As we were singing a song in German I looked over the people gathered and was thanking and praising God for all he has done in the past 40 years.  You see everyone in attendance is a direct result of a small Bible study that was started by a Canadian couple.  This Bible study birthed a church and within 11 years four churches were started.  As of a study done in 1999 there were 4 generations of churches that started from this church!

It is neat to be a part of what God is doing here in Austria.  The church based training and the Bible school are heavily involved in training and equipping active workers in these churches and helping train many church leaders.

The moderator for the church service was an EVAK (The Bible School) student and another student is leading the city wide youth group (ages 15-25) highlighted what God is doing among the youth in Vienna.  Those who pray and give financially toward us and our ministry are also helping in tangible ways for us to be here right now doing the things we are doing.  Investing into the lives of these men and women who are actively serving Christ in their ministries and daily lives.

There are other churches in Vienna where God is also working but I am most familiar with these “Evangelical Free Churches” (no direct relation to the Evangelical Free Church of America).

Last week Kati had a week off of school and we took advantage of the time as a family.  We were able to enjoy some sights outside of Vienna which we hardly get time to do.  I think it is always good to continue to learn as much as we can about Austria in order to help us live and minister more effectively.

I have posted some random pictures of the kids and some cool places we visited.  One day we met up with some good friends, the Perrys, and Dawn made a comment that struck me.  She said something like, “Isn’t it amazing that this town and the buildings we see are older than the United States.”  It really puts things into perspective as to how long of a tradition people have been building upon.

One day we went to Enns, the oldest recognized city in Austria April 22nd 1212! I found the old part of the city rather facinating because in most towns we visit the center of town is a church and in this case it was not but the city tower.  There was a church on the other side of town but the main part seemed to be the tower and city hall.

Well we had a single lady and a young couple who have been accepted to the mission and we were thinking they all would come this year, 2010. 

Not only is it a waiting game but not everyone who starts the process actually arrives.

The single lady, Krishana, has been raising support for about three years.  She has applied for her visa two times and been declined and she flew over this January to start the process again.  We got word last week that she does have a place reserved and she just needs to hand in a few more documents.  What a long process she has  had with her visa.

Well after she applied for her visa this January she went back to the states to receive one last bit of training and then pack to come back to Austria.  It was exciting.  A little over a week into her training she went to the doctors to get something checked out.  The visit revealed that she had a tumor and needed to get it checked out more thoroughly. She decided to have the procedure done at home where her parents were, that was two weeks ago.

It turns out she has type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma called Follicular Lymphoma.  She is undergoing chemotherapy at the moment. 

I, and the whole team here in Austria, get her updates from her website and she is a writer and is journaling about her process. It remains to be seen how the treatment will go but the doctor is thinking that it might go into remission and even coming to Austria isn’t still out of the question.

All I know is this all happened so fast and Krishana is reacting with tremendious trust in God even when she doesn’t understand why.  If you think of it today, please pray for Krishana, that her treatment would work, the cancer would go quickly into remission and that her body will cope with the chemicals in as much of a positive way as possible.  And that she will be encouraged through this by her friends, family and her faith in God would be strengthened.

you can follow her story and progress at www.tandemliving.org

I didn’t know if  it was going to be a good time and worth the few days out of my schedule or not but I found it to be very good.  I was able to see and talk with others who are in the same position and dealing with similar issues.

We all had read Bill Hybels “Too Busy Not to Pray” before coming and after our worship times had a short discusson about our prayer lives.  It is nice to know that other leaders are also concerned about cultivating their spiritual lives.

We had all taken the Birkman assesment