Live and plugged in Cambridge

I scarcely believe its only been a week since I left the Schloss. I'm in full swing and halfway through my time serving with the Cambridge International Outreach.

Coming here was tough. The Schloss is a place where theres tons of visitors already, so each person there has to strike a balance between having a comfortable circle of friends, yet also meeting new people.

What basically happened was I left that community on a Sunday morning, and by Sunday afternoon I was surrounded by the new Cambridge Int'l Outeach (CIO) team, 40 people from all over. Everyone else was very excited and everyone was getting to know everyone, however I was still coping with the idea of leaving the Schloss community. So it was tough, I wanted to retreat... I am getting used to it now. Community is important - after getting more comfortable with the team it has been easier for me to extend myself and start to open up more to the int'l students (which is the whole point of the ministry lol).

The days are busy here, the weekends we have more time off, but my average day look like:
Wake up around 9:30 (staying with a host family), bike over to our main HQ, we have a time of singing and then someone teaches from a bible passage (we're going through 1 John), then morning tea, then a seminar teaching us about different cultures, then lunch, then prayer time, then afternoon activities (sports, flyering, getting to meet int'l students and invite them for evening events), coffee break, small group discussions, dinner, cafe setups, then we open up our 2 cafes. Int'l students come and we hang out with them, get to know them, host optional bible studies, etc. We close up at 11:00, clean up, debrief, and I bike back home around midnight. Five days of this in a row and I was really ready to have the weekend off.

Cambridge is a beautiful city, a lot of history, and plenty of sites to see and things to do. The Cambridge Shakespeare Festival is on, so we went to see Hamlet in the gardens of the famous King's College here which was neat.

Cambridge is interesting, mostly a university town, so there's tons of students. However during the summer most of the regular students leave, and what happens is Cambridge has many language schools that then open up, with people from all over the world coming to study and learn English. Many are only here for weeks at a time, its quite an incredible thing to see - and all the multinational friendships that come out of that. So all sorts of bizarre mixes of ethnicities are seen.

I have to go - miss you all very much.

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Bye...

Going in 5 hours. Off to Cambridge for 2 weeks, Oxford for 3 days, Toronto for 7 days, then home!

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End is coming

4 more days to finish up everything before I leave the Schloss. So much to reflect on, both on my time here and to peer at the steps ahead. I think leaving always involves sadness :(

Sat in for a couple lectures on a course "Building Christian Communities", had some really interesting content. We often remember that after the fall people long for a reconciled, perfect relationship with God, but perhaps we often forget that we also long for reconciled, perfect community. It was who we were made to be - so the course looks at how do we understand, approach, and then pursue community. Certainly my time here has really influenced my thoughts on community, and renewed my hopes of bringing some community-mindset back home as well.

Oh also check out My Google Calendar, hm seems like Google's always cooking up something cool. Google's set of web services is simply unbeatable. I can manage several different calendars, and download others. So I have my own personal one (which I linked above) which I can share, I could have a work one, Canadian holidays, Christian holidays, all color coded, and can be overlayed on each other. I can also create events and send out invitations and all that jazz. Basically small companies could easily move over to Gmail and Google Calendar to replace a shared Microsoft Exchange Server setup. Nutties. Haven't made the switch to Gmail and Google Calendar? Its worth it to make the switch.

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When things come to an end

*glances uneasily at watch*

4.5 days left.

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Where did you come from where did you go

Its been quite awhile since I last updated, its good for me to pause and try to sum up where I am and where I'm going. I leave Schloss Mittersill in 12 days, and I don't think I'll be back anytime soon. Since my last update its been a nonstop rollercoaster ride as summer is the busiest season here. I have often tried to summarize what life at Schloss Mittersill is like - well in many ways the summer is very un-mundane. The summers especially, as we have groups constantly in and out.

Arts Conference (pics)- We just finished up the busiest conference of the year, in which I took full part as a delegate but also helped out with music and audio/video setup each day. An amazing conference - gathering musicians, visual artists, filmmakers, actors, writers from Europe and North America. It was such a moving time to really consider the gift and calling for artists to be creative in our world. I think our culture totally doesn't appreciate the arts - its just some nice hobby to do, but not really important to the larger scheme of things. One of the speakers pointed out the first occurence in the Bible where we are told of someone being filled with the Spirit was actually the artist God commissioned to work on the tabernacle (Ex 35). It was great, there were workshops on painting, acting, percussion, musical arrangement, sculpture, etc. Highlight for me would be playing in a worship team with a amazing guitarist, cellist, percussionist and a jazz pianist (3 of which made a living as a musician).

Other thingies - Hard to summarize the past couple months, but a few highlights: Been doing a fair amount of hiking (pics1, pics2), and learning more about enjoying the beauty of nature. World Cup (pics) was a big thing, and especially neat as so many different nationalities come through and its interesting to watch the Swedes play with actual Swedes in the room, or Germans, Dutch, Brits, Poles, etc. As I'm the one doing technical setup for a lot of these groups that come through, I get more of an opportunity to actually get to know them. Neat opportunities come up out of that, a Swedish confirmation group of around 35 invited me to lead their worship night on their last night at the Schloss, it was a special experience and I've been really thankful to be a part of what God's doing with these groups.

Comings and Going - Many friends have left me at the Schloss, as there has been so much change within the Schloss Community. Sadly I know that in 12 days I will be the one that leaves. Its been a great time for me, from here I'll go to Cambridge for a 2 week student outreach, then visit a friend in Oxford for a couple days, and then fly to Toronto to visit my sisters. I'm sad when I think about leaving, yet excited for the steps ahead. The theme of the Arts Conference will stick with me, as a calling to what it means to really follow Jesus, whether in an artistic or just a broader sense. What he calls us to is a long obedience in the same direction. Here I am, getting ready to end another chapter, may it all be obedient in God's direction.

I've uploaded a bunch more pictures on my flickr page.

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