Tomorrow will be the halfway point of our stay in Austria. Two weeks down, two weeks to go. It's going extremely fast! :S I don't know how I feel about that. On one hand, I'm glad that we are keeping busy and that time isn't dragging. On the other hand, two weeks left seems like such a short time! I think it will be hard, for me, anyway, to leave the Oasis and the team and everything else after such a seemingly short time. Guess we'll see.

To be honest, I'm having sort of a difficult time deciding what to blog about tonight. I don't want to bore you by saying that we had another haircut day (which we did). You've already read about haircut day. So bear with me. I'll just be writing what comes to my head.

One thing that I hear about a lot that just boggles my mind is the fact that it is so hard for refugees to get a doctor to look at them. I mean really, it makes me mad to hear about that. How can doctors just blatantly refuse to look at someone who needs their help? And for what reason, because they can't pay, because they're foreigners? Because they're "too busy"? Honestly, what good excuse can they give? I'm sure there are plenty of legalities and such that I'm not aware of, but still - it makes me angry. Austria does far more for refugees than Greece ever has, but I've still heard many parents say that doctors won't look at their sick children. Children, for heaven's sake..I just don't see the logic in this. How can one claim to cure sick people when they won't even look at a 3-year old Chechen girl with a bad fever and give some antibiotics? It makes me feel helpless, but what I feel is probably nothing to what these parents feel.

I don't doubt the power of prayer that I can offer, but I wish so badly I could be able to physically do something. I feel so limited right now. I want to be able to do more than give a sympathetic look and shoot up a prayer. I can't even tell them "I'm sorry, I wish I could do something" in their language. It's extremely frustrating.

Kendra

the blustery day

a blustery day it was indeed. even as i am writing this i can feel the building shake from the strength of the winds. kendra and i went to church and back and got soaked. CHILLY! we ran home from the train and could barely stay on our feet from the wind. we quickly came upstairs and changed into dry clothes. we were supposed to have gone to vienna with an iranian girl, nazanine, today, but she called us just after we had gotten home and suggested we go on a nicer day - we were definitely ok with that! so we had a nice time hanging out here at the guest house, eating some lunch and watching our new show (we stared "heroes"). it was relaxing, and best of all we stayed warm!!

we bundled up again in the evening to go to the iranian fellowship, where we were going to end up with nazanine anyway. but this way we got a ride into vienna from julie :) so we still got to see nazanine, and we joined a new fellowship for the evening! we were warmly welcomed by mary joy dosset, a lovely iranian woman (i know that doesn't sound like a persian name - she changed it after she became a christian). some of you in athens might remember her coming with mark dosset a few years ago. wonderful lady. she sends her love and prayers to all, especially the parents :) very nice night.
i have decided that when i get back to greece (and especially if it is for a good amount of time) i am going to start going to persian fellowship. i cannot give any real specific reason other than I JUST WANT TO! all of you in greece who are reading this, i expect you to hold me to that!

3 sermons today. my favorite passage preached on? matthew 8: the faith of the centurion. imagine having faith that amazed the Lord himself?

-becky

PS - thank you all for your faithful reading and commenting. it's encouraging to know our blog is read and enjoyed by so many :)

the baby bags

so today we met julie at the oasis to help organize this one closet that is absolutely FULL of baby clothes, baby bottles, baby blankets, baby diapers, baby everything. (susie, emma, you would die to have a room so full of baby things.) i'm guessing austrians are just really into donating. which is great! anyhow, one of julie's "things" is to make baby bags filled with all sorts of baby goodies to give away to expecting or new mothers. kendra and i met her there this morning to organize and take inventory of this closet. we also prepared a few baby bags ready to be given whenever the need arose. this took close to 2 hours, and once we were finished we prayed over the bags. now, i personally don't usually use terms like "prayer warrior" but if there ever was such a person, julie would be the poster woman. she really is quite a lady. we prayed over these bags, for the recipients of the bags, for the babies who would stay warm with what came in the bags, and we prayed that people in need would know to come find these bags.
well wouldn't you know it that as the three of us were sitting down to a nice bowl of soup and fresh bread that julie treated us to, the doorbell rings and in comes a young couple from chechnya with a 3 year old daughter and a 7 MONTH OLD BABY BOY.
coincidence? i think not.

