Week 3: Basics of Faith

Well, I've been here for 3 weeks, and I've got to say, that it keeps getting better and better. I'm growing so much in my relationship with God.

The speaker that was speaking this week was Christane Keller, a German woman, who spoke about the Cross and Basics of Faith. She explained even more about the character of God, and the reasons we believe in very simple language.

On Friday, we all had a Culture Night, where we all introduced our countries. Me and Jessica presented the US. We didn't say much about the nation as a whole, but she talked a bunch about Minnesota, and I talked about Chicago and DC. and we made Rice Krispie Treats, which turned out pretty well. but the Swiss don't have any normal marshmallows, so we had to use this odd marshmallow candy. The treats turned out fine, but they were kind of green. But the Germans, the Swiss, and the Dutch gave us all chocolate, so we were pretty happy.

On Saturday, though, we did an outreach in Bern with King's Kids, the children's ministry associated with YWAM. We helped out with a children's program called Jump, that King's Kids was running for the children in a low-income housing area in Bern called the Gabelbach. I helped set up a trampoline, and supervised the kids jumping on it. Then, during the message, I was in a short sketch we did. The message was about everybody being important, but I didn't understand most of it, because it was all in Swiss German (different from regular, or High German), but the skit was about Zaccheus, and I was Townsperson #2. It was outside, though, and really cold (not for me, of course, but I did need to wear two sweatshirts), so not many kids came to the program. Overall, though, it turned out pretty well. I really felt like we were doing God's work.

Here's a picture of one of the buildings at the Gabelbach:

And here's a picture of two of us in animal suits for the kids: Micha, one of the staff, is on the left in the bunny suit, and Allard (the Luxemburger) is on the right in the bear suit.

Well, this has been a pretty short update, but this week (week 4) has been amazing so far. I'll tell you about that next week, though.

God Bless,

Frederick Beuttler

macrovore@gmail.com

Week 2: Character of God

Well, this has been the first full week at YWAM, and I've learned a lot.

Before I get into anything, let me dissuade any rumors: I did not actually eat at the McDonald's in Lyss. We just went in to get a pop.

Well, the speaker who was speaking last week was Paul Hawkins, one of the first YWAM leaders. But, the problem was, that he was also scheduled to speak at YWAM Lausanne (one of the other bases in Switzerland, an all-english school) that week. Fortunately, God was watching out for us, and it turns out that YWAM Lausanne is one of the bases connected all around the world through the Genesis Project, YWAM's teleconferencing project. So, Paul talked to us, and the Lausanne kids watched him on live TV from their base. It's kind of wierd. They're in Switzerland (the french-speaking part), but the school of 26 kids is almost all Americans and Koreans (about the same # of each), with one Norwegian, one Mexican, and one German. They still have 4 guys, though.

On Wednsday, the Lausanne kids came over and we had class together. Now, before I show us all together, let me show you what the Swimming Pool (actually, our classroom) looked like empty:

and here it is filled with all of the students (the 14 Wiler kids, and the 26 Lausanne kids):

oh, and here's a picture of Paul Hawkins, and Björn, one of our staff, who translated everything he said into German. Paul is the old guy on the left, if you didn't get it before.

We did a bunch more stuff during the week, including go on a small outreach. We went to an Asylum Seekers' home about 30min away. It was run by the Salvation Army, and we weren't allowed to evangelize, but we could hang out with the people, who often didn't have much to do. We played with the kids a bunch, played volleyball with a guy from Eretria, and me and Allard (the guy from Luxemburg) played cards with a guy from the Sudan, in Darfur. He was pretty cool.

So, this week we were learning about God's Character. And I'm proud to report that He is a good God. We just don't always do what he wants to do. Most people who doubt God simply have a wrong view about God. Email me if you have any questions, or something.

Well, until next time, God bless,

Frederick Beuttler

macrovore@gmail.com

Week 1: Sunday, October 7th

Wow. This week (actually, a little more than a week) was so amazing. But before I get to talking about YWAM, I'm gonna talk about getting there.

