Decision Making

Seth and I have never been very good at decision making, from what do you want to do with your life down to what do you want for dinner. We are indecisive to the core, which is something that God is continually growing and developing in us. However, I would be surprised if we ever got to the point where either of us said that we enjoy making decisions. These past few months and especially these past few weeks, we have really been focusing on making a decision: do we want to pursue coming back to Austria long term or not. This has not been an easy process as we weigh many pros and many cons. There have been a couple times for me that as I think about the cons so much, that I get down right homesick. If God does lead us to come back long term, I am sure that my desire to be with friends and family in the states and eat Chipotle will weigh on me now and again. However, in the past year and a half that we have been here, that hasn't happened very often. For the most part we have been excited about what we are doing here. The amazing thing is, as we have been working on making this decision while we have experienced some lows, we have also experience in these past few weeks, encouragement unlike we have seen since living here. We have received affirmation and encouragement from parents of youth, we have been invested in more by people in our church, we have been taught and coached more intently by our boss, and we have been pleaded by many youth to stay. In the past few months especially, I can see how much we have grown and gotten more comfortable in our job here. One thing is for sure, no matter what our decision is, God has used us here in Austria in ways we didn't even think were possible. I for one am excited to see how God will continue to guide us and how He will use us in the future.

There have been some exciting things going on in this past month, I will share with you a few of them. At the start of April we helped run the youth program at a conference in Croatia. It was a conference for a different missions organization that is all over Europe so English was the main language that was spoken. This was something that Seth and Dave spent a lot of time the previous couple of months preparing. It was new territory for Seth as he was making plans from scratch. He even gave two of the messages. In the past Seth has a little bit of experience speaking in public but really most of it was for support raising. So throughout the last few months our team leader, Dave, was coaching Seth. Looking over his notes before we left for Croatia I thought it all sounded very good but when I heard him speak at the conference I was blown away. I was challenged by his message, a couple of the kids shared that they enjoyed it and Dave was very excited to see him doing more in the future. I don't necessarily think that Seth will end up becoming a pastor and giving sermons each week but I do see this as a skill that God will continue to develop and will use to some extent in our future which is very exciting to me. We really enjoyed our time in Croatia although Naomi didn't very much which was hard on me at times but I was also able to be apart of some of the activities and was even able to meet one-on-one with one of the girls which was very good and I pray that God will continue to use me in her life in the future.

After the conference we were able to get together with some of our friends that we had met from our German class. They are refugees from Iran and attend the Catholic church semi-regularly. We have had multiple discussions, especially with the husband about God, he even attended our bible study for a while. We have had a lot of contact with their family as well since one of their boys comes to the Lighthouse for the tutoring program each day and will most likely come to English camp as well. This time when we were at their house they invited a few other people over as well and we got the chance to share about what we do and what we believe with the group. It was interesting because everything was being translated since not everyone could speak German or English but it was a really great opportunity. One of the women's family was baptized a few weeks ago through one of the non-Catholic churches here in town and she is now interested in sending her kids to the tutoring program at the Lighthouse as well as to English Camp so be praying that God will continue to be using our relationship with them!

Lastly this Easter Sunday I played the flute in the church for the first time. It was the first time I played for people since I was in High school and I enjoyed it a lot and am excited to doing it more often in the future :)

We appreciate all your prayers!

Alyssa