Summer Time and Friends

We have now been back in Austria for two months. During this time we have gotten settled into our apartment, decided on a local church to attend, settled into the ministries at the Oasis, been able to meet some wonderful and amazing short term individuals and teams, and even had three visitors from home! The last couple weeks have been a whirlwind.

The Oasis team welcomed back a team from the Priory Street Baptist Church, near Bath, England, that has been coming at least once a year for the last six or seven years. They were so much fun to get to know and such a blessing to the whole team. It was also wonderful to actually meet some of the people who had emailed us personally ahead of time. Joan, who had been to the Oasis twice previously and led the group this summer, had actually found our website while we were still in the US doing support raising. She had sent us an email in January before we even arrived in Austria to let us know that even though we didn’t know her yet, she had been praying for us! When we received her email it had been almost overwhelming to realize that a complete stranger and her church half the world away were praying for us. Our God is so BIG! We are blessed to now have a personal connection to this church who has kept us and the Oasis team in their prayers.

Also, in the past two weeks, we welcomed three of our friends into our home. We had Elizabeth Peuchen (see her previous blog entry on July 18), from our church in Salina, Kansas come and spend a week with us. She was a great help and fit right in at the Oasis. Everyone on the team was amazed that a 16 year old was so mature and such a hard worker! While Elizabeth was here, we also had Dan’s friend from college, Lisa McCullah, stop by for a couple days. She had been in Turkey and Kosovo before her stop in Austria. The four of us got to spend a day sightseeing in Vienna which was a lot of fun! Our final guest was Regan’s friend from high school and college, Amy Polhemus. She was on her way to Kenya where she will be teaching for a year. The weather was unseasonably cold and rainy while Amy was here which was a bummer, but by the end of the week in warmed up in time for Amy to be able to see Vienna and Baden (the town we live in). It was a great and busy two weeks!

So far our adjustment to life in Austria has been very smooth and the summer has been wonderful. We are enjoying learning things like the word for baking soda in German, or that if you want cilantro for homemade salsa you have to buy it on Mondays. I won’t say there aren’t things that we miss from home like family, friends, In ‘N’Out Burger (for Regan) and Runza (for Dan), but all in all we feel incredibly blessed to be here. Thank you for our continued prayers as we minister to and build relationships with the refugees that are coming to the Oasis. We are daily learning, growning and being challenged as we share the Gospel with these people. God is doing amazing things in the hearts of Muslims around the world and it is awesome to see some of it first hand.