From Survival to Purpose

Josh Stephens: Oh, you're already grabbing a seat.
We're going to grab a seat.
Noel, if you'll come out here real quick,
he's going to join me.
Before we get started with a conversation,
a couple of things.
One, let's show some love for the Chaps and Lady Chaps
basketball team for greeting us today.
That was really nice of them.
And they also reminded us, and you heard Troy do that
a while ago, tonight they have a big game.
And so that place, the R.I.P. is different when you're there.
So please be at the R.I.P. 530 for Lady Chaps, 7:30 for the Chaps.
And it's fun to, like, Jesus is okay with us heckling inside the R.I.P., okay?
As long as we use words that build people up, accept their coach, then we're good, okay?
So please be there.
Now, I'm going to scoot forward a little bit.
Why don't you scoot forward?
If I can be honest and real.
I know right now some of you are about to like nerd out because it's your Clash of Clans time
or whatever. Oh, Clash Royale. My bad. There's counseling on the second floor of the sub,
by the way. I know those things are special, okay? But I really want to invite you to be present
right now because one thing we learned last semester is you like hearing student stories.
And we're in for a really, really good one today.
Some of you know this guy.
Most of you probably don't.
And so I'm really excited for you to hear his story, but also what God is doing in his life.
So if you can be where your feet are, if you can be present, close your phone, close your laptop, and listen.
Noel, I'm going to let you introduce yourself so that it provides some context.
And then there's just a couple of questions that I've got for you.
And then the floor will be yours.
So why don't you introduce yourself?
Noel Bondesson: Okay.
So for the people who don't know me, my name is Noel.
I'm from Sweden.
And I play golf here at the men's team.
No shade.
Okay.
Josh Stephens: But yeah.
So hold on real quick.
So how's the proper way for me, like a guy from West Texas,
do I say Noel?
Do I say Noel?
Do I say, hey, guy?
Well, what's the proper way to say it?
Noel Bondesson: Noel.
Josh Stephens: Yeah, Noel.
Noel.
Noel.
Shut up and listen.
Okay.
But way to give them love.
That was awesome.
And we're going to talk about that here in a minute because you have found community here.
And I think that's really, really special.
When you look out here, there's a lot of people here.
And everyone in here has a story.
Okay?
So do you.
And so I want you to share part of your story with this audience because I'm willing to bet most don't know this part of your journey.
Noel Bondesson: Yeah.
So most or some people in here know my story.
It's actually Miss Grace Hazel that committed me to make this story.
So when I was five, I got diagnosed with leukemia, which is blood cancer.
As you can see up on the board now, that's how most of my days looked when I was between
five and 12 years old.
I went through chemo, several, many, many various treatments to get rid of it.
And, yeah, it all started basically from my parents thinking I had an ear infection.
Took me into the hospital.
I didn't feel good.
And then they took me in and they took some samples and, like, oh, it's way worse than an ear infection.
It's leukemia.
And my parents was like, well, what does that mean?
And at that early age, so this must have been around '09, 2010, around there, the survival
rate for a kid who was five, six years old was about two out of 10, so about 20%.
Now it's much higher thanks to, well, we've learned about it.
Now it's up to about eight out of 10, so it's much higher.
But during this time, I have been experimented on with various types of treatments.
That's now the founding treatments for leukemia as kids.
Josh Stephens: And I appreciate your vulnerability and your willingness to share that.
It has to be daunting to be in Sweden when you hear 2 out of 10 kids survive this.
that's not the kind of percentage we want. We want what you talked about. We want higher numbers.
One of the things that I know when Dave and I visited with you and had that opportunity
that I found really encouraging is you talked about, like we said, everyone out here has a
story and those things impact us and we respond in different ways. Share with the audience kind
of how you've chosen to respond, given the diagnosis, given all the experiment, all the
Noel Bondesson: things that happened how do you choose to respond in that season so well when you're that young you
really don't think about it like you're mostly trying to live out your life try to have fun be
out play i couldn't do that so i realized at an early age that my childhood was not normal
but so when i grew up and i was about 10 11 years old i basically had to take a decision either to
let go and live the life of being at a hospital or possibly not even be standing here today
or decide, okay, I'm going to fight this through and I'm going to try to become a normal life,
which I did. And thankfully I'm here today. Not super healthy. There's of course consequences
from all of these treatments, like heart conditions, joint problems and all of that
Josh Stephens: with all the three treatments I got, but I decided to fight through it and here I am.
