Wien, Österreich

This weekend, we went to Vienna, Austria. I'd say that the memory from this trip was learning about people. We went to Vienna with Bryan, a guy who was born in South Africa to British parents and grew up in Australia. We were hosted by Tony,born in Kenya to a Kenyan mother and an Austrian father. His wife is Jane, a woman who is half Jewish and half Russian who grew up in Moldova. Ken and I can't even claim another state to our blood!!! We were both born in Indiana to Indiana parents. This adventure has really opened my eyes to how little international experience Americans have.

A few months ago, I was worried that I was only making English and a few German friends. My only real Hamburg friends have come through our English-speaking church. However, now, in my Bible studies, there are 4 Germans, one Canadian, one Australian, one Honduran who has lived in Germany for the last 7 years, a Cuban, a Croatian, and a gal from Switzerland. And a few Americans.

So, about the trip. We got there Friday night and Jane had prepared dinner for us. Their hospitality was well above and beyond. Saturday morning, Bryan made us all omelets for breakfast and then we headed out for a walking tour of Vienna. The city has beautiful buildings (Ken will post pictures in the next few days.) which are all relatively close to one another. We had dinner in an Austrian beer garden. The food was really tasty there, but not as good as the Viennese apple strudel. I got a recipe, in German, of course. I'm hoping to perfect it by the time I get home.

After dinner, we went by the Rathaus and saw the "Life Ball", a big AIDS charity event in front of the Vienna Rathaus. Sharon Stone was one of the headliners. It turns out there were 40,000 person attending. There was a fenced in for the red carpet and VIPs. Many of the people were bunch of cross-dressing partiers.

Outside were thousands of people watching the show. It was SO sad. I had the same feeling there that I had in Amsterdam. Sex is so outward and blatant here in Europe. Sure Pendleton Pike and Coliseum have their girlie bars, but there are no windows and you don't usually see people going in and out. Yes, there are cross-dressers, but in Indianapolis they stay inside and do not have parties in front of the City-County Building. Growing up in Europe, you become immune and desensitized to that. It made me truly appreciate growing up in the Midwest.

Sunday we went to Jane and Tony's church. It was a bi-lingual service in both German and English. I really needed a praise and worship service after the sorrow of what we saw the previous night. After that, we went on a 3.5 hour boat tour on the Danube. It was really long and the first half wasn't very exciting. Yet, after all the walking we did the previous day, it was nice to sit.

After the boat ride, we went to Schloss (Castle) Schönbrunn. It was phenomenal.

View from the Castle overlooking the gardens and the Gloriette.

This is us up at the Gloriette.

On Monday, we went back to a few of the buildings we'd walked by on Saturday. We got to see the catacombs at the Stephansdom. No pictures there, but the piles of bones and pots filled with the intestines of royalty were rather ominous.

Kristy

Jesus House- 2 weeks late!

Better late than never, I suppose. Two weeks ago, I volunteered three out of the five days of Jesus House. Jesus House is a youth event that is held every three years and Hamburg successfully won the bid to host it this year.

The lady in charge of the event came to IBC's Young Adults Group one night beforehand to share about the volunteer opportunities and what God had done already. I knew that it was something that I wanted to get involved with when I heard the story of how they got the location. They wanted a place that was distinctly Hamburg. The first place they thought of was the Fischauktionshalle. Every Sunday starting at 3 AM there is a fish market and party down at the docks. This market is a Hamburg landmark. The hall has bands and food service. However, when they went to see how much it cost, they found that it cost way over budget. Headquarters told the local organizing team to find another location. They started praying for a new location. They didn't find anything that fit their budget or their dream. On a whim, they went back to the hall. Since they first went, they hall had gotten a new manager. He was a Christian. He ended up pulling some strings and giving them the hall for 1/2 the original price. Go God!

