Day at the Kids Museum
One of the many neat things about living in Vienna is all the museums it has. Even cooler is that starting this year kids get to go free to a few of the more well known museums.
Last Saturday we decided to take advantage of this cool deal and go to the Zoom kids museum. We signed up to learn about everything that flys. To our great surprise kids and adults were free. We enjoyed our time.
The displays were really well done and everything was kid friendly. There were coustumes to try on not just the ones in the picture album but costumes to do with airplanes, pilots uniforms, air controllers (the guys who direct the airplane once on the ground), etc…
There was a flight simulator, a paper airplane section where we could make different paper airplanes and see how far they could go, a hot air balloon, a place to draw/trace different insects or flying machines and many more cool things to see, touch and try.
We all agreed it was a fun time. Kati’s favorite (and mine) was the paper airplanes.
By the way, please keep the information about our family being “Super” just between us. If our identities got out our lives would never be the same.
Sitcom or Reality
Last Friday I felt like we were part of prime time sitcom. So many things happened it was almost too funny to be true.
For starters early in the morning Elena woke up crying for no apparent reason and had to be held a bit before she went back to sleep (Being a deep sleeper Christy told me this in the morning).
We woke up to a house that didn’t have heat. Our boiler stopped working in the night which was why Elena cried she was too cold.
We called the maintenance man and he told us the water pressure was o and we needed to just fill it, well since we grew up in America and haven’t been exposed to their type of boilers we didn’t know how to do this and their is no instruction booklet to be found so he said he would stop by before noon.
I, Eric, had planned to get rid of our old refrigerator which decided to stop keeping things cool about 3 months after we lugged it up three flights of stair. My long-time friend came over to take it to the recycling depot.
Not 20 minuets after my return from the recycling depot I was in the living room getting ready to do some office work when I heard Christy calling from the kitchen, “Eric” “Eric” “ERIC”.
I walked to the kitchen and Christy looked at me with wide eyes and pointed to our kitchen wall cabinets and said, “it’s moving toward me”. And sure enough it was. Thursday night Christy said she noticed a few pieces of small plaster and dust falling when she was using the kitchen machine. But today she saw the whole cabinet lurch toward her.
I got on the counter to and to my horror saw that the anchors which held the (two) bolts for each cabinet were almost completely out of the wall. We quickly took all our dishes, glasses and mugs out and went to work taking the cabinets completely down.
Fortunately, all that was needed was to put larger anchors and larger screws in the same position as the old ones. Now they are back up and actually look good. We realize that they were never really in even when we moved in!
Oh, yeah and Kati was really sick too, did I mention that. Christy just got back taking her to the doctor and found out that she has a really bad case of bronchiticus.
Now that I type it all out it doesn’t seem that crazy but on Friday it felt like one thing after the other was happening to us.
Oh yeah the maintenance man did come, a little after noon oh about 4 ish if I remember correctly. I am sure glad I didn’t try to find a place to fill it with water because he hooked up a hose from our bathroom and filled the water directly to one of our heaters (not through the boiler). We have heat now and Elena is sleeping comfortably.
Just thought I’d share a slice of our life with you today.
Church Building Offically Open
Yesterday, our church had it’s official opening Sunday. Here are a few pictures of it.
We are excited to see how this new location and venue for ministry will open possibilities for ministry to those outside the church.
This building is not a church building per se. It is a multifunctional building that has a kindergarten under its roof and an open hall for meetings, concerts, dinners etc.. One could liken it to a community center that is privately owned.
Last Friday night the owner, a believer, had an open house for the neighbors and businesses in the area to show what they can provide in services.
There has been an Advent concert already in this building and this summer there are plans to have an English outreach there. We are excited about possibilities that are opening up with this. I ask that you keep us in your prayers that the people of the church would also develop a vision for reaching out as the leadership envisions.
Pre-accreditation visit here and gone
Last week was pretty busy with all the meetings we had with the Pre-accreditation team. They worked all Tuesday afternoon and late into the evening amongst themselves going over what they had read about our academy and the different interviews they conducted in the day and a half they were here. On Wednesday morning they presented their findings to the leadership team before they flew back to their homes and ministries.
I am really pleased with their evaluation as I think they were able to really able to understand what we have accomplished in the last five years as well as understand our ministry context.
Here is the bottom line as I see it. We have to have a few students to complete our whole program even before they think about granting accreditation so we are looking at maybe two more years (this fall we should have our first graduate). In the mean time we can work on the areas that they recommend to get up to standard and I think we would be granted accreditation to at least two of the three programs rather quickly upon their next visit.
One strong recommendation they gave was to concentrate on the program that is on the level of a BTh. Right now we have a one year certificate and a two year program that is on the level of an MTh. All of the core teachers we have are pursuing their doctorate in their fields. The EEAA stipulates that the teachers have to already obtain their degrees to be considered in compliance.
Here is the breakdown of their review of our school.
14 areas with 90 sub-points
- 48 sub-points are in full compliance
- 19 sub-points are in partial compliance
- 16 sub-points that work needed
- 5 sub-points that much work needed (all having to do with graduated students and alumni which we don’t have any yet not)
- 2 N/A
My work in this was affirmed in the report as well. It is encouraging to know that my contributions are recognized in their report they said that the “Management and organization of daily operations are in very capable hands (Michaela K., Werner W., Eric McCauley).”
I find it exciting to be on the cutting edge of training Austrians for ministry and leadership positions in churches. Thanks to all who have been praying for this and continue to pray that we in leadership would know how to best teach, train and mentor those who want to serve our Lord in ministry.