-becky

ps - i've been told that my blogs are too long. is this better?

as kendra said, we did go to the pensions in altenmarkt again today. last week i was a bit overwhelmed as it was my first full day in austria and..i just felt awkward and tired and homesick. this week, i really enjoyed it. i think it is my second favorite thing to do in austria (besides wednesday night program, which in my last blog i said was my favorite oasis program). it's just fun to see the kids, and today i chose the craft to go with the john the baptist story - paper locust. and of course they ate the honey with the nuts, so they had a full experience john the baptist meal! the locust were actually a folded pattern of a praying mantis, to be honest, but the kids were none the wiser. even as i chose it i thought it was kind of a lame craft and i didn't think they'd like it, but THEY DID! they loved it. they all made one, while they watched the jesus film in chechen.

after the kids part of the day we went visiting. i went with miriam to the afghan family again. i am really going to be praying for this lovely family. she's only 23, hasn't seen her mom in 7 years, has two lovely daughters, and they just found out that their case was looked at and rejected. they are being sent back to greece, where they came through and had their fingerprints taken. they are not at all happy about this, which is understandable. apparently the 12 days she passed through there left a very bad impression on her. but i did tell her to find the arc if they do go back. hopefully they won't have to though. during this time i was also amazed by this woman's faith. i do not think she calls herself a christian, but she told miriam that she knows Jesus is more than the koran says he is. she says she believes he is sent by God, but not just as a prophet. she says she has been reading the children's bible that was given to the girls at a previous children's program and she wants to learn more about the stories she hears mentioned at the children's program. i was just so encouraged to see that God does not hide himself from those who are seeking him. please pray for nadera and her daughters magnus and zachia, not only for their legal situation, but also that God would reveal himself to her more and more.

so after the time with nadera and the girls, instead of going to the chechen house again with miriam david and kendra, i hung out with these two girls (my age) that i have (kinda) made friends with. i hadn't thought of it, but then they asked me to stay and so i did. it was really nice to hang out with more people my age. only one of them, ivana (yugoslavian), spoke english, but she translated for me and sophia (georgian). fun girls. no good stories to tell there. just a good time hanging out :)

i apologize for the lack of ministry related photos. i will start taking them, i just didn't want to at first because we stand out enough being the new young girls, never mind me having a giant camera around my neck. maybe next time!

ok, and finally before i end this blog i just have to brag about the pot of sauce i made today. yeah, that's right, i'm a cooker now! mom, wasn't quite as good as yours, but it still tasted like home!!

goodnight all

becky

Mein Gott ist so gross

No, my God is not gross, but that happens to mean "big" in German, so what could I do but sing along? Actually, I learned three new songs in German today: Dies ist der Tag ("This is the Day"), Mein Gott ist so gross (noo, not the coffee version daily sung at the ARC), and Vater Abraham. I won't insult your intelligence by translating that one. I certainly hope you don't need me to.

The reason I learned those songs is because today we headed out to Altenmarkt, as we do every Thursday, and I had to take Eileen's place today during music since she was sick and couldn't come with us. Thankfully, Miriam did it with me, so maybe the kids were none the wiser that I never took my eyes off the posterboard.

I find it so frustrating to not be able to speak to people. As I've mentioned before, after the children's program is when we split up into twos or threes and visit families staying in the Pension. I really enjoyed doing this last week, and I did again tonight, but at times it is extremely difficult to make conversation. If I were staying here for longer, say three months or so, I would absolutely insist on learning some basic German. As it is, I catch a few words here and there, and that makes me feel like I've accomplished something. Anyway, I'm getting a little off track. All that to say, I really like visiting in the Pensions (particularly the Chechen family I met last week), and I would so love to be able to communicate properly. Ah well, such are the ramblings of a short-termer.

I discovered today that if you mix hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts, and browned oats with honey, it makes a really good snack. So much of it went to children who didn't eat it - what a shame.

