Karaoke, Friends, & Volleyball

Here's a couple new pictures for you all. A bunch of us went to Aigle on Saturday night to a karaoke bar. This is us performing Vanilla Ice, "Ice, Ice, Baby." Ok, the truth is, one of us performed it and the other pretended like he had a clue what what going on, but clearly didn't. Can you guess which was which?

We haven't sent any pictures with L'Abri friends. This next shot is a couple weeks ago after we played our last round of volleyball before the colder weather set in.

And here's a picture of our volleyball court, just to give you an idea.

L’Abri in Review: The Swing of the Pendulum

Sadly, today begins the last week we'll be here at L'Abri. It’s hard to recap specifics of things we’re learning because there is SO much. Every meal, every lecture is an intensely different topic. It’s been fantastic to have the time every day all week to just think while we study, work, eat, etc.

But on a big picture level, we ('we' pertaining to Hannah and Micah, not the L'Abri community) have been talking much lately about “the swing of the pendulum” as it relates to our approach to life and Christianity. Unknowingly we had allowed ourselves to be strung up so tight in one direction by pop-culture American Christianity. That isn’t meant to be a knock on anyone or anything as there is a significant recognized component of personal responsibility. But at the same time, that is the world we’ve been consumed by, from church our whole lives, to Christian college, to jobs in non-profit ministries, relational expectations, etc.

However, many of the details or conclusions of what we claimed to believe were hard to sit with and at some point a couple years ago, it snapped and our pendulum began to swing. And what happens when a pendulum is strung up one direction and let go? Well, that’s what happened to us. At the point we came here, we were pretty much on the far side of the swing. And surprisingly, that’s been a very common experience for many of the students here. Most are here because of disillusionment with American Christianity.

And what I’d say has been happening is that the staff here has been helping us to gently lower our pendulum to a resting point in the center. Actually it’s more like they’ve been helping us to lower our pendulum to a less volatile swing.

We’ve been learning how to question and critique and learn for ourselves when we hear things that don’t sit right, from the world or from the church. And we can take these tools from here and continue the learning we have barely begun to practice.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

No, it's not a Swiss holiday. No one around here is celebrating.

But at L'Abri... it's a glorious celebration. The majority of us this term are from the United States and so they're celebrating with us. We only work half the day today and most of it revolves around preparation for the two glorious meals we'll be eating... Brunch and Dinner!!!

So, while you're stuffing your face with food, know that we did the same thing... 9 hours earlier.

Happy Eating.

6 Months!

I'm proud to announce that I have successfully had my gottee growing for 6 months now! Francis Schaeffer would be Proud. Actually, his granddaughter (the director's wife) wanted me to show up as Francis Schaeffer for Halloween.

10 Day Break - Part 2

Here are pictures of the family/friends we met up with on our break.

Ahhh... the parents. They came to visit us at L'Abri for a few days and then we were able to go to Paris with them. This picture was up on the glacier Les Diableretes in Switzerland near L'Abri.


This is extended family, the Devouassoux's in Neuchatel, Switzerland.


And of course, Hannah's college roommate Aimee and son Mitchell in England (husband Marty not pictured - he was playing... flying Airforce jets)


We appreciated the personal touch to our 10 days travelling Europe!

Brrrr!

If you can even believe it, yesterday was the first cold day we've had. We live in the alps and the weather just dropped to 45 degrees Farenheit. Never did we expect that.

We wanted to post pictures today but can't get them to load... sorry!

Today we had a great lecture on body image as it relates to world views, world religions, and the history of Christianity. It was fascinating! Then at lunch we discussed appropriate application of supernaturalism to world and life events (i.e. natural disasterss and diseases and such). It was a great conversation but we pretty much resulted in the idea that we are not in a place to truly know how the spiritual interacts with the natural.

It was a good thinking day.