Adventures of a Black Hawk: Worship, Skiing, Basel etc..

This past week we were looking at worship and what worship means to us. The speaker, Sylvain, was Swiss and spoke french, which meant we had a translator speaking english this week. It was another great week & we were able to explore different means of worshipping God & that we all worship in different ways. Many of us, when we hear the word worship, would automatically associate it with worship songs we sing in church. However, the Bible tells us to worship God at all times, in all places. Which means consciously giving praise to God in our everyday lives.

Here are the main points I took away from this week:
- We worship what we know
- Worship = All that I am to all that He is
- How do we maintain a love for worship?
- Praising God in the difficult times is a lot harder, but it produces more fruit
- Psalm 139 'I am fearfully & wonderfully made'
- No one else can praise and worship God for you!
- We sometimes worship our intelligence. Intellect doesn't equal wisdom!
- Opposite of worship = Idolatry
- Your God is who you give your time, money & thoughts to. Who or what are we idolising?
- Our worship isn't dependant on our feelings
- What do we need to give up to God? Offer back to him?

At the end of the week we were challenged by the speaker to pray about what we had been idolising and on Friday morning we had a time where we gave them back to God, some symbolically put something at the foot of the cross, others wrote on a piece of paper and others gave it to God in their hearts. It was a powerful time and a great end to the week.

Since being here in Switzerland myself and a few others have really wanted to go skiing but havent had the chance! One of the leaders, Catrina, said she would take us on Friday afternoon to a place about 35/40 mins away called Les Jouvencelles, which is in France. So there were 5 of us that went, I have only been skiing once, 5/6 years ago for a week and Stephan only for 1 day about 15 years ago! So we thought we'd be staying on the baby slopes all day, however we managed to pick it up pretty quick and with a bit of persuading managed to do a red run!! For those that don't know, the difficulty goes, green(easiest) then blue, then red & then black. So we were pretty pleased to have done a red! One cool thing when we were going down one run, the run split into 2 and you had the choice to ski into France or Switzerland!! Pretty cool hey?! Catrina took her camera, so here are some of the photos she took...

On Friday night one of the women on staff had a Pyjama party, so we went across the road to her house for some girly time! It was great fun and we had some awesome chats whilst eating chocolate and painting our nails.. you know, girly things!

If that wasn't enough excitement for one week, some of us were invited to Basel to stay with Sebastian's (DTS student from Romania) sister & Brother-in-law and their children. So, Aubrey, Sam, Jenna, Sebastian & myself were picked up on saturday morning by his brother-in-law. Basel is about 2 and half hours from Burtigny and the journey was beautiful, we were able to see loads more of Switzerland. Basel is on the border of France, Germany & Switzerland. I really wanted to just drive into Germany & have a little walk round to be able to say I've been there!! On saturday we went into the centre of the city and walked around. We also climbed a tower in the Cathedral which meant we got some amazing views of Basel & the surrounding areas, including France & Germany! We ate so much amazing food! On Saturday night we had the Swiss tradition of Raclette which was delicious then on Sunday we had Romanian food- Peppers stuffed with meat & rice. It was a lovely weekend and so nice to see more of Switzerland!!