ABC Student--Daniel Hitsman from Norway
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The current Ambassador Bible Center (ABC) class
has one young man from Oslo, Norway. Daniel
Benjamin Hitsman, 19 years old, has three
younger brothers, Isak (10), Emil (8) and Elias
(13).
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Daniel Hitsman |
Daniel moved around a lot white growing
up, and has lived in Trondheim, Fosen and Oppdal
with his mother and step-father. Daniel says:
"During this time I didn`t know that much about
the Church. The information I had was very
limited, but I still kept the laws about clean
and unclean meats while growing up. It was a
challenge keeping the holy days, and laws of
clean and unclean meats when you are young and
living in an environment that does not keep
them."
He moved to Oslo at age 15 to live with
his father. After living with his father and
talking with him regarding the world's holidays
versus God's Holy Days, Daniel stopped observing
the world's holidays. He was also realizing the
world, in general, is becoming more evil and
noticed this in particular with the development
of more violent video games, movies and song
lyrics. He thought that the music groups and
movies, who use lyrics, titles and band names
such as Black Sabbath and Iron
Maiden (medieval torture chamber), are a
clue that there is something to God and also the
devil, because if there is no God or a Devil,
why would it be this way? "The increasingly
popular horror movies such as the SAW series
made me sick. It shows how DE-sensitized the
world has become"
At age 18, Daniel moved to Stjørdal
on his own working at any job he was able to
find - he worked in a meat packing plant, as a
waiter for a restaurant, a parts washer in a
meat processing factory, and inspector and
packaging person in a plastic parts factory and
a stocker at a grocery store. At this time he
was not sure of what he wanted to do for the
next year, but was regularly keeping up with the
beyond today shows. Daniel watched the
Beyond Today program; at the beginning of
2010, Daniel was on the Beyond Today
website and linked to the United Church of God's
website. He saw the link for ABC and viewed
the tutorial video about the educational
experience. He knew God's way was the truth but
he was anxious to learn more and be able to
defend his faith. He did not have any schooling
planned for the next year so he decided if he
could make it to the United States, he would
like to attend ABC. Both his mother and father
supported his decision and helped him with the
finances to be able to attend. A couple months
before ABC started, Daniel moved back to Oslo
with his father and prepared to travel to
America.
He arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA ten
days before classes started and attended his
first church service that Sabbath. He also had
the opportunity to attend the Feast of
Tabernacles for the first time with some fellow
Ambassador Bible Center students attending in
Panama City Beach, Florida.
Daniel misses sidewalks and public
transportation. The United States has public
transportation, but it is not as prevalent as
Norway and Daniel has found that the United
States is more car-centered ... it requires a
car to go to many places. He is also amazed at
the difference in prices of items such as food
and fuel, with the USA being quite a bit less
expensive.
Daniel was active in the Scouts when he
was younger, and enjoyed the summer camps where
they built their own quarters from small timber
logs, the first few days of camp and then stayed
in them the rest of the time. "We build a
hammock tower, and slept there in our Hammocks
during the night at summer camp. I really
enjoyed the environment that we had in my Scout
group, and the lessons we learned. I can't wait
for next time!"
He plans to complete his third year (Vidregående)
in Allmenfag and then attend the police
academy. He is looking for God's direction in
his life and will decide exactly what to pursue
when he is done with the ABC program.
"I would advise anyone who has the
chance to attend the ABC program to do it!
Considering its cheap (heavily subsidized by the
church) and gives you much more important
information than any other school in the world
could possibly give you. It's an awesome
character building experience!"
- Connie Sipes
