You’ll never walk alone

We’ve had quite a weekend. Saturday was Lisbeth’s birthday. I was going to write we celebrated Lisbeth’s birthday, but that would not be quite true. Not because Lisbeth did not want to be celebrated, certainly not because she is not worth being celebrated, but simply because we didn’t have the time. Apart from breakfast together we spent the rest of the day preparing for Lukas’ confirmation on the Sunday.

Confirmation is certainly not part of a Salvation Army tradition generally, but in the Scandinavians countries, where between 80-90% of the populations are members of the Lutheran church, it was introduced 25-30 years ago. At that time almost everyone in a school class would be confirmed and instead of stigmatizing SA youngsters, the Army adopted the idea. You of course cannot confirm you baptism, as is what it means in the Lutheran church, but instead you, as a teenager, publicly confirm your Christian faith after 6 months of teaching.

When we returned home to Denmark Lukas decided he would like to be confirmed and since the autumn has participated in teaching on the Christian faith together with 4 other boys from SA in Copenhagen. Yesterday the confirmation was celebrated, first in the service and continued with a party with friends and family. Lukas himself had decided he would like John, one of our very best friends, to officiate the confirmation. John, or I think actually is was his wife Hanne, got the brilliant idea of using “You’ll never wlak alone” as the theme for the service – brilliant as Lukas is a passionate Liverpool supporter. He had chosen the text from Luke (it of course had to be from Luke, which in Danish is Lukas) telling about the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, you probably can see how that links with never walking alone.

Part of a confirmation service in The Salvation Army is a time, where the young person is asked questions about what he/she has learned through the time of teaching. Lukas was asked 5 questions, which he of course had been told before hand, but he had to prepare the answers himself. He had no problem in answering them, standing relaxed and cool, one hand in the pocket, all through the ceremony. The evening before we had dared him to reply to one of the questions: “I would like to call a friend” or “Could I ask the audience?”, but he decided to behave himself. I will later update this profile with a video of this part of the ceremony, if I can get it to work.

After the service we had invited friends and family to a party. We are fortunate that there is a community centre in the building where we live, so could use their facilities, as well as our rather large garden. The weather was nice, the food brilliant and we all had a really good time. Part of the Danish traditions for parties like this is that you write special songs for the person being celebrated. Lukas’ Uncle and Aunt brought one, and Friday night Lukas very kindly had left home for football, which gave the 4 remaining Andersens a chance to write a song too. We decided to mix Danish and English all through the song, so if you do not understand both languages, it makes no sense at all, but we thought it was quite good. At the end of the day, we were not just tired, exhausted comes closer. It was all worth it, we, and especially Lukas, had a great day as you hopefully can tell from the photos.