April
week 23 – 26
Spring Term has started! Some students have left but we also have lot’s of new students! It’s Easter Sunday and we’re up early to watch the sunrise. Addy had organized this and she shared the resurrection story before the sun rose, the rising sun was not only a beautiful picture of a new beginning concerning the resurrection, it was also a beginning of a new term.
A new term also means a new room and a new roommate. This term I am sharing my room with my good friend Glendon, some of the pictures on my blog are taken by this kind man. It was nice to get to know Glendon better seeing that we will be spending a lot more time together this summer and next year (yes, next year, I’ll explain later).
Johnny B. returns! One of the lectures this month was on marriage by John Brenneman. I was really excited for this lecture series. Johnny B. did not disappoint, the lectures were really good and this was also because he is a Christian marriage counselor by profession, so he was always able to back up his teaching with real life examples. What I learned this week was incredibly useful and not only for marriage, but also for relationships with friends and family.
We had a look a like day this month, on this day people tried either dressing up as someone else or dressing up as twins. Since Glendon and my wardrobe are pretty similar we decided to wear our beige shirts and blue jeans, nice and simple 🙂 you can see some pictures of others below.
All the way back in Fall term we had our weekly Galatians study, this was replaced in Winter term by a book study (I forgot to write about this). The book we discussed on our small groups was On Guard by William Lane Craig, it is a book about apologetics, very ingesting but sometimes hard to follow. The book we discussed this term was The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer, it beautifully describes ones journey in discovering the need for knowing God.
May
week 27 – 30
Half way through may we went on a Spring retreat to Flögens a nice were you can escape Holsby for a bit but it is also not too far away. This weekend was quite an adventure, we went on a nice hike and I went rock climbing in real rock for the first time! It was really awesome but quite scary. At the end of the weekend I injured myself (first injury this school year, pretty good in my opinion), I caught a football on my finger tips and injured my middle finger. It’s all good now but it sometimes still hurts when I move it wrong. This weekend made me do a good checkup on myself. I had been spending a lot of time with people all the time, this is not like me, normally I like to have time to be alone and in a community like Holsby that is sometimes a bit hard. I also have to say that I forgot I was in an introvert. As a result I was pretty socially depleted, this was a good lesson for me to make sure I recharge and take time for myself and God.
Our last week of lectures were given by Luke Thomas. The lectures involved a lot of experiential learning and probably because of this and the warmer weather the lectures were mainly outside. These lectures were to help us prepare for our life after Holsby, even though my time at Holsby is not ending anytime soon (again, I’ll explain later) it’s good have it in mind.
We also had our last dorm-life evening this month. Dorm-life is an evening that is organized once a month by the RA, but because Tim our RA left, Phil, me and some other guys organized the evening. We started out with a big Ultimate Frisbee game which was really awesome, after that we went down to the river and canoed to a nearby Island in the , I think I’ve mentioned this Island before if recall correctly. We camped the night there and shared some things about our experience of the last year as Ekhaga, during this sharing time we all ate from a big pot of around 20 instant ramen packages that I cooked up. I slept surprisingly good that night, but I was still really tired the next day.
Commencement
This is it, the end of Bible school. I am writing this blog a little late and it has already been two months since the commencement ceremony where all of us got our certificates. I will always look back on this time fondly. As I am writing these last words of my blog about my time here as a student I am reminded of all the memories I made, all the things I have learned, the people I got to know and love, but most of all the God I got to know and love, our incredible and amazing God, who loves us so much unconditionally, a way of loving that for us is impossible without ever being satisfied by His love first. Getting to know this deep and endless love of God and reflecting this to others is something I want to focus myself on the coming year. I am so thankful for everything that happen the last year, I have been really blessed to have been able to experience this time here at Holsby and how God has guided me to this place were he did a lot work in my transforming me.
What’s next?
This summer I am volunteering in the program team, this means that I will be facilitating activities and games for the groups and the Summer Bible school. I will also be working in the ropes course. When there are no groups coming I will be working on the new campholsby.se website that I am building.
During the spring break I got to know I was accepted for the position of RA (Resident Assistant) next year, this means that I will be spending another full year here at Holsby! I will be leading the male students and serve them throughout the year by tutoring them and making sure they have a good environment to get to know the Lord better.
I will be back home for a short while from August 23rd – September 10th. I am looking forward to see my friends and family after 11 months and have some good old Dutch “frituur”.