Aosta, Italy

Yesterday nine other students and I traveled to the city of Aosta, Italy. Aosta is north of Torino, in the heart of the Alps. We spent half of the day on top of the mountain either hiking around, eating lunch on the top of a grassy knoll, or even playing around on the kid’s mini zip line!  Throughout the day I found myself just stopping to appreciate the situations that God and my parents have helped place me in. I feel really blessed to have the chance to see the world like most people do not.  We have officially been in Italy for 9 days, and I find it funny to say, but I don’t know if I have ever felt more alive!

We spent most of the day up on the property of the Pila Ski Resort in Aosta. The view from this region of Italy was absolutely amazing.  The 10 of us walked around the small resort town at the top of the hill for a little bit before stopping to eat lunch on what we found out later was the roof of some of the condos at the resort.  The view from here was one that I have never experienced anywhere else.  As we sat eating lunch you could just look out and enjoy the view; A view that seemed to be endless as well as amazingly natural. 

Another cool part of the day in Aosta was the Roman ruins that we were able to look at.  There were a few churches in the town that we went to, and inside / under neither the church was the remains of what was once a roman underground town system.  It was amazing to walk the halls of this underground society and just think about all of the history that was lying between those walls.  This was a really cool experience as someone who enjoys learning about history and what things have shaped society to be the way it is today.

Ciao,

Nate

Italian Culture

Today is the third official day of school here in Italy for me. I am finding that I am enjoying my time here, because I am enjoying some of the differences of culture here in Italy.  Having only spent less than a week here, I can already see a more simpler approach to life as a whole (not feeling the need to strive to be the greatest thing; or even feeling that your life has to be go go go all of the time), but rather living a simple life that is filled with family, friends, and happiness.

Our apartment is a pretty nice place, we are in a great location right in the heart of downtown, and we have a good bit of room! Because of this we have had friends over a couple times for dinner or drinks and good conversation.  Last night we had some friends over, and I found myself talking to one girl for almost an hour about the amazing differences between the approaches to life here in Italy and back in America. It was amazing conversation, because in such a short time we can see the obvious differences and the beauty in a simpler and more satisfied life.

Italian Culture (as I have seen it so far) is beautifully simple: the people seem to be content with spending their evenings with friends at a local cafe rather than spending their time worrying about whether or not the have the best of everything, or the newest and greatest.  After spending my whole life being caught up in the hustle and bustle of the way Americans spend their time, I am finding it refreshing to relax (relatively speaking) and stop to enjoy the things around you. This has not been something I have ever been very good at; in fact it has come in between me and relationships I have had with friends in the past. 

I am excited to see if this is just a short observation of a culture, or if it is a way of life that Italians cherish, rather than the desires of wealth and success like Americans often do!

I will keep you all updated as things on this journey change.

Ciao,

Nate

Ciao

Ciao,

I am writing for the first time on here since Matt and I have arrived in Europe, and just wanted to take a moment to let everyone know how things are going!

As we speak it is around 2:10 here in Torino, and we are supposed to wake up at 7:00! The hotel we are staying in tonight is absolutely miserable; it is very very hot, we are the only room without a balcony (which I would sleep on right now if I could), our beds are literally 6” apart, and the wifi has cut in and out at least 15 times this evening.

With that being said, I did want to take a second to talk about how amazing Paris was, but also officially release “the list”.  Paris was absolutely amazing, our tour guide Adrien (my ex-international buddy) showed us the amazing monuments and tourist stops, but we were also lucky to see some off the map spots in Paris that most tourists don’t get to see! Matt and I were very appreciative of him and his family for allowing us to stay with them for three days and showing us around! Although the Arc de Triumph was my favorite place in downtown Paris, I would have to say that anyone that visits Paris is very stupid not to take a day to visit the Palace of Versailles! The gardens there were unbelievable and I really enjoyed them!

With that being said, “the list” is something that matt and I have been working on for some time now. Some of them are funnier than others (although the mean serious things), but others are some of our true desires that we would like to accomplish while here in Italy.