-Kendra

PS. I blurted out "Eimaste mazi" yesterday when I was ordering a pizza (referring to Becky and myself). Knew it wouldn't take too long for the Greek to start coming out!

one week completed

even though kendra has being doing a great job of it, i think it's my turn to take a turn at this blogging business.
so we have finished our first week. i don't know about all of you readers, but i am thoroughly impressed at how well we are doing with our blog. consistent, detailed, we put pictures... honestly it's just some good stuff. hope you're as impressed with it as i am.
haha, anyways..
today was just a really great day. my favorite day since coming, actually. i feel a bit wasted by the end of it, but let me tell you how it went before i fall asleep
it started out bright and early with a nice big breakfast (altho it wasn't AS early because we change our breakfast time to 8:30. so a little extra sleep is what gave this day it's happy start. kendra and i had planned for our only free morning this week we would take a hike to a castle in baden, so by 9:30 (maybe closer to 10...) we were on our way to baden. it took us a bit to find the castle, but we did after very little effort and we brought a little lunch with us that we picked up at a bakery. so after a very short steep hike up a hill, we arrived at the ruins of Raunstein castle. it was bitter cold as we were wandering through the castle and it even started to snow a little bit. unfortunately, my hands were too frozen to mess with camera and settings and such, so i didn't take as many pictures but here are a few.

(i will add these later)

it was such a gorgeous place. we were the only ones around and it was adventurous as well as relaxing to climb around up there. the view was lovely and we ate our lunch on top of the highest point of the tallest tower overlooking all of baden as well as the valley and mountains in the distance. just a really lovely time.

so that took up the first few ours of our day. we met julie in traiskirchen for a prayer walk. at that point i had just gotten to the oasis and thawed off my poor frozen feet and i really wasn't looking forward to going back into the cold, but it turned out to be another wonderful time. the prayer walk is something julie does fairly often, from what i gather, and it is when she walks around the laager which hosts up to 2000 refugees. the camp is protected by fences and video cameras all around it to keep anyone from getting in, and the stories julie was telling about the goings on in there broke my heart. girls getting taken advantage of, drug rings, and the like. it made me thing about how even if the government allowed people to go in there, i know my mom would never be ok with me going in there. and yet there's girls my age in there, and younger. some with their husbands dead or in prison and they are alone with their children. it also occurred to me that kendra and i come to austria and we are having a fabulous time, enjoying the beauty of the country, the culture of the city, the people we meet; these people come to austria and i'm sure their impressions are not nearly the same. such different circumstances.
so we took about an hour walking around the laager and praying for the people inside. and afterwards i had a really great talk with julie too. what a lady :)

we then started preparing for the wednesday night program, which is pretty much a wednesday night evangelistic-type program, but they refrain calling it that because to some refugees it has some negative connotations. there are some songs, a short speaker, tea and coffee and pastries. i don't know why, but it is my favorite program that the oasis puts on. i suppose because they're not really giving away anything, so it's not like people are rushing to get something, it's just people who want to come. maybe they wanted the coffee of the pastries, but they're still there and it's a more relaxed atmosphere (for me anyway). i really enjoyed last night because the only lady for azerbaijan was there last night with her two sons, so it was good to see her again, and while the program was going on in the main room, i got to go back and hang out with the kids! it was only the two of them and i don't speak any turkish or russian (the two languages that they speak) but the great thing about being with kids is that you don't have to speak the same language. so we made puzzles, we drew, the two of them were both really into the jesus film, which was playing in turkish, and they even made the connection that the coloring book that we were drawing in was telling the same story as the movie. the younger brother was the hyper one that wanted to run around and play with balloons (which we did) and the older one was much more serious and he wanted to watch the film and flip through national geographic magazines (which we did). anyways, i was in the back with them the whole time, and we had fun. i love hanging out with kids! so much better than trying to talk to grown ups (no offense, grown ups).
so i actually have a few pictures from tonights program

here's one of my two new friends and their mom


here's one of a few random guys from kosovo with david (australian teammate) that saw me with my camera and asked me to take their picture.


well, that was wednesday. i might have sounded a bit unenthusiastic about it, but that's only because i am so tired as i am writing it. sorry! it truly was a great day. hope tomorrow at the pensions will be just as well.

goodnight all!
becky

Clothing Room and Haircutting

Becky made a wonderful dinner of omelets and hash browns, so for the first time since we've been here, we had a nice homemade supper. I feel full and happy, and ready to tell you all about the past two days.

