak a
little extra clearly and explain some words, we managed to have a
twenty minute conversation, and I really enjoyed speaking French
again. Wednesday night was small group Bible study night; we had
stick bread and introduced ourselves and talked about what we'd like
to study for the next couple months.
Last night was MC's birthday. We gave
her a clue in the morning in Afrikaans which told her she should be
in the library at 7:15pm; she had to go to google translate to figure
out what it said. When she got to the library, Judith told her a
sentence in Swiss German which she had to memorize and repeat to
Joel; the sentence told her where to go next to find a sentence
written in Romanian which she had to read to Andrei and so on until
the last clue, in Swedish, directed her to the fire pit behind the
chapel where everyone was waiting to surprise her. We had smores and
banana boats (bananas stuffed with chocolate and cooked in tinfoil
by/in the fire) and good conversations.
Well, that's the past two weeks in a
nutshell. I hope your week was a great as mine!
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