Dave's Visit

...It is true - this blogspot site definitely IS easier to handle than my former one!! 

I love it!

David came here for a visit and Johanna and I loved it (right, Jo?!)!! ...Well, I sure did!

It means a lot to have someone visit from your second home (aka The Shepherd's House family :o))...!!

We had so much fun and just a great time!

These pictures were taken last Monday, when Dave came to our house for dinner. My parents and brother loved to meet David and we had a very nice evening.

Despite the bad weather during the day, the sky started to light up more and more and we were able to show Dave our beautiful view of the Alps! :o)

After dinner we drove up the hill behind our house and had dessert at a restaurant up there. The view from there is even better! You can see the Lake Thun which you can't from our house...!

Dave kept telling me to NEVER FORGET HOW BEAUTIFUL this is!! ...So I tried to explain, that even to me who sees this every day, it is STILL VERY BEAUTIFUL!! Seriously.

Sure, there's many other places that I think are very beautiful, too - e.g. THE OCEAN, which to me surely is even more special than the Alps... ;o) The ocean just brings the association of VACATION to my mind... :o) 

There's just one bad thing that I realized while Dave was here: My English isn't as good anymore...! :o( It doesn't cross my mind as easily as it used to... This made me a little sad. I have always loved learning languages and when I spent those six months in California it was great to live through this experience of really learning a language. And now I've lived in Switzerland for more than a year again and all that I have learned just seems to slowly slip away... Of course I keep reading many books in English (it's just a pity you can't get them as easily here - at least the ones I'm interested in...) and I still think or pray or write (e.g. in my journal) in English often. So, I think this definitely helped keeping it... ;o) But still, I don't really get to practice my oral much and that's the main part that's worsening.

New Site!

...I decided to continue my blog on blogspot.com because I think it's easier to handle than my former freewebs.com blog. Of course you can still go visit the former one which I started before leaving for California in 2006. I started blogging for my friends here in Switzerland, so they could read and see what I was experiencing during those six months in the U.S. That part is written in Swiss German and German.

The entries which I wrote after returning to Switzerland are written in English.

You will also find some pictures there... ;o)

www.freewebs.com/salomefahrni

As I wrote on my freewebs blog, I now don't really know what the purpose of my blog is... ;o) 

...And it might be true that I'm continuing just for fun. :o) I also can't really tell you what my future posts are going to be about...

So, I guess, you and me are just going to find out over the years... ;o)

August 3

That night I went for a walk. It was after 9pm, the sun had set about an hour ago & it was still pretty light outside. The air was still warm, too. I decided to take the road right from our house that goes a little up the hill. I went as far up as I had never gone before (which was still only about 200 metres... ;o)). We've been living in this village for eleven months now & I have only gone up that road to our neighbor's house once (which is about 50 metres from our house). So, I decided to discover new land. :o) After I had passed our neighbor's farm & after a couple more metres I stopped & turned around to see the view from where I was standing. - ...I was amazed at how much more of our neighborhood you could see from there than you could from our house! I saw things differently than I see them out of my window every day. The distance was a little bigger but my view was much broader than usually. Now I could see more of the Alps, I could see the hill that's right next to our village from a little on high, to my left I could see further than usually because I saw a nearby village that from our house you're not able to see. 

While taking all this in it made me think about how this is so true with our personal lives. Sometimes we are so caught up in our day-to-day life or in problems appearing in our lives that we tend to only look at things & problems from our own & limited perspective. But if we'd just step back a little, we'd see all that from a completely new & different point of view & big things bothering us so much would start to become smaller things not bothering us so much anymore...

I think the only way you can REALLY have the right perspective on something is by looking at it the way God does. I know, sometimes this is not that easy, but if you want the Lord to be the most important thing in your life, this is exactly what you want to be doing.

There are a couple of verses from the Bible that talk about this:

1 Samuel 16:7

"But the LORD said to Samuel, Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

Isaiah 55:8-9

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Ask the Lord to show you His view of this one thing in your life that you can't seem to get past. Ask Him for His help in dealing with this one person you seem to always have troubles with & ask Him to show you how He sees that person & learn to see him or her the same way. 

He will do it!!

With His help you are able to see things from the right perspective.