And you mentioned something that, like, sometimes during holiday breaks,
you would go do stuff at the hospital.
Why don't you share that, a little bit about that?
Noel Bondesson: Yeah, so I like to give back as much as I can.
It was about a year or two years ago I, like, took a decision,
okay, I'm actually going to start to share my story.
Because, I mean, it's not easy to share all this.
Like, I was closed to death so many times.
I've had multiple surgeries.
I cannot even count how many surgeries I've had.
But I want to give back as much as I can, meaning if they're taking samples and doing more stuff on me right now
because to see if the treatment works and what are the side effects and future causes that can happen,
for example, with the heart problems and all that, we know now, okay, it's a thing with the treatments I got,
but we didn't know that at the time.
But I do like to talk about my story, especially with children who got these things or has a hard time, not necessarily only with cancer or any sickness, but in general.
Because in the end, we all go through stuff.
It could be, like I did, trying to survive and not having a normal life or having a hard time studying for exam.
We all have hard times going through, but I think it's important not to give up and always try to fight it through and try to make the best out of every situation we've got.
Josh Stephens: And I love the fact that when you were talking with us, you talked about how you would go into the hospitals to be a source of encouragement.
And really, all of us are going through stuff, and sometimes we don't understand why we are in that valley.
But to be transparent and honest and recognize maybe I'm not the only one in this valley and to find community with other people, to walk with them, kind of like how Dave charged us on Monday to find people to lean into.
The Lord can use that to bless them.
Okay.
Because you mentioned it.
You still deal with some of the leftover stuff from that diagnosis.
And I love, like, as a person, to see the little picture of you in the hockey outfit, like that, maybe the stereotypical Swedish kid that's, you know, I imagine you drinking Swiss Miss hot chocolate and playing hockey and all that stuff.
But to see, like, how you've grown, how you've chosen to give back, knowing that there's people here who are hurting.
There's people here who, some, who have what you had, okay?
What's something hopeful you would give to your fellow students, a message, a hopeful message you would give to your fellow students to kind of encourage them maybe if they are going through a trial like that?
Noel Bondesson: Never give up.
It's never too late to do anything, even though it looks like, oh, it's over.
Various of trying to get a degree or anything.
There's always hope, and you can always try your hardest.
And if that's not what happens, that happens.
but always to try hard and never give up.
You will eventually succeed in something.
It might not be the thing you want to succeed in,
but eventually you're going to find something that you're going to succeed in and become good at
and just never to give up and just keep pushing through the hard times.
Josh Stephens: I appreciate that.
And as people of faith, we view those moments that, like, we're not going through those moments alone, okay?
But in our conversation, you know, come to find out you didn't necessarily grow up in a home of faith, okay?
And so you, you know, Jeff recruits you to come to LCU, and you come to Jesus School,
and now you've got to go to chapel, and you've got to do all these things.
It was encouraging hearing you talk about what that experience has been like with you,
talking about, and you can mention Chandler, you know,
you've got people out there who aren't just walking with you socially.
they're not just walking with you because you're a part of their team they're they're investing
in you in this journey of this being a safe place where it doesn't matter what you bring when you
come here this is a place where you're going to be seen and valued and and you mentioned
experiencing that and i hope you there's some of you and i know in here that maybe struggle with
that but we want you to know that you you are loved here and you are seen and you are valued
here. And so why don't you share a little bit of what this journey has been like coming to LCU
and especially the faith component kind of being introduced into your life.
Noel Bondesson: Yeah. So back home, as you said, faith, it's not that big and we have a different view of
everything than you guys do over here. First, honestly, when I first came here and just like,
oh, do we have to go to chapel and all that? It's like, why do we have to do that? And it
was a little weird to me. And it took a while to me to understand. And it was actually Chandler
who's sitting right there in the front who actually got me to understand, oh, there's more
to this than I've ever thought. And about mid way through last semester, he gave me my first Bible.
