After a week of travel with Renee and Berenike, I started the Summit session of my semester a bit sleep deprived and anxious for my sister (Diana) and friend (Callie) to arrive that night. Our week of travel was great. We had some challenges, but overall I enjoyed going to London, Amsterdam and Copenhagen to see the cities and learn about their cultures. There were several distinct factors I noticed in each country. London felt a lot like New York City and there is a lot to see and visit. I still have places and museums I have yet to visit in London. Amsterdam is very pretty but spiritually dark and the people not as friendly as I anticipated. Copenhagen is a nice city as well, but the cold weather made the walking not as pleasant. Spending time with Renee and Berenike was great and I had a fun time sharing interesting train experiences with them.
The morning Renee left was our first day of our Summit Intensive where we started to compile a list of questions we had about Christianity, the Bible and the Islamic faith. Most of our meetings follow this format. We arrive a little before 10am, start around 10:15. During our meetings Kevin will start us off with a topic and pull in information about what other people have said about the topic, books that talk about the topic and then we refer to the Bible for what it says about the topic. Throughout this process the students and I make comments and ask questions. Sometimes our questions will lead us into a different direction and we start to talk about another topic for a half hour and then all of the sudden we get back to the original topic. Quite amazing I must say. At the end of the day we either get a reading assignment from Kevin or we get an e-mail later that evening of what we have to have read before the following day or in two days. The start of last week consisted on talking about Spiritual Warfare and what that looks like in life, later we moved to a couple of students sharing their term at Oxford and how they were either challenged or enjoyed the term. We also covered a couple of chapters in the book Idols for Destruction and later started discussing Islam and the fundamentals of the religion. Next week our papers are due about Islam and I am a little nervous as to what I chose to talk about for my paper. The topic will be on Women and Islam, but the details I have yet to specify. As Diana and Callie were with me last week, we were able to see each other in the evenings because of my class and their travel to visit London and Oxford. Last Friday and until Sunday I was able to travel with Diana and Callie to Ireland. Our trip was fun but we too had many mini hurdles to overcome when in Ireland. What the three of us did notice right off the bat was the economic situation of Ireland. It was not as nice as England but the people were friendly and really wanted the money of tourists! I was able to fulfill one of my life-long dreams of seeing the Cliff of Moher. The weather was great which really did help with keeping the weather quite nice. My time with Diana and Callie was great. It was nice to see both of them after three months and spending time with Diana who is normally busy when I am on vacation.
Yesterday our class met at Blenheim Palace where we spent the day learning about the place and spending some time with Kevin's daughters Katherine and Emeline. The palace was beautiful. It reminded me a lot about Versailles in France. Today we are coving the topic of Lying and what that means to Muslims and Christians. Later today we are covering more about Islam. The Summit Intensive is great but our long sessions are sometimes taxing. Please be praying that my group and I can have the strength to concentrate and get as much as we can from the readings and discussions. On Thursday we are interviewing the Imam from Oxford which should be really exciting and interesting because we will finally be able to ask questions to a person who is practicing the religion we have been studying for so long!
I only have a little more than three weeks left here and I am going to miss it so very much.
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