Adventures

These past couple of weeks have just flown by. It is officially spring here in Innsbruck, raining almost daily. It is crazy to see the mountains at this time of year. Everything is all green except there is still snow at the tops. Lilac bushes are in full bloom and they seem to be everywhere.

(The view once more from our living room window. It looks a lot different now than it did when we first came. I sure am going to miss this view when we move in a couple of months.)

About two weeks ago we were on the train headed to Speyer, Germany to meet our friend John Garske (from Seward, NE) who was there for a Christian conference. It was amazing to see how God worked so that we could attend the conference as well. We grew and were challenged those four days that we were there in Speyer. It was a beautiful little town, much more like Nebraska or Kansas than Innsbruck is. Monday morning we took the train with John back to Innsbruck (and started our 4^th German class the next day). He stayed with us until Friday morning when he flew home. We had a great time showing him the town that we live in as well as some of the ministries we are a part of. We also did a little traveling, to Switzerland, Lichtenstein, and Italy. By train these are two hours or less away so we took a couple of day trips. It was our first time traveling to all of these countries; they were beautiful and fun to visit. We were definitely encouraged having John with us for a week or so.

(This is in Switzerland and behind us is flags from 4 of the 5 countries we visited while John was here. Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Lichtenstein. If only they had Italy too!)

Friday morning John flew out early in the morning, we had German class all morning and then headed out for Seefeld, Austria with our team. (Luckily this was only a half hour away). We enjoyed spending the weekend there with Dave, Cathrin, and Carrie. We did many team building activities, had lots of meetings, and great food. We left there feeling encouraged and motivated. We came home and have had the privilege to spend time with Tara Sharp who is currently staying with us until tomorrow. It has been great to have her, getting to know her better as well as be encouraged by her (hopefully there has been some of that the other way as well). Tara was apart of our team for the last five years but now has a different position through Reachglobal where she is the head of the camp division. She is also from Nebraska and went to Timberlake for any of those of you that don’t know her.

It is nice to just relax for a few days but that won’t last for long because on Saturday we go to Pfiu (I don’t know if that is spelled right) but it is a Christian youth conference, I believe for all of Austria. Most of our youth is going. I am excited to see how God uses us while we are there for the few days.

Please be praying for us and that God will use us. That we will be intentional about sharing with others about God and what He is doing in our lives. Be praying that God gives us more opportunities as well. Thanks for all your prayers!

Praise God!

We have a very big praise! Apartments are generally pretty hard to come by here in Innsbruck but He has provided our next apartment! We signed the lease yesterday! We will be living in an apartment that friends of ours will be moving out of the same week that we need to be moving in. Praise God! We will be living in an apartment building that is owned by a man that goes to our church and it is filled with other believers. It will be a small one bedroom apartment but that is all we need. We will not have the amazing view that we have now but we will be right down the road from the famous old city and a little bit closer to the Lighthouse. We will be moving in at the end of July during the few days that we will be in Innsbruck that month due to English Camps. Our friends that live there in the apartment now actually are Americans and will be moving back to America at that point. They have decided to give most all of their furniture and possessions to us since they will not be taking them on the plane. This is such an amazing opportunity for us to save money and time from searching for furniture! It’s crazy that we can be here for 2 years and spend next to nothing on filling our apartment! Praise God!

Cultural differences

Since most everyone who reads this will be receiving an update by email in the next couple days, I wanted to share a little something different. Obviously we have moved to a very different culture than our own. It has been very interesting to see some differences, here are some little things, some are silly, that we have noticed.

- A lot of people here eat cough drops like they are candy. A lot of the time they will share with others, who also are not sick J As a kid I really liked the taste of our cough drops and I would enjoy it when I was sick because it was like I got candy, so I can kind of understand.

- It is common that for a married couple you have a queen size bed but then you have two twin size blankets…

- It is normal to have your toilet in a separate room from your shower or bath tub. That makes sense to me, very practical but the funny thing is they put the sink with the shower. So in an apartment like ours you use the bathroom and then walk to the other side of the apartment to wash your hands.

- Austria is very spiritually dark but they still have many catholic roots that come through. For example, all stores are closed on Sunday. Students get a week off school for Easter and then some adults do as well from work. School is also closed for Catholic holidays like Jesus’ ascension.

