November 8th, 2015
Two Months In
With yet another lecture week under the belt it seems like time is flying by way to fast here. I’m over 2 months in since I left home and I’ve got to say it seems odd that now I refer the YWAM base here as home.
The week started off with a huge windstorm and lots of rain, but in my normal fashion I wanted to go on a hike anyways. So a few of us headed off towards Hessa, the opposite side of Aalesund, to see if we could manage a hike. Unfortunately when we got there, it started just dumping on us. Rain and wind whipped at our faces leaving us a little lost as what to do.
The bus dropped us off at the end of the line, and we stood there in the rain trying to decide what to do. As we were standing there a local lady told us about the aquarium and how if we just walked a short distance further we could spend time inside the famous Aalesund aquarium. Having heard lots of stories about the aquarium it sounded like a plan to us. We wandered around inside, seeing all sorts of strange Norwegian fish and playing around with the penguins and seals. For such a small aquarium it sure packed a pretty good punch, and we really had a blast tooling around in front of the giant aquarium and talking fun silhouette pictures.
The lectures for the rest of the week were really cool. We had a speaker from England come by and share with us different techniques on how to share the word of God through our individual arts. She had lots to share on how we need to be accountable for our own choices when it comes to pursuing our art and trying to make a life out of it. A life devoted for God with our art.
It was interesting the different things she talked about and made us consider. She got us to think about our happy, creative place and how it helped our creativity, what were the different elements in our happy place that made it so easy for us to express ourselves there. After we finished that we talked about skills that made us who we were. Things that we thought we were good at and could use to further God’s kingdom. Also the opposite was included, we talked about things that we thought we struggled with or different things that got in our way of being who we are. It was a bit of a struggled for me realizing how easily I can be distracted by different road blocks, but also how I’m good at hiding the road blocks from others. It was a great learning week for me and I grew a lot in ways that I can learn to love God and myself.
This week I also had the pleasure of meeting a fellow who came all the way from London just to hang with the photo track. Studying commercial photography and having grown up with one of the guys here in Aalesund he quickly became part of the family. Joining us for all sorts of adventures and if he was awake then also for a few of the lectures. He was honestly one of the most chill guys I’ve met apart from my family here, so I’m hoping that at some point in the future our paths will cross.
Friday was our creative track day and we were honored to have Mats Grimseth come and speak about photography with us. This Norwegian adventurer has one of the most inspiring stories I’ve ever heard. Starting photography at the age of 15 he quickly made a name in his local town. Working every spare hour with the newspaper trying to further his name. His name was soon recognized by larger and larger brands and before he knew it he was in Austria at the Red Bull School of photography. Postponing the end of high school so that he could pursue his dream of becoming a professional photographer. He quickly achieved that, becoming the lead photographer in many different Red Bull events. His work being shown across the globe. With all his success he was looking for something a little different to do with the rest of his life. So he followed his “Boyhood” dream and bought a sail boat and for the last couple months has been sailing the west coast of Norway, on his way up to the Lofoten Islands.
The craziest part about all that is…. He turned 20 just this year.
His story really inspired all of us. Seeing that no matter what your age is, what your background is or what your style is, you can be a success if you work hard enough and believe in your work.
So safe to say it was another crazy success of a week and I’m looking forward to start another great one this week!
