There is a strangely wonderful feeling of returning home from an extended period of travel. There is something so simultaneously refreshing and relaxing about home, not entirely unlike seeing an old friend after a long time. There is a sweet familiarity to be found in the ordinary. After my wonderful month-long trip to Montana, I have so enjoyed returning to Lausanne. My time in Montana was incredible. I treasured getting to connect with so many of you. However, by the end of the month, I was ready to return.
Unlike the last several trips I have taken back and forth, I was not alone. I got to bring along, my parents! They are involved with a software team that created and develops the system that stores all the student records for YWAM’s University of the Nations. The team convened in Lausanne for a 2-week intensive development sprint. It has been amazing to have them here. They will also be making a longer trip back later this year which I am looking forward to.
Returning after a month away, I jumped right back into my role at full speed. Right now, our campus has every single bed filled including the housing in the new development. We have about 125 students currently doing different training programs. This is both wonderful and exciting, however, it means much more work on many fronts. I have taken this as an opportunity to stress test some of our office systems/workflows and make incremental improvements where possible. It has been like my own personal testing lab. The processes for making student ID cards, welcome packs, and information sheets have all gotten improved because of this.
With the new influx of students, I have also received 8 new students, who are doing their work duties with us. They are fitting in really well and enjoying their time in the office. There is always a bit of an onboarding process when new students start to work with us, but they are catching on very quickly. I am looking forward to helping them develop both deeper passion and skills in this area over their time with us. They are also a big blessing to our small team as they help to carry some of the load.
I also recently got invited to teach in one of our leadership & missions training courses. My topic was how to create email newsletters like this one. 🙂 It was fun to share what I have learned creating these over the last 2 years. Many of them were intimidated at the prospect of starting to send out updates. I did my best to dispel their anxiety and demonstrate how approachable it can be. When I taught, I offered to give anyone who wanted it individual coaching/advice. Several of them took me up on it. Now, I am working with a number of them one-on-one, helping them to become more effective communicators. It is wonderful to get to pour into others who are just beginning their journeys as missionaries. My hope is to do all I can to set them up for success in the area of communication.
Work is continuing on the new YWAM Lausanne website. Most of my efforts since arriving back have been centered around further connecting the website to our database to automatically update things like dates, upcoming courses, etc. On the old site, all of this had to be done manually. This took a significant amount of time to keep current and was prone to mistakes. By automating the process we are able to free up time for more important tasks and ensure accuracy. The new site has continued to be received very positively, especially by younger people. Some of the students who recently arrived have commented about how much they liked the site. This is very encouraging for me. The new site is serving its purpose as an effective tool in mobilizing more people into missions. All the time and energy we poured into it are starting to pay off.
Like I mentioned earlier, I am so happy to be back in Switzerland. On one of the first days back, I went down to the waterfront in Montreaux and took my camera along for the ride. Here are a few of the shots:
One of the challenges that is somewhat unique to living in Switzerland, is transportation. To get around, I basically have 3 options, renting a car from the base at the cost of $0.75 per km, public transit (most frequent option), or walking. Every year, I purchase a special pass that cuts the cost of public transit tickets in half for about $120. This greatly improves my ability to get around and the public transit here is amazing. However, there are still lots of times where walking is the only option. As I have continued to put down deeper roots here, transportation has continued to be a major limiting factor in what I can do.
I have been looking into other solutions to improve my ability to get around. Now, in North America, the answer would be clear: a car. Sadly things are not so simple here. Pretty much every aspect of owning a car here is much much more expensive than back in the US or Canada. They also have serious limitations about where they go (most European cities weren’t made with cars in mind). One common solution people here use are electric scooters and other “Last mile transportation.”
For my use case, an electric scooter would be ideal. I do most of my traveling inside/into old cities where the majority of the streets are not accessible by car or motorcycle. However, bikes and e-scooters are allowed in these old restricted streets. Scooters also don’t require additional tickets like bikes on transit and fold up, meaning it could tag along easily pretty much anywhere I go. They also don’t require any kind of license or taxing like vehicles with combustion engines. With a range of about 40km and a speed of 20km per hour, they can cover a significant distance and at a much faster pace than walking. This means instead of buying multiple transit tickets to get around, I can get just purchase a ticket to get to a city or area and then rely on the scooter to get around from there. My monthly transportation costs are about $150 per month. The cost of a scooter is about $900 and I estimate that this could rough cut my monthly costs in half while enabling me to do so much more. I am trying to raise the funds to acquire one of these scooters by the end of the year. This is something very practical that would have a major impact on my effectiveness here. If you would prayerfully consider this I would greatly appreciate it.
Looking ahead, the restrictions have shifted to the place where we can finally do local outreach and evangelism. I am beyond excited about this because I have put together a new photography evangelism group! The day this newsletter goes out, we will be going down into the city for the first time with the new group. I so love going out into the streets to bring a message of hope to the people we encounter. Stay tuned for more on this in future updates, I am really really excited and I hope you are too!
As always, thank you for coming along with me in this adventure of faith,
Ben