I started reading it and I started to realize more, oh, this is a different view of viewing
point of it than I've learned about back home in school and what we walked through and the
few times I actually went to church back home.
And for Chandler to share his story to me made me realize here's actually people here
that cares about me and I have the same with the men's team and the women's team in the
golf and the people in my class, my teachers.
I found kind of like a second home here a little bit.
Josh Stephens: Awesome.
Noel Bondesson: I have a lot of teachers who actually care about me and who want to help me with not necessarily school stuff, but everything that goes on.
Josh Stephens: That's great.
And I think what's powerful, as an outsider speaking into you, you do have your story.
And Chandler's story was able to impact that.
And then Chandler would tell you and will tell us someday his story was impacted by Jesus' story.
And that's what we get to do.
And I hope wherever you come to LCU from, from a faith standpoint, I hope when you look around, I hope you don't see people pointing fingers.
I hope you don't see judgment, okay?
I hope you see broken people.
I'm a broken man that needs Jesus.
And every person I see in here is a broken person that needs Jesus.
and Christ desperately wants relationship with us.
And so you found relationship in friends
and some of those friends are pointing you
to relationship with Jesus and I love that.
And it's not a race, okay?
It's not a sprint, it's a marathon
and it's learning and it's growing.
So I appreciate your vulnerability in sharing that
because I know there's people here
who feel the same way you do.
They come having thoughts about faith,
having sometimes preconceived notions
and faith isn't a positive thing.
Some people are in here with church hurt,
but this is a place where we can be broken people
and we can look to the one who can heal that brokenness,
and that's Jesus.
So I appreciate your vulnerability today.
Y'all, give it up for Noel.
I really want to encourage you to connect with him afterwards.
If you haven't met him, meet him.
He's awesome.
He kind of has a little accent, so that's kind of cool to hear too.
But we're going to dismiss in a different way, aren't we?
Okay.
So, Ben, can you turn on the house lights real quick?
So what we're going to do, since Noel is a student athlete, international student, he's a golfer,
Dr. David W. Fraze has so generously purchased five, like, foam golf balls.
And Noel, no pressure, is going to hit those golf balls.
And if you catch one of those golf balls, Dr. Fraze is going to get you something.
So you can either go see David or you can go see the...
Hold on, hold on.
I know.
Greedy people.
Okay.
But the giving doesn't just stop there.
Because one of you who catches that ball, if when you give Dr. Fraze that ball, if you see him today, he's had minor ear surgery.
And you can talk to him about why one side of his face may look a little stretched than the other.
That's not important.
But I do want you to do two things.
When you're talking to him, don't look at him in the eyes.
Just stare at the ear, okay?
And two, if you thump that ear, I will buy you coffee at Starbucks, okay?
It's only good for one person.
So first come, first serve.
Dave may be running away right now because he doesn't want that to happen.
But golf is a pressure sport.
So when he hits his first shot, if it's a good shot, we're going to give him the golf clap.
Okay?
Can you do that with me?
Golf clap?
Okay.
I see some of you participating.
I see some of you not.
And I see you.
Okay.
If he shanks the shot, let's let him feel it.
Okay?
Let's let him be like, oh, man, like, huh.
Coach Majeski might need to do some more tutoring or whatever.
Okay.
So the floor is yours, Noel.
If you chose to sit up front and he blades you in the face, that's on you because you chose to sit there.
Okay?
No pressure.
I like it.
Get in the hole.
Nice.
Can you get it further?
I'm nervous.
Nice.
I don't know where it went.
It went in there.
First to grab it from there.
Don't.
Oh, another one.
Well, that one went that way.
So there may only be three gifts.
Try not to hit it up in that, in the lights.
Let's go back left.
If you catch this with your mouth, you're weird.
Hey, let's let them hear it.
Oh, wow, wow.
Guys, we're grateful for you.
We're grateful for Noel.
And Noel, I'm going to let you close us out and dismiss us.
Noel Bondesson: Okay.
Thank you, everybody, for hearing my story.
I really appreciate everybody paying attention.
And I hope you all have a good rest of your week.
And you're dismissed.
Thank you.