World Travels

Well friends, it's been awhile, hasn't it? I've been a travelling fiend, for which I am so grateful and excited that this chapter of life affords, but now I am back in Tennessee for the rest of the semester (with a few side trips :) and glad to be able to update you on all of my travels!

I think I might do this in several posts over the next few days, so stay tuned for tidbits, stories, facts, praises, and photos!

My recent travels are as follows:
March 4th: Friday morning - leave Knoxville @ 11 am, drive to Charlotte, board a plane @ 7 pm, fly to D.C., board a plane @ 9:30 pm, fly to London (arrive @ 10 am there, 5 am here), board a plane at 1 pm there (8 am here), land in Stockholm @ 4:30 pm there.
Spend a week in Uppsala, Sweden.
Fly home the following Saturday, land in Charlotte at 4:30 (10:30 Sweden time, which I was then functioning on). Spend the evening with friends in Charlotte, having SO much fun but forcing myself to stay awake until 11 pm (5 am to me - eek!)
Go back to the airport Sunday afternoon and fly to Daytona Beach, FL to join our staff team and students for our Spring Break trip!
Spend Sunday-Thursday on the beach hanging out with students, spending some time relaxing, some time building community, and some time doing outreaches on the beach.
Leave Daytona Friday morning, drive to Savannah, GA - spend a couple hours there while the guys watched the UT basketball game and I read a book in a park.
Leave Savannah and drive to Charleston, where we have an amazing dinner, time in the city (preview of the summer for me, woohoo!), stay with a staff member's family, and awesome pancake breakfast in the morning.
Leave Charleston Saturday morning, stop in Spartanburg for lunch with my dear friend Courtney at the famous Wade's restaurant, and then....
FINALLY drive into Knoxville around 4:30. The date was then March 19th.

Holy Moly, it was a lot of travelling. But I LOVED it!

Today I will tell you some general information about Sweden:

In March, Sweden is very cold, but apparently not as cold as most of the winter, because people kept telling us that we cam as it was beginning to get warm (the temperature was right at freezing the whole week, with a couple days maybe getting into the 40's F.)

We walked a lot and used public transportation, which I absolutely LOVE about Europe. I am in love with Europe. I would absolutely love to live there except that all of my friends and family are here and I am a communal creature, so I would probably be homesick a lot. But otherwise...Europe is the place for me!

The only downside to the walking a lot is the fact that there was a layer of ice several inches this all over the sidewalks, and I nearly busted my tail on the sidewalk on a daily basis, but I did manage to keep my feet under me - a big accomplisment!

Sweden has stinkin' awesome coffee. For. Real. Also, Swedish Fish candies are named that for a reason - Swedes love their gummies!

Sweden is known as one of the most secularized countries in the world. Most of the people, especially university students, are either atheist or agnostic, yet only 2 generations ago Sweden sent more missionaries than most countries in the world. This is what is called a "post-Christian" culture. There is the idea that we have advanced beyond the need for faith or superstition or the need for a system of beliefs to explain the world to us. There is either a big reliance on science or the influence of postmodernism and relativism - "your truth is your truth, mine is mine, we can agree that each of us arrives at truth differently and no one way is better than any other." I am convinced that our culture is rapidly heading in the same direction as Sweden, and in a couple of generations we will look very similar. And when I say "our" culture, I'm talking about the Bible Belt, because pretty much everywhere else in the country the philosophy is very similar to what we saw in Sweden. However, it was incredible to see how the Lord is working among the university students of Sweden, and to hear how walls have begun coming down in the thinking of students even in the past several years. Its like they are beginning to recognize their own dissatisfaction with their beliefs (or lack thereof). Like they are realizing that there has to be more, and that relativism doesn't work - it doesn't satisfy. This dissatisfaction was so evident in some of our conversations with students, in the way that Uppsala students are interacting with the Crusade staff team there, even in the questions that Swedes are asking.

It's incredible to see how God is working, and I can't wait to tell you a little bit about it! Stay tuned!