25 things to do in Europe

1.       Walk down the streets of Torino with gelato in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other.

2.       Hit up the Vatican.

3.       Kiss a random French girl under the Eiffel tower.

4.       Gladiator fight in the coliseum.

5.       Wine tasting in the Italian countryside.

6.       DASSSSSSSS BOOOOT!

7.       Get Oktoberfest outfits.

8.       Look up relatives in Germany and Italy.

9.       Visit the Cut in the Mountains in Norway.

10.   Go to a professional soccer game [Juventus].

11.   Go to a sweet concert somewhere in Europe.

12.   Pay dues to “The Don” in Sicily.

13.   Go to the Lamborghini factory.

14.   Ride in a gondola with a man that looks like Fabio.

15.   Get an A to make mom and dad happy.

16.   Travel to the Palace of Versailles.

17.   Learn how to cook.

18.   Visit the Cinque Terra.

19.   Go to Amsterdam…..

20.   Visit Big Ben, Parliament, Buckingham Palace, and the London Eye in London, England.

21.   Hike the entire Trail B in one day on the Cinque Terra.

22.   Learn Italian.

23.   Go to a TECHNO / RAVE / HOUSE MUSIC party!

24.   Hold a complete conversation in just Italian.

25.   HAVE THE TRIP OF A LIFETIME!!

Although I doubt that we will be able to cross all of these off before we leave, let alone before we die, I hope to cross as many of these off the list as possible because these are things that I am passionate about completing.

Tomorrow (aka today) we move into our apartment and really figure out what type of situation we are actually in.  I am living with Matt and two guys that we have never met before, but to be honest I am 5x more excited about this than nervous! I will try to keep you all updated on everything, but also remember to check out my facebook page to see what is going on!

Ciao,

Nate

PS – if you can help me with #3 or #21 please let me know ;-)

It Is Official... WE IS GOIN'!!!

So I have not written in this blog for a very long time. Mostly because of how crazy busy life is, but also because I have found that I am in a season in my life where I am in some ways rebelling against electronics and trying to spend as much of my free time away from a screen and with other people (its sad if angry birds and words with friends become your only source of entertainment people!!).

With this being said I am happy to announce that I will be leaving America for London on the 28th of August, and will be spending 5 days in northern Europe before working my way down to Torino, Italy.  I am very excited to spend this great experience with one of my very close friends, Matt Buchheit, and have a chance to view the world in a different way!

WE ARE LESS THAN 90 DAYS AWAY TO THE GREATEST ADVENTURE OF MY LIFE!!!

-Nate

In The Beginning...

This weekend at church we started a new series on the story of God, and how we are people fit into that story.  Chuck talked about the Bible in a way that I have never heard someone talk about it before.  He related the Bible to a book (which it is; the bestselling book of all time!), and with that being a slight bit of realization that we as humans are not the center of the universe. 

I WILL SAY THIS AGAIN; IF YOU LOOK AT THE BIBLE AS A BOOK, WHICH IT IS, WE AS HUMANS ARE NOT THE MAIN CHARACTER OF THAT STORY!!

The first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:1 states "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Now knowing what I know about books, my bet and what Chuck talked about, is that if you just read the first sentence of the Bible, it is safe to say that God is the main character of the story, but with that being said, why is it that people live their lives daily centered around themselves and what they want to get out of everything.

I wanted to share this with you all because I find it to be motivating and inspiring to go out and live your life in a way that reflects the BOOK that you are in.  We are all just supporting characters brought along by the main character to help him, GOD, in whatever he might need help with.  The next 7 weeks Crossroads is going to be continuing to talk about this STORY OF GOD, and how each of us tie into that story.  I wanted to get this out now, to challenge all of you to take on this journey with me, and realize where we fit in this amazing story that we are in.

God is Love,
Nate

Why Bad Things Happen To Good People

This morning I sat down and actually watched a two part podcast sermon on why bad things happen to good people by senior pastor Perry Noble from Newspring Church in Anderson, South Carolina.  For the past month Samantha has been urging me to watch these videos, but to be honest I was avoiding them because of the things that have happened in my life.  The bad things that I don't want to let go of, but rather hold onto for situations when I don’t like what God has to say about something.

For anyone who knows me, my road of a very short 20 years has been littered with some very challenging tragedies from being paralyzed twice to losing a grandma to brain cancer right in front of my eyes, to depression, to losing my grandpa last week, and now having to watch my great grandmother fight for her last few breaths to hopefully make it out of this weekend.  And so to me these two sermons where nothing I was looking forward to because I personally have no interest in hearing it.

However, I just finished watching these two podcasts, maybe the best 2 hour investment of my life, and have a little bit of a better realization of what tragedy actually looks like.  The one thing that was said in this sermon that struck me very close was that as humans we want to justify the wrong things that happen to people based on things they must have done, but we want our wrongs to be washed clean so as for us to not have anything bad happen to us.  What I realized to actually be reality was actually something totally different.