Yesterday was Monday, which at the Oasis means clothing giveaways. Yesterday in particular was children's clothing, and boy, was it a loooong day. The way they do things at the Oasis is they give each group who walks in a number, and then each group is taken into the clothing room individually and allowed to take four to five articles of clothing each. Well, around fifty groups showed up, so you can imagine how incredibly long it all took. Becky was in the clothing room all day, but I could only take it for one shift and then I had to get out of there :S I spent much of the time in the kitchen, washing cups and then filling them again with tea and coffee. Also spent a little time with the kids, building block towers and knocking them over.

Overall it was an extremely long day, and we were all exhausted and hungry by the end of it. Five of us (Eileen, Becky, me, Miriam, and Vera) all went to a restaurant called...oh, I can't remember the exact name. I'll probably mess it up, but I think it was called Schlapfelhof. It's known for their wines, and the owners make the wine from their own vineyards. Not being a connoisseur of great wines, I settled for a grape drink that was tasty. I also had grautstrudel, which is basically sauerkraut inside a pastry. Very good, and very satisfying after a long day.

So that was Monday. Tuesdays at the Oasis are haircutting days, and mostly men come to that. It was another long day, but the atmosphere was far more relaxed and quiet (aka - no children!!). Unfortunately, there being mostly men in the big room, Becky and I were more or less confined to kitchen duties for most of the day (which if you're at the ARC keeps you pretty busy, but haircutting days can be a bit slow).

(I just found out that Heath Ledger is dead and I'm totally shocked! :S)

One of the high points of the day was meeting a Somalian man who we found out was in Athens for two years, and only came from Greece four months ago. So he spoke fairly decent Greek, and we had a nice little conversation about his time in Greece. It was soo satisfying to finally be able to talk to someone - I'm tired of constantly wishing I spoke German or Russian! Anyway, this guy was friendly and nice to talk to - apparently he had very positive experiences with the Greeks (Greek people, that is, not the Greek government or civil servants). He had nothing but nice things to say about the culture, the food, and the people. I guess he obviously had to leave because the government wasn't doing anything for him. I was very excited by the whole encounter :D A little bit of home.

At one point during the day, David walked up to me and Becky and said: "If anyone asks, you are 16 year-old Serbian girls." Apparently, if they knew we were American "ladies" eligible for marriage, we'd be targets for marriage proposals, because marriage = a passport to America. So yes, we are Serbian. I'm not too impressed, David. If you could think of a more believable lie then I might be inclined to play along :)

I also "talked" with an Ukrainian woman who was there with her four-year old daughter (by this I mean a lot of sign language and guessing was involved). From what I could gather, she has been in Austria for one year with her three children, and fairly recently her husband was taken away by the police. Poor woman, she told me was going crazy :( Tonight was her first time at the Oasis, apparently her home is very far ("100 kilometers"). I would like to see her again. Pray for Irina and her husband and their three children when you think about it.

Well, this has taken me an extremely long time to write, so I think I will sign off and let you all read :) Guten nacht!

