No Story But Your Own

Hey Everyone,

I apologize for the fact that I forgot to post while I was away. It was a crazy time, and I learned a lot, so I want to share a bit of it with you all.

For those of you who have read the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, this quote may be familiar to you. It is from The Horse and His Boy.

"Child, I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own." - Aslan

When we first arrived at DTS, one of our assignments was to write something called a "weekly reflection". In the first one we were asked to write about our personal theme for DTS. I've loved this quote for a long time and it had stood out a lot to me in the months leading up to going to Switzerland. It ended up being what I chose as my personal theme for my time there.

I didn't really know what it would mean for me or what the goal was in choosing this. I wasn't even quite ready for the journey that would follow in the next few months. It sounds like such a grand thing to have God tell you your own story. I spent so much time watching other people's stories unfold and being amazed at the beauty of it all. In the middle of it all, I just wanted to be the one who had a cool story. Maybe I had chosen this theme as a challenge to God, to show me something that I had never seen before in my life. I wanted to have exciting stories, so many things learned, and to be a super strong person because of what God would show me. What I learned and what this theme actually taught me was nothing compared to what I thought it would be, and it was so much more beautiful.

I had God tell me my story. It was not Him showing me things I hadn't seen before in my life, it was Him showing me things that had happened already in a totally new light. It was a really wonderful, but humbling experience. There have been things that I've struggled with, and in God telling me my story, He showed me where some of those struggles began. There were so many times that I would think, "Where did this fear come from, and why is it so strong?" And in those moments when I would try to figure out where it could have come from, it just seemed foggy. In the most unexpected ways and at the most unexpected times, God would show me what had formerly been so unclear. He would bring up some memory or thought and I knew that He was showing my where in my life these things originated. In showing me that part of my story, it made it possible for me to begin to overcome my fears.

At the part of the story where this quote came from, the main character, Shasta, first encounters Aslan. When Shasta tells Aslan about his life, he says that he must be "the most unfortunate boy that has lived in the whole world". Aslan's response to this is to tell Shasta of how he had been there during the times that Shasta would have counted as "unfortunate", and how those times were actually used to bring good things. This is what I found it was to have God tell me my story, it was to have God tell me about the things that had happened in my life, and how it happened from His view. He showed me the ways that He had been with me in the moments when I didn't think it was good. For all of the days that I believed the lies that I wasn't good enough, or that I wasn't wanted, God showed me how He was with me in those moments, and how He viewed me, which was different from the way I viewed myself. It was hard to actually take time to look in depth at my life and have God break down the lies that I had believed. It was to have God break down the misconceptions of events in my life and rebuild it in a way that was built on the foundation of who God is and how He views me.

God really loves every individual person so much. In Him telling me my story, the thing that stood out the most was this simple little thing that God said all throughout, "I love you." If you ask for God to tell you your story, He shows you so much of how much He loves you and sees your life as a beautiful and full of potential.

Thank you for taking the time to read my rambling thoughts, and I hope to write more soon about other things that I've learned over the past few months.

Thoughts, Roses, and Budapest

Hey Everyone,

Sorry for the lack of activity here. The schedule has been packed and it is hard to figure out where to begin, so I decided to start off with a quick story.

On Valentines Day, the boys in our DTS decided to make our day a little brighter by putting on a pleasant evening for us. Let me tell you, it was beautiful to see these brothers in Christ come together to honor us as sisters. They started off with individually walking us into the room and seating us at tables. They then proceeded to sing and do a dance for us, serve us cookies, and the icing on the cake was the fact that they had gotten roses for us, complete with an encouragement note rolled around the stem. They had planned some games to play as well. It was a sweet evening and I'm very thankful for these classmates of mine.

Some of the guys found their inner DJ

I think all events here end with a dance party. 

I am now in the middle of my eighth week here in Switzerland. It seems crazy to think of how quickly the time has gone by and how much we have covered in our classes. Because of this I have had a hard time figuring out what I should try to put on the blog. We've covered a lot of topics and had our minds blown numerous times by the new perspective offered to us by our many wonderful speakers.
I will share a thought with you from our speaker this past week. 1 Corinthians 13:13 says, "So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." (ESV) This verse is quoted a lot, but have you ever really thought about what it says? It says that the greatest between faith, hope, and love is the best. So often we talk about faith, desiring to find leaders of great faith, to get to the level of the heroes of faith mentioned in Hebrews 11, and yet Paul says that love is greater than faith. Why then do we not spend as much time on seeking to be people of great love?


And last but not least, in just over three weeks I will be headed to Budapest, Hungary for the Outreach Phase of my DTS. I'm super excited to heading to Budapest and spending eight weeks serving the people in Budapest.

My Outreach Team - Left to Right (Top) Me, Cho, Courtney.
(Middle) Ester, Tyler, Rebecca, Emily, Kevin
(Bottom) David, Helen, Royce

Intro to Switzerland

Hey Everyone!

This first week at YWAM Lausanne has been crazy busy, but also wonderful.
I don't have a lot to write, but I think I'll give you a little introduction with some pictures.

These are all of the beautiful people in my DTS

The sun came out for the time we took pictures, it was spectacular.

Swiss Night - So much cheese fondue and chocolate

My lovely roommates: (left to right) Allie, Hannah, Berdien, Helen, and Ashley 

At the metro station

My team for the scavenger hunt: Niclas, Havilah, and Berdien

I have an amazing view of the French Alps from my bed

The Saturday market in Lausanne

A place in the market that sold many delicious Swiss pastries

Ice skating

These first two weeks in Switzerland have been wonderful. The people are amazing and I've enjoyed getting to know these new friends a bit. Last weekend we had an introduction to the city of Lausanne in the form of a crazy scavenger hunt that had us running around the city and taking the metro from station to station. This week has been very full, with many wonderful classes and introductions to the various activities around the YWAM base. 

More to come when things get a bit more settled down. 

Cheers, 

Sarah

An Introduction

Hello Everyone!

I started this blog to share pictures and write about my time in Switzerland and beyond (the unknown location of my Outreach). I will be spending roughly three months in Lausanne, Switzerland for the Lecture phase and then two months somewhere else for the Outreach phase of the Discipleship Training School. I invite you to follow along as I go on this adventure.