I want to share with you all the not so often told tragedy of a man named Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to save us from our own sins, whom never once sinned himself, but endured more tragedy than any of us ever will.  Here is the list;

1.      He was born in a barn because there wasn’t even a room for his family (Tragedy if it happens to your friend next week?)

2.      King Herod ordered the killing of all children under a certain age because he feared Jesus (Tragedy if you wake up tomorrow and see that every child in Ghana under the age of 3 was killed yesterday?)

3.      Jesus’ own father Joseph died when Jesus was between the age of 12-30 (Tragedy if your dad dies today?)

4.      After Jesus’ first sermon he was taken to a cliff in the town and was going to be thrown off of the cliff and killed (Tragedy if the head pastor of your church is thrown off the roof?)

5.      For the first 3 years of Jesus’ ministry there was a group of men who went around criticizing him and plotting to kill him (Tragedy if a countries leader is assassinated?) (Republicans don’t answer that question)

6.      Jesus was betrayed by one of his 12 disciples (Tragedy if your best friend backstabs you?)

7.      The night Jesus was captured his friends couldn’t even stay awake to support him (Tragedy if you need someone to be there and they fall asleep on you?)

8.      Jesus was so worried before he was captured that he was sweating blood (Tragedy if that is you?) (If you say no you are lying!)

9.      After Jesus was captured his closes friends betray him (Tragedy if you get taken to jail and use you one call to call a friend and they tell you they are at a Reds game and aren’t coming?)

10.  After Jesus was captured he was spit on, beard pulled out by hand, crown of thorns smashed onto his head by rocks, and whipped by cat of nine tails just while on trial (Tragedy?)

11.  Once sentenced Jesus was forced to carry his cross until he literally could not carry it anymore (Tragedy when an athlete dies from dehydration?)

12.  Jesus had nails pounded through his feet and wrists onto the cross and a pillow placed behind his back so his lungs would fill with blood (Tragedy?)

13.  For six hours Jesus hung on the cross and GAVE HIS LIFE FOR YOU!

Now just so this all comes back around, this is all to a man WHO NEVER SINNED, and we look at our lives and hold things against God.  Really?  But the best part of this story, and the part that has honestly changed the way I look at my life, is that these tragedies (which they are) where turned into triumph when Jesus rose from the dead. 

Isaiah 43: 1-3 reads : But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

The reason I share this with everyone today is because just as I have had tragedies in my life Jesus had tragedies in his, and just as his tragedies turned into triumph so will mine!

Dance to Make the World a Better Place

This weekend I had the great privilege and honor to be a part of the 3rd annual Cincinnati Dance Marathon. For those of you who do not know what the dance marathon is, I wanted to take some time to explain about CDM and the courage that I pull from it every year.

Last year was my first time being involved with the CDM, and to be honest I did it because I have to do 30hrs of community service for my scholarship here at school. However I must say after the first 2 hours there I realized that we as students were there for a bigger reason, and a greater purpose. The Cincinnati Dance Marathon is exactly what the title states; a dance marathon in Cincinnati, but truthfully it is much more than that. CDM is a one day event that happens every year where hundreds of college students from the University of Cincinnati come together and literally dance for 24hrs straight to raise money for Cincinnati's Children’s Hospital. This year the students involved (a little over 600) raised over $23,000. This might not seem like a lot to some people, but to students who live off of Roman Noodles and Pizza, I was really proud to say that I was a part of it. 

The thing that touched me the most were actually the children from the hospital that came to the dance marathon to talk about their health issues.  Some of these kids are undiagnosed, some with some of the world's rarest diseases, and some who are just really sick. Above all of this, these kids took time out of their crazy and volatile lives to come and thank us for spending our time and money to help them. This whole situation really makes me think about the finer things in life that I feel most Americans take for granite every single day, such as life itself. I find that spending an hour with someone who is holding on to life by the tips of their fingers helps keep life in perspective for us that have more than we truly know. 

I am not saying that everyone should feel the need to go out and spend time with sick children in a hospital, however that is something that this has made me want to do more often to give back, but I do think that situations like this should help us balance things in life that we feel to be rights, and not privileges. There is nothing more humbling and gratifying than spending some time with someone, and through that bring happiness to both you and that person. That is the joy that should be passed around to our peers not one of the more possessions I have the happier I will become.

I want to apologize to anyone who first feels that my statements have been all over the place through this post, but also to someone who finds what I say to be demeaning to someone with lots of possessions. I just want to be clear in stating that I am not saying that possessions are bad, but rather a healthy balance of possessions and giving back to those in a lesser situation might be exactly what some people need.