PS. "Mein namen ist Kendra". Figure it out!

comments, please

hey all
we changed the settings so now ALL of our lovely readers can be commenting on our blogs.
so come on readers, comment :)

becky

hello all
as kendra said we spend yesterday in baden with julie, who is such a sweet lady, and she showed us a few of the many beauties of austria. baden has an old-town, village-y sort of feel to it and from what we were told is a big touristy point, but you would never know it. they have still managed to keep the quaint feel and it's natural beauties. it is also a place where many older (and wealthier) austrians retire too, and it has natural hot water springs.
anyways, i'll just add a few pictures to give you a visual.

this is a view of baden from behind beethoven's temple (more of a pagoda).

this is another view of baden from the top of a hill we climbed (so pretty!)

one of the scenes painted on the ceiling of beethoven's temple.

kendra sitting on the balcony of beethoven's temple, looking out at baden

julie and i at an Ebuscho coffee shop (julie said to say that she's holding her favourite coffee)

my photography does not do the place justice, so you'll have to make it to austria to see for yourselves :)
i will add more sometime this week as we plan to go back to baden on wednesday morning (which i believe is our only free time this week) for a hike up to one of the nearby castles. i don't know any history of it, but it's over a thousand years old and it was in one of the turrets that kendra's dad proposed to kendra's mom some years ago, so it's got some history ;)

well, that's all i've got for now. kendra and i spent a lovely morning/afternoon wandering around vienna's numerous catherdrals, opera houses, and other gorgeous structures after church today. after living in athens for so many years, i had forgotten that a city could be so beautiful (and clean!). for random reasons i did not take too many photos, so i will save that for another day.

-becky

Saturday in Baden

Yesterday (Saturday) was our day off, so we walked around the town of Baden with Julie, one of the Oasis team members. Becky and I have been to Baden before - we spent a day there two years ago when we came to Austria with our moms, and we had fun memories of the town, so we were excited to go back. Julie was a great tour guide. She showed us her favourite coffee shop (Ebuscho, I think), walked us through some beautiful parks (the Rosarium and Couer Park, which I know I'm not spelling correctly). We had a delicious lunch of doner kebab and salad. Becky took the pictures, mostly. Yes, you read that right, we finally have pictures!! Apologies for not having any up sooner.

A few things I've noticed/learned about Austria:

1) The toilets tend to be separated from the showers - separated as in different rooms. I have no idea why, but I've seen it in practically every home we've been in.
2) Just like souvlaki is the cheap lunch in Greece, in Austria you can get either doner kebab or a slice of pizza. I don't know why those two particular foods, but wherever you get kebab, you can get pizza.
3) Everything closes EARLY here! By 5:00, just about everything is closed for the night. This makes grocery shopping a bit tricky, since we work in the day and usually aren't done until around 6:00. Still trying to figure out a schedule for that.
4) I miss my family and the Athens team :(

Enjoy the pictures! Becky will post them in a separate blog.

Early Morning Breakfasts

Waking up at eight o' clock every morning for breakfast is not the funnest thing in the world, but it does provide a good opportunity to discover wonderful things about each other.

I've discovered that when i am awake when i would rather be asleep, eating food that i'd rather not be eating, my sense of humour reaches a somewhat lower level of immaturity. I've also discovered that when Becky is awake and would rather be sleeping, eating food she'd rather not be eating, she has a tendency to laugh at just about everything i say.

The combination of the two brings about much merriment at the breakfast table.

-Kendra

the beginning

and here i am. i am at a bit of a loss because kendra wrote a really great account of our time up til now, so i'm trying to think of what to write. i'm really horrible at keeping up with these kinds of things, but i will try!
i guess i'll start with saying that this last goodbye at the airport was one of the hardest ever, and i've said my fair share of goodbyes. i knew i had so much to look forward to and i should be excited, but goodbyes are always hard for me. on the 2 hour flight from athens to vienna i watched "snoopy come home", on my ipod. for those of you who don't know, this is a peanuts movie when snoopy leaves charlie brown (of course to return by the end of the movie). there is a reason i'm mentioning this though. after snoopy had left charlie brown couldn't sleep and this little speech stuck out to me:
"why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together forever? someone would leave. someone always leaves. and then we'd have to say goodbye. i hate goodbyes.
you know what i need? i need more hellos."
sigh...charlie brown, you are a perfect pessimist; but you are so right.

