At the end of January, two of our students visited a partner school, HLT in Norway, as part of the Nordplus program.
Kadi Vildersen (MA, 2nd year) wrote:
“The topic of healing has been strongly present in my life lately and has deeply resonated with me. While there, I took a course called Church and Healing, taught by Øyvind Gaarder Andersen. His heart burns for the subject of healing, and throughout his life, he has witnessed many miracles performed by God. Since it was very important to him that this course was not only theoretical but also practical, he incorporated many testimonies and experiences, showed us videos of miraculous healings, and genuinely prayed with us and for us.”
Kadi hopes that this course will also be introduced at Estonian Free Church Theological Seminary, as, according to their lecturer, healing – praying for the sick and speaking about it – should be just as natural as preaching during Sunday services.
Maria Metsamaa (BA, 4th year) shared her experience:
“Who is a good leader? What is leadership? Are leaders born or made? Is ‘power’ good or bad? These are some of the questions we tried to explore in the Value-Based Leadership class. During the international school week, our group was incredibly diverse, with students from all over the world – Asia, Africa, and I, as the only fair-skinned European, from Estonia. We discovered that many answers to these questions depend on the culture one comes from. For example, an Estonian and a Filipino might describe a good leader differently, meaning that a person ‘born to lead’ will experience leadership differently depending on the culture they are part of. At the same time, we all agreed that the best example of a leader is Jesus Christ. A good leader embodies values and behaviors similar to His. Leadership is, first and foremost, a relationship between the leader and the follower, and by reflecting on this and taking Jesus as an example, everyone can better analyze and develop their leadership skills.”
Both students commented on how the school days were structured. “One thing that immediately stood out was the fact that there were A LOT of breaks,” Kadi remarked. Classes ended as early as 14:15, which felt very unusual at first. “By the third day, I had slowly gotten used to it and even started to like it, as it gave Maria and me the opportunity to explore Oslo and visit museums.” In addition, Kadi enjoyed participating in a mini church service, where they could worship together, listen to a sermon, pray, and take part in communion.
Maria arrived on Sunday morning and, in addition to attending exciting classes, had the opportunity to visit the Pentecostal church Filadelfiakirken, which operates within the school building. She admitted: “At the same time, I also realized how grateful I am for my own school in Estonia. But it is so great that we have partner schools we can visit as exchange students. I highly recommend everyone to take advantage of such opportunities and experience an adventure – because besides our classes, we also had time to explore the beautiful city of Oslo!”