- Very few places have air conditioners which isn’t as big of an issue as it would be in Nebraska or Kansas sense it tends not to get as warm here. It is important to open your windows at night to cool your home down. The funny thing to me is that there are no screens for the windows…

- As a whole people here tend to be more health conscious with the foods that they eat. But majority of the bread available to buy is white. The rest is mostly Rye bread. Whole wheat bread has been very difficult to come by, in fact most of the time we make our own.

- If you are invited over to someone’s home for lunch at noon, you should expect to stay until about 3 so you can have coffee and dessert.

- We use peanut butter for a lot of things in the states but here it is not as easy to come by. They also don't put peanuts in food, instead they use hazelnuts. 

- I’m not exactly sure what it is with the washing machines, but their cycle lasts for about 2 hours…and it doesn’t seem to get your clothes very clean unless you put prewash liquid on every little spot. It is not common to own a dryer.

- I have yet to see flour (or much of anything) sold in a large quantity. In fact the biggest bag of flour probably only has 8 cups in it.

- In the states when you buy ground beef you buy based on the percent of meat to fat…however here you buy it based on the percent of beef to pork. The all beef is really expensive so normally some kind of mix is sold.

- When you are either coming or leaving, you should shake everyone’s hands, including the children. And then if you are good friends, you give hugs. (This isn’t for when you go to the grocery store, but at youth group, spending time with friends, or at the after school tutoring)

- I have yet to see a home that has carpet. Everything is wood floors, which is beautiful, and then depending on the family they have rugs in the rooms as well.

- High school students here are more like college students in the states. Their school schedule is based on what classes they want to take, most are finished with school around noon but then have one or two later days in the week. They are allowed to drink alcohol at the age of 16.

- In the majority of pastries there is apricot jam in the middle. 

- All of the high schools are different (they are specialty schools) but there are some that you can choose that are like an apprenticeship school. So from what I understand you have school half the time and then work half the time.

- Their stores for the most part are separate. You have grocery stores which will have a small selection of non-grocery items but not much. Then you have stores that carry your toiletry items, shampoo, lotion, vitamins, etc. Then you have your Apotheke which carries your medicines both over the counter and prescription.

- The government building here in Innsbruck is in the same building with a shopping mall. J

I thought you might enjoy reading some of the differences that we are noticing and experiencing on a small everyday scale. There are many more. 

Sportlich

This week has been a week full of sports! Thank you all for your prayers! God really has been providing in this area. When I was writing last week Seth was playing basketball for the first time since being here. He had invited some friends (including some from German class) and others joined. Seth was able to get some of their phone numbers, hoping to play with them again. There were two other times this week where he was able to go out and play basketball (as well as once for soccer and then today for Ultimate Frisbee). He contacted those he had played with before and some of them came J He also met many new people. Probably in this past week he has gotten about 8 phone numbers all from people that are interested in playing together again and has met many more. God has really been opening the doors. The most common question we get here is, why did you come? This gives us a great chance to share what God has called us to. Many of the people that Seth has met are immigrants from other countries and are all ages. Please continue to pray for these opportunities and the relationships that he has started to form will continue to build!

Thursday, the youth that Seth had met last week at youth group decided to come into town for soccer (He lives in a village outside of the city). He came in a little earlier and had dinner with us as well! It was great for us to get to know him a little bit better. Please be praying that this relationship grows more as well.

Friday night is the night every week that we hang out with the youth at the Lighthouse until very late. We always have some kind of food and drinks and with 15-30 kids that leaves a lot of dishes and messes to clean up. Normally the leaders clean up (while the kids are still there). However this week was exciting for me. I was going through collecting the dirty dishes to be washed when four of the youth girls came and asked if they could help…the whole process went a lot quicker. Even though this is small, it was very cool to see them step up and realize there was a need that they could help meet.

Today was a particularly exciting day for both Seth and I. We had recently been talking with some other American’s that we know here and we decided that we wanted to play Ultimate Frisbee but we weren’t sure if we could get enough people together. An e-mail was sent to almost every 20 something that goes to two of the Christian Churches in town. Some said they couldn’t make it but others said they would come and bring friends. We both invited others that we knew as well. The two youth girls that had gone to the t3 weekend in Linz with us came along! We had a lot of fun together and they even helped me work on my German (They are both amazing English speakers and were able to explain things very well). And then one guy that had played basketball with Seth came as well even though He had never played Frisbee before. Wir hatten viel Spaβ!

This week has been a lot of fun for us! God has been providing so many opportunities. Please be praying that more come our way and that God continues to use us!