anyhow, i'll move on from sad topics. i will try to fill in some of the things kendra has not written about. we arrived in vienna around 5:30 local time and were met by joann richards. tom and joann have lived and worked here for more than a decade and they had us for dinner, which was lovely. it would have been a very sad thing if we had just come straight to the guest house. but they gave us a nice welcome :)
our accommodations at the guest house are not what i would call 'homey', but it's not fair to compare to my own lovely home. it is nice tho. kendra and i share a room that is ironically decorated "greek style", with bright blue and white walls along with photos of scenes of greek islands and shells and pottery and such. how did they know...? anyhow we get a lovely breakfast at 8 in the morning, which will keep me in the habit of waking up at a reasonable time and of eating breakfast: win-win.

kendra already told you about the pension. it was a neat experience. while kendra was visiting the chechnian family with david, i was with eileen visiting the only afghan family in the whole pension. i think after spending time working at the arc i have a soft spot for afghans - i really like them! the two little girls are beautiful. anyways, i got the impression that the wife especially is just very lonely because she has NOBODY to talk to. she was so excited when miriam came and she said so, because she has not spoken to another woman in many weeks. before miriam came though, eileen and i spent the whole time wracking my brain for any farsi words we could possibly remember, but we weren't doing too well with communication. finally after a rough start i got out a pen and piece of paper and we communicated through drawings. it wasn't anything outstanding, but it worked. got through basics of family and such. like i said, it was a rough and awkward start, but by the end of it i really enjoyed the visit.
and today i met two girls from azerbaijan. the only reason i mention that is because not only were they very sweet, but i have never met anyone from azerbaijan before (in fact, i only just learned how to spell it). i love the name! again it was hard to communicate because of the language barrier (i speak NO turkish and NO russian), so you just smile a lot in the attempts to make chitchat. it can be fun :)

i am still rather new with austrian ref-min (refugee ministry), but i am finding it interesting to just observe the differences between ref-min in athens and here. it's very different! not just how things happen at the oasis (the ministry base here) and the arc (ministry base in athens), but also how the government deals with each. from what i've heard greece is just rather uncaring for them, while austria either gives them housing at a pension or even if they are not here legally still has a "camp" for them to stay at. i had always heard that refugees never really wanted to stay in greece, but now i'm seeing why. they are helped out much more in countries like austria, norway, sweden. they really get nothing from greece.
another thing that i am experiencing is being a part of a team not as a leaders' daughter or as one of the kids, but as any other intern that might come in, wholly unconnected as i am. i'm not saying that they are any less welcoming, it is just a different role. i'm not one of the kids that they knew since i was 10 anymore. haha

anyhow, i apologize at the lack of substance in this particular blog entry. i just read back and i'm noticing that i'm writing a whole lot without really saying much, if you know what i mean. well that's getting in the head of becky sirinides....HA! hopefully i will get better at this, but for now i say GOOD NIGHT

Our First Day in Austria

We still don’t have Internet access at the guest house, so at the moment I’m writing this on my laptop in hopes that I’ll be able to copy and/or paste it sometime later.

Our first day in Austria was a long but very good one. We headed over to the Oasis in the morning with Eileen, our fellow guest house resident, where we were shown around and got to work preparing crafts for the afternoon’s children’s program. At two ‘o’ clock, the five of us (Eileen, Becky, me, David, and Miriam) headed out.

The kids club is held every Thursday in the village of Altenmarkt, about half an hour away by car. It is held in a Pension, which is a large building with many one-room apartments that house refugees. Around twenty kids showed up, many of them from Chechnya, nearly all of them German speakers. For the first time in a long time, I was in an environment where I had no idea what was being said to me (I can just hear certain people in Athens saying: “Well, it’s about time you experienced what the rest of us go through!”). I don’t deny it was kind of frustrating. I did learn some new words though – a girl named Selena taught me the names of the colours. I’ll have to learn them all over again next week, I’m sure, but hey, it was conversation to some degree.

