We got off the train in Switzerland and immediately our jaws dropped from the amazing lush landscape with the Alps before us. Our bus up to L’Abri was full of a large group of hikers in their 60s and 70s. We weren’t sure if this was our bus but the driver assured us when he said “L’Abri - Chalet Bellevue” in a great French accent. Ask Jamie to reenact it-she’s hilarious. When we arrived to L’Abri the building, called a chalet, was empty. We finally found someone and we were told that we could go down to a lecture. The speaker was talking about gender roles. We thought for sure after the lecture someone would give us a tour and tell us how things were done. But everyone left and we sort of had to figure everything out on our own. We made it up (quite a hike) to our rooms and which we were pleasantly surprised to find were together. The first night we had the whole house to ourselves.
We finally got into the swing of things when we went down to Farel House (their Library) and picked up some books. The basic structure of the days was to read for four hours after breakfast (or work), have formal lunch where people ask questions and they are discussed, study for four hours (or do more work), and then have dinner (which always had amazing homemade bread!). We lucked out that they didn’t make us work because we were only there for a few days which gave us extra study time.
The people at L’Abri were just as interesting as the studying! There were people from all over the world from Korea to Australia. Every day at meals we would see a new person pop in that we had never seen before. They all came from different backgrounds but everyone had questions and wanted to wrestle with these questions.
We really wanted L’Abri to be a time where we could address some of our questions about God and Christianity. We had the chance to meet with a couple (who were in leadership) the first day who gave us a list of books that would be helpful. We spent our days focusing on key topics of study and journaling about these ideas. It was strange to spend so much time studying again. We haven’t done that in years. But it inspired to keep reading and asking questions even though a lot of those questions are still left unanswered.
Oh and back to that jaw dropping landscape of the alps. We never saw it again! It rained with thunder and lighting for the rest of our time there! The rain was great study weather, but we didn’t get any pictures of the alps because of the heavy fog! On Sunday we decided to hike even though it was likely that we would get drenched. We hiked up to the next town to use the ATM and get breakfast for our train ride. It was an amazing hike and we did get drenched!
We finally got into the swing of things when we went down to Farel House (their Library) and picked up some books. The basic structure of the days was to read for four hours after breakfast (or work), have formal lunch where people ask questions and they are discussed, study for four hours (or do more work), and then have dinner (which always had amazing homemade bread!). We lucked out that they didn’t make us work because we were only there for a few days which gave us extra study time.
The people at L’Abri were just as interesting as the studying! There were people from all over the world from Korea to Australia. Every day at meals we would see a new person pop in that we had never seen before. They all came from different backgrounds but everyone had questions and wanted to wrestle with these questions.
We really wanted L’Abri to be a time where we could address some of our questions about God and Christianity. We had the chance to meet with a couple (who were in leadership) the first day who gave us a list of books that would be helpful. We spent our days focusing on key topics of study and journaling about these ideas. It was strange to spend so much time studying again. We haven’t done that in years. But it inspired to keep reading and asking questions even though a lot of those questions are still left unanswered.
Oh and back to that jaw dropping landscape of the alps. We never saw it again! It rained with thunder and lighting for the rest of our time there! The rain was great study weather, but we didn’t get any pictures of the alps because of the heavy fog! On Sunday we decided to hike even though it was likely that we would get drenched. We hiked up to the next town to use the ATM and get breakfast for our train ride. It was an amazing hike and we did get drenched!
1 comment:
woo jason!
in case you care to know, you've been getting numerous calls from blockbuster saying your movies are overdue, but i don't know which ones they are so i haven't returned them. do you want me to take them back?
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