Praying on campus

Went to the University in Graz today to pray. Happily had one student join me and we spent about 40 minutes walking the campus and praying for God to move in the lives of students. One thing I saw a lot of was advertising. Everyone seems to think reaching this group with their message is important. When I got home I looked up the firm that runs all the advertising in the University buildings and the cafeterias around the Universities. Their website had some great facts about the 4 million times someone would look at your add each month if you advertised in their 820 locations. That's a lot of views. Then I looked at the list of their customers for references. Let's just say I couldn't find a company I hadn't heard of and couldn't think of a large company that was missing. If you want to impact a generation reaching the students on your university is certainly important. Even the wording of the website made me feel evangelistic. "Reach the decission makers of this generation!" Sounds like marching orders for those of us following Christ. I am so happy we have a much more important and far more compelling message than all the others. I imagined signs labelled "hope, life and peace available here", "Love, acceptance and compassion, Free for the asking". Let's just say I walked home energized to get the message out.

One Week to Christmas, here's an early present

So, Christmas only comes once a year, as the father on "The Christmas Story" proclaims when defending the purchase of the Christmas tree. I'm pretty sure a blog was not meant to come just as infrequently, but here is a new post as an early Christmas present. We have been incredibly busy over the past 6 months, thus the lack of posts. We have seen incredible things happening in our lives and the lives of students around us as we returned to Austria. It is hard to believe we have already been here almost 6 months. I am amazed at how fast things have gone by. We just had our last student group meeting of the year last week. I pulled every chair in the house out and we were just barely found a seat for everyone. When we start up again in January we will be looking for some new seating possibilities. We have a great group of students from around the globe. At last week's meeting we had students from 10 nations represented, makes for some challenges but a ton of fun. We are looking back so thankful for all God has done in getting us to Austria, finding an apartment, helping us to raise an awesome little boy, ministry to students, a wonderful church where we feel at home, and so many great friends and family who support and connect with us so that it doesn't always feel that far from the US. There is snow on the roof outside, I have to finish shopping for Christmas presents for Michelle and this has already been a bit long, but just wanted to keep you updated about life here in Austria.

Leaving tomorrow

So Sorry if you have been reading this blog looking for a complete history of our ministry efforts. Hopefully, you also receive our newsletter and see our updates on Facebook. We are leaving June 29 for Austria. So excited to see how God has provided just at the right time, so that we can be a part of all God is doing in Austria. Can't wait to see what God has in store for us next.

June 3 update

What an exciting and busy time. We are just days away from returning to Austria. We had an incredible time of refreshing and encouragement this last week and now we are trying to enjoy the heat with a 9 month old addicted to baths.
We are looking to leave on June 22nd, so lots of stuff to finalize. We are working to wrap up stuff in the US, (do you have any idea how much stuff you have to do to leave the US for 4 years?), making plans to get together with family and friends and triple checking all that we need to send and take to Austria. We still need to finish raising our budget ($120 short) and get all the reports and finances sent to AGWM. Like I said, busy.

2 More Days

We are just two days away from our itineration deadline and excited to see all the miracles that God is doing in our lives as people tell us how they want to partner with us. We still need around $2000 in monthly commitments to meet our pledge budget, but believing God for great results.
If you want to be a part there is a link to online commitments on the right.