Holsby

After leaving Strandhem on Wednesday, we traveled to the small town of Holsby to stay overnight at the Holsby Torchbearers Bible School.  In the morning on Thursday, we met with the leadership of the school: John (Director), his wife Christine (Registrar), Luke (Principal of the school), and Jonathan (Director of the Camps and Retreats).  We also met with some of the staff who will be working this summer with students, confirmation classes, and families that visit the school for short-term camps and classes.  A new offering this year at Holsby is a three-week bible school class that will serve about 20 students.  We had some good times of sharing and prayer with the leaders and staff.  We also had a good walk in the woods (a very Swedish thing to do) with John and Luke, with some time to pray along the way.  Specific prayer items for Holsby include: visas have been difficult to obtain for non-European students to attend Holsby (pray that this process would go smoothly and it would not prevent any student from attending in the Fall);  a number of students have shared, once they are at the school, that they have suffered in the past from physical or sexual abuse  (please pray for the healing of and the forgiveness by these students); there have been a number of renovation projects completed at the school (prayer of praise for these improvements); they have not yet received enough funding to build their indoor gym on the property (please pray for wisdom as to whether to proceed with this or be waiting to see how the student body grows or declines); the summer school was not expected to draw many students (maybe 10), but they have 22 students attending (prayer of praise for this number of students; also pray that this will be a program that will be a blessing for the students and can be continued in future summers); Jonathan the Camp Director has been waiting for months for a new visa (please pray that this would be issued soon so that his employment at the camp is not disrupted and his financial support from the Government can be restored).

John, Christine, and Luke after our morning prayer time looking at books we delivered to them from the Gospel Coalition.

Luke, John, and our team as we started our walk in the woods.  The forests and landscape around Holsby are very beautiful and quiet, providing a great environment to study the Bible.

We stopped at location on our walk where there was a very large stone which was engraved with names and dates by people who were leaving Sweden forever in the 1700s and 1800s to go to America.  This was a common thing to do by people emigrating during this time.  Many of these engraved names were still visible, as you can see below, although difficult to read.

The summer staff at Holsby.  They are currently spending about two weeks preparing for the summer camps and family visits to the school.

The sign welcoming you to Holsby.  They will be changing the name on the sign soon, as they officially go by "Holsby" and not "Holsby Brunn" anymore.  "Fackelbärarna" means The Torchbearers  in Swedish.