The Journey

I left from Dulles last Friday, on a flight with Scandanavian Airlines to Copenhagen (in Denmark, the little thingy right above Germany on a map). Me and my mom left the house at about 2:30pm to go to the airport. We met up with my dad, and had a late lunch at a pub-thing at the terminal. I got on the plane in time, at ~5 for takeoff.

The flight was a long 7 hours. I watched Ocean's 13 (great movie), Spiderman 3 (my friends were right. it was emo), and most of Freedom Writers (profound), and read a little in one of the books I brought, a collection of short stories by Philip K. Dick (he wrote the stories to Paycheck, Minority Report, Total Recall, and Blade Runner. all great films). But the cool thing was, that one of the channels on the tv screen on the seat was the in-flight camera, where I could look in front of or under the plane, which meant that I could still see outside, even though I had a seat in the middle, nowhere near a window.

I got to the Copenhagen terminal easily, and after a quick security check and about 45min of layover, I got to another plane to Zurich (in Switzerland). That is a really big airport. I walked for, like, 15 minutes just to get to the train terminal. There, I met Jenny Skölind, from Finland, one of the students at the DTS, and we took the train to go to Biel, where we were picked up by Micha, one of the leaders. We drove to Wiler, which is a very small town fairly close to Bern, the capital of Switzerland. By then it was saturday, at about 1pm. We had a snack (just some bread), then I crashed from about 2pm until 10 the next morning. it felt great, and because of it, I was spared the worst of the jet lag.

The Base

After breakfast on Sunday, there were a few more kids who I met, and some who arrived. Jessica Williams was the other American at the DTS. She's from Minnesota, and doesn't speak a word of German (she knows 4-5 words now), so the language barrier was more of a problem for her than it was for me. Fortunately, though, every time the leaders spoke to us together, they used both English and High German (not Swiss German, because even though half of the students were Swiss, it's really really hard to understand). Jenny also doesn't speak much German. Just Swedish, a little Finnish, but pretty good English. When we had the whole group assembled, there were, among the 14 students, 4 guys and 10 girls. Seven of us were from Switzerland, Two from the US, two from Germany, one from Luxemburg, one from Holland, and one from Finland. A fairly varied group. We had a short introduction, then we left to go on our Mule trek.

The Trek

The first thing we did as a group was going on a Mule Trek in the Jura Mountains, the mountain range inbetween Switzerland and France. We drove to the lodge we were staying at (about 30-45min from the base), had dinner there, and crashed. The next day, we started the hiking. We had 5 mules, and we switched between riding the mules, leading the mules, and hiking alongside them. We hiked up around the mountains for about 3 hours, stopped for lunch, then trekked 3 hours back. The second day, we hiked up to this high-ropes course called Forest Jump (like Fun Forest in Stuttgart, but a lot smaller), and I did all of the courses in less than 3 hours (there was a bike-line, a 160m zipline, and a Tarzan-style rope swing). The third day, we took another hike up to the owner of the mules' house, which took 2-3 hours. We were all really tired by the end of the three days, but the views and landscapes we saw through the whole trip were amazingly beautiful. We really got to see God's creation at it's best.

There are a bunch of pictures of the trek here. I'm not sure which ones to post here, so I gave you the whole album. if you have a Facebook, message me, friend me, or comment on the pictures.

In the nights, we were learning about how to hear God's voice. And, when we got back to the base, there was some more of that. We learned (kind of) how to do intercessory prayer (essentially, where you ask God who to pray for, and pray for them, freeing yourself from your ideas and emotions during the prayer, just letting God show his heart to you). I'm not quite at the point where I can simply ask God to speak to me, and I can understand what he's saying, but I'm farther along that path than I've ever been.

This weekend, on Saturday, me and a bunch of other students went to Lyss, another town about 10min away by car, and walked around for a bit. There was actually a MacDonald's there. But, seriously, you need to see this one:

and, the whole view:

So, yeah. This whole week has been great learning about God, my classmates, and Switzerland, in that order. I hope all your lives are good right now, and I'll be praying for you.

God Bless,

Frederick Beuttler

macrovore@gmail.com