What is a DTS? (So Far)

A DTS – Discipleship Training School – with the organisation YWAM (Youth With A Mission) is 6 months that you set apart for God. 3 months of lectures and then almost 3 months of outreach, a missionary trip. I left Sweden a week ago and it feels like I’ve spent a lifetime here. My particular DTS in Florida has about 30 students and is also focused on the arts, so you can choose an art track to focus on during lecture phase. And it’s already my home. These people are my people. We prayed for the nations this morning, prayed for each other this afternoon. Ride our bikes through the city under Florida sun and rain and moonlight. They’ve got nothing left now either, we all left to come here and this is where we are, we are the ones who need to be each others’ home. What God does is good. I never want to leave.

Remembrance

Don’t write for people to remember you or it. Write to remind.

Tell what we’ve always known and will always forget. Tell me about the stars and the moon and the story about love sinking into oceans beneath everything.

Writing is sharing and giving what you’ve received, so pour it over me til I’m drunk and stumbling or bright and clear and make sure that I know what should be known.

Don’t live in the illusion of remembrance.

Every moment is a new eternity.

Zambia Travel Diary – Last Day

2015.09.22 02.02  There’s someone screaming on the plane. Not constantly, just every now and then, but imagine a man’s voice sounding like a baby that’s almost crying. Also the movie I just watched left me with a bit of a bad feeling. I know I shouldn’t be scared, and I don’t know if it’s offensive that I am, but I decided to take a short walk and must’ve walked past where he sat so he started screaming and clawing with his hands (he sat a few seats in by the windows though) and I jumped and almost ran a few steps. Now in my seat with my heart still hammering, but it doesn’t really matter because I don’t think I could have gone to sleep anyway and now at least I’m not stuck in some middle stage.

This made me think of what a good story idea it would be to have someone mentally ill try to take control over a plane, and then make it really disturbing (Not to judge this man in question, literally don’t know anything about him), but the story idea creeps me out even more.

09.09 We’re landing. I can’t decide how much I mind. But I do want to take a walk through the forest behind my house. Just a short one. Because that’s a part of me and my childhood, but not, never, part of the frustrating feeling I want to move away from home for. (Sidenote: The 2nd Law by Muse on low volume is a very suitable background for flying today)

16.32 It wasn’t as cold as I would’ve expected when we stepped off the plane. Sweater was quite enough even though I could feel the colder air on my face, clear and crisp. It’s definitely autumn, but the leaves are still green, the sun still brings warmth to your face and the sky was blue. It could almost be a spring day, one of those early ones when you make an attempt at walking barefoot but the stones are cold under your feet. Or an early morning at a summer scout camp, or taking a break from skiing and having your body warm and the sun reflecting on the snow to melt your icy face even though the air is cold. I love these things so very deeply.

I did take a walk when I got home, even though it had started to rain and drops slid down my face. I found some colourful leaves then, that showed me that maybe this is autumn, but I don’t mind, that’s what I had expected. I am, however, gonna take a warm, long bath now. (I realise right before getting into the bathtub that my hair still smells like Zambia)

21.52 I’ve never been very patriotic. I love and very strongly dislike my country in the way you do with things that are what you are, yet so very different and they don’t understand. I love the way the world looks now, with the possibility to be international and unbound by cultures and borders, belonging everywhere and belonging nowhere, and it was first recently that I realised that regardless of the rest of my life, I will always be Swedish. It’s too late, I’ve already spent too much time here. I still try to ignore it though, maybe because most of the time I don’t even feel it. It’s like what I wrote earlier, that I don’t feel like I’m coming home, I’m just going to a different country. Lies, lies, how could I believe that it wouldn’t affect me to see it from the sky, forests and small fields surrounded by tiny red houses, like toys my brother played with when he was younger. How could I believe I wouldn’t react to the smell of it, like I’m inhaling lakes and forests, or the way everything is green green when we drive from the airport under blue sky dotted with tiny clouds, the sun shining down on my from the side window and the air bright in my lungs.

I feel like this is the thing I will never remember, and always be taken back by. I can see it, the type of life I want, filled with travelling and differences, and the way I always forget until I’m welcomed home, like the way I was welcomed home today while walking through the forest, the rain drawing tears on my cheeks like a sacrifice, like a purification, like a reminder that you’re here and you’re tiny, these forests knew you before and will bloom for many afters.
It’s a weird thing to have, such a big home.

(And I’m happy now, curled up and warm under white sheets, with the misty and dark autumn night outside. It’s different, jumping into autumn like this, because I like time to long for things, like eating chocolate and savouring each tiny bit, but now I’ve mashed it into my mouth and life is big, grander, great and waiting for me outside the door.) Goodnight.

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