God answered prayers to get me there as well. No one from our church was doing catering. I put my name in and started getting all of these e-mails in German. Each had 3-10 attachments. It would take hours to use the 500 word a shot translating software to translate it all. Once I translated it, I realized that I had to go to a series of meetings and get food handling certified by attending a doctor's training course- all in German. I nearly backed out. I finally prayed, "Lord, if you want me to do this, you're going to have to provide me with people who can translate for me." He was faithful to me as well. He first provided Leonie and Heidi to help me through the meetings and then Brianna (cutting fruit above with me) and Sally (and a slew of others) during the actual volunteer days. The doctor even spoke English so he could give me the food handling training in English.

While I volunteered, I was on the fruit plate team every day. We would slice fruit for the band and the AV folks who rehearsed and prepared all afternoon long. At 5, we would serve dinner to all of the volunteers. You can see our "kitchen" on the left. I served meat, arranged meat trays, sliced veggies, and did trash duty.

So what happened? Hundreds of youth came for music and speakers. Many lives were changed. There was a volunteer dinner afterwards, and here is a translation of what was said. A guy in our church e-mailed this report out. "Dear all! As promised here is some further information regarding Jesus House: A couple of us Young Adults attended the celebration service on Sunday. The testimonies were a blessing. In total, over 150 people committed their lives to Christ (excluding recommitments!) and over 400 counselling sessions were reported! But apart from these quantitative results, 43+ participating churches have worked together in unity, and so it would seem that God also planned Jesus House 2007 to establish a broad foundation of believers for His continued work in Hamburg. He did great miracles during Jesus House, bringing many people even from the streets to the cross and providing for the many practical needs of the event, and we may be encouraged that this is only the beginning... "

Our catering leader Jörg said, "The youth are the carrier of the revival in Germany." Re-reading that quote, I think of the question that Patrick asked Ken and me yesterday. He asked if Germany was really as spiritually dead as is assumed in the US. My answer to him was that I thought it would be a lot worse. From my perspective, it is probably in the same place that the US is though I have no statistics. God is moving in many places here. It is exciting to see.

Test

The exam went really well. I finished the grammar in 25 minutes while we had 60 to do it in. I had a little difficulty with the reading comprehension section because many of the words were unfamiliar, but think that I guessed well. Everything was multiple choice or T/F except for the 100-word letter. Missy will be happy to know that she was the recipient of my letter.

I've been studying like crazy for this. Now that I know how easy it was, I wish I would've gotten more sleep the past two nights instead of studying. I had trouble getting to sleep after studying last night (go figure!). I had dreams of adjectives and adverbs. Ken told me that I was sleep-talking in German. All he made out was, "Ich bin". You know you are learning the language when you start sleep-talking it. I've now spoken three languages in my sleep. In Mexico, Emily caught me speaking Spanish in my sleep.

Studying

Sorry it has been so long since I've written something on here. We've settled into a routine and routine isn't very exciting. I helped out with Jesus House two weeks ago and haven't posted that. I'll get something up in the next few days about that.

My main task right now is studying for my Friday A1 German exam. A1 is the first level of study out of 6 that my school offers. To go to the next level, you must pass the exam. This is a good thing. There are 7 of us in the class and maybe 2 are struggling. I can see them getting pretty far behind if they do not grasp the basic concepts. For you that know German, this exam will cover present and past perfect conjugation; akkusative, genative, and dative objects, articles and possesive and personal pronouns; prepositions; comparative and superlative adjectives; and modal verbs. The exam will be 4 hours and will include grammar, reading comprehension, listening, dictation, and writing a letter. I haven't taken a 4 hour exam since probably my SATs. I didn't even have that long of exams in college. I've been studying like mad. We had a study group this afternoon. It wasn't very helpful to me. I probably could have done more on my own. Oh, well, it was good group bonding and helped some people (I hope!)


L->R Estelle from France, Carlos from Spain, Keisuke (sp?) from Japan, Wanvisa from Thailand, and Asuza from Japan