First Austrian Race!

The last few days have been very full days. It is nice to relax and sit on my couch as I share with you all a little bit about it. Over this past week I have had a great opportunity to get to know a girl that is about my age. Her English is not very good so it has been a great time of learning for both me in German and her in English. We had a lot of fun together and then on Saturday we ran a 10k race along with a girl from the youth group. Both of them are not really runners but we all made it without even walking once. It was a great accomplishment. J This week we also joined the team that leads the high school youth group and Saturday was our introduction night. Most of the youth we knew already know from the different groups we are involved with. Seth did have a really good long talk with one of the youth boys that he met last night. We really enjoyed being there studying the bible alongside them (even if we didn’t always understand what was going on). After youth group there is about an hour hang out time, and it was great being able to build those relationships even more. We are very excited for how God will use us in this area. We pray that more one-on-one meetings and bible studies are yet to come.

(The race was sponsered by Tiroler Milch which is Milk so we got goodie bags with yogurt and fruit flavored milk as well as flowers! We were also sporting our shirts that translate to mean hope carrier a christian organization here was calling all believers here in Austria to come to the race and wear these shirts. Although we did not have all believers there we did have a crowd of about 40)

This month Seth’s focus will be changing more to sports ministry. We are not sure exactly what this will look like yet so please be praying about it this month. As I write he is playing basketball with a group of friends, praying that more guys will be there willing to join in the game as well. This is the first time that he has been able to play basketball while being here and we pray that he will get more opportunities for that as well as other sports. Currently he has been involved more with soccer which he plays about twice a week.

Thank you all for your love and prayers!

Oh and tomorrow is my (Alyssa) parents 35^th wedding anniversary, so if you know them make sure and tell them happy anniversary!

Like a snap of the finger

And like that our second German class is finished! I feel like I was just writting about the gathering at the end of the last class and now we have had another one. It is crazy how much we have learned in the past two months! Now we are able to communicate in a different language. We are far from perfect and still have four more classes to go but God has definitely been blessing us through the language learning process. On Monday we start our third class. We will go back to the teacher that we had for the first class and will continue to truck along in this processes. It is starting to seem realistic to think we will become fluent in German instead of just an impossible task set out before us. We thank you all for your prayers so far and ask that you continue to pray. Some of the people from our class are not continuing on to this next class so please pray that we can stay in contact with them as well as being able to reach out to those that are new in the class. We have been extremely blessed through the relationships we have made through German class and we pray that those will continue.

T3

Thank you to all who prayed for the retreat this last weekend! It was a great time for us to get to know some of our students better as well as other students and youth leaders from around Austria. We were in the town of Linz which is about 3 hours to the east of Innsbruck. We were in charge of most all of the meals which went very well apart from one minor rice incident but everyone ate the food none the less. The relationship aspect was by far our favorite part of the 4 days. There were many messages, and workshops given, all in German. At the beginning of our time we understood more but the longer we tried to focus and understand the harder it became. But God still provided and we were able to learn some things about knowing, living, and sharing (the theme). I was able to really connect with a couple of girls that were there so be praying for those relationships to grow.

We got back Saturday evening after having little sleep during the week and continued that pattern with going to a late baptism at the Catholic Church and then losing an hour of sleep for daylight savings. But overall it was well worth the sacrifice. Since then we have been able to connect again with the couple from our German class that got baptized please be praying for more opportunities and for that relationship to grow.

Easter Sunday was not anything like it has been in years past. We did not sing any of the traditional songs and understood little of the message. However we do not need to understand everything for God to use us. That morning the two Christian Churches that meet in the same building had a combined service so it was very exciting to see so many believers together here in Austria. While we were there talking with people after church, God provided opportunities for us. I was able to meet a girl about my age that wants to work more on her English and is interested in meeting on a regular basis. As we talked longer she showed interest in running in the race with me this weekend so now we are running together this week to prepare. It has been great getting to know her these past couple days. It has been a challenge though since her English is about as good as my German but all things are possible with God. Also on Sunday Seth had the opportunity to connect with a previous camper that was in his cabin when he was here in Austria four years ago. He does not live here in Innsbruck but was in town visiting his brother and we were able to spend the afternoon with him.

It is awesome to see as God uses us in the ways that we least expect. Be praying that we are continually being willing to follow God’s leading no matter how spontaneous it might be!