After kids club (which consisted of songs, a bible story, a craft, and a game of charades), our group split up and spent a couple hours visiting some families staying in the Pension. David (the Aussie on the team) and I went to visit with a Chechnyan family who’s been in Austria for two weeks. They spoke no German or English, and we didn’t speak any Russian, so conversation was quite limited until Miriam showed up and kept the talk flowing with the Russian she knows (thanks, Miriam!). They were a very sweet and hospitable family – Roufan and Indira have two children, a four-year old girl named Fazira and a two-year old boy named Bhela. Thank the Lord for little kids – they’re a great distraction when you find you don’t have a lot to add to the conversation ☺

Afterwards I spent a little time with Becky and Eileen and the Afghan woman they had been visiting. In this short period of time, I discovered that the only Farsi words I know (“tarosh” and “pakorn”, pencil sharpener and eraser, respectively) are apparently Iranian Farsi words, and not Afghan Farsi. Who knew? So my meager attempts at Farsi vocabulary sort of flew out the window. But it was quite nice to see an Afghan face – felt like Athens, in a way.

Another Chechnyan family was our last stop, at another Pension, where I consumed my fifth mug of tea of the day, and where we had a very tasty dinner prepared by Leila, our host. It’s very humbling that everybody we were with today was so eager to share with us what very little they have – surely it would be far better to save it for their families, or so we would think, anyway. They love having guests in the home, though – they never hesitated to offer us seconds (which we always refused – we were at three homes, after all!). I’m looking forward to seeing some of them next week, and meeting new families as well.

I’ve decided that I must learn another language at some point in my life. German or Farsi are at the top of the list, at the moment – maybe I’ll fit Chechnyan in at some point (or Russian would be better, actually).

Hoping this gets posted soon! It’s just after midnight now, so I’m gonna hit the hay. Guten nacht!

-Kendra


Edit: I am now able to post this from the guest house!

Last night we flew into Vienna at around 5:30 pm with no troubles at all - we made it safely and our luggage did too! I would have updated last night, but at the moment, we're having a little trouble with internet connection at the guest house. It's a little unclear if all we need is some passwords, or if the entire building is without it for now. Anyway, I'm on the computer at the Oasis at the moment. In about ten minutes we'll be heading out to Aldenmarkt, a village where we will hold a children's program - sort of a Sunday school, from what I gather. Becky and I spent the morning cutting out cardboard ears and horns for paper cows and donkeys :)

We've met most of the team already. Eileen is also staying at the guest house, so we met up this morning and showed us the whole spiel on trains and tickets and whatnot.

Sorry for the short post, but we are about to head out the door, so when I have more time I'll try and post some pictures!

Love you all!

-Kendra

Let the Countdown Begin - 10...

Okay, maybe countdowns are cheesy, but really now - 10 more days?? I haven't even started packing yet :S

So on Wednesday, January 16th, Becky and I will board a 4pm flight from Athens to Vienna, arriving a little after five in the afternoon. I'm glad it's close - don't want to be too exhausted our first day (though I'm guessing the emotional toll might wear me out anyway).

Obviously I'm excitedly anticipating finally leaving, after months and months of planning and choosing and whatnot. And to tell the truth, it will probably be easier to talk about this vision trip of ours once we've actually done it. Sure, right now we can name the places we'll be in and give a general idea of the kind of work we'll be doing, but we'll probably make much more interesting conversationalists once we've actually experienced it all :)

Then again -"easy" to sum up seven months of ministry and travel in one conversation? Silly me.

With the excitement also comes the sadness :( Not so much that I have to leave Greece - I'm ready to see other places and anxious to get down the basics of "living on my own". I just wish goodbyes didn't have to be a part of it. I'm going to miss a lot of people here. Seven months is a long time - I have to say, I'm glad we'll be starting work straight away in Austria. I'll need something to distract me so I don't become too homesick. I'll probably be an emotional wreck on the 16th, but I never expected anything less, so I'm preparing myself ;)

Some people have asked us what we're thinking about the whole Kenya situation and whether we still plan on going there in July. All we can say is we really don't know at this point. It's possible that the bad stuff may blow over by July, and then again, it's entirely possible it may not. They apparently have required that all Canadians leave the country - I haven't heard anything regarding Americans, but if it comes to that, we'll see where God leads. I'm not particularly worried about it at this point.

Happy New Year, every one. I hope you'll have a great one. We're just getting started :)

10 more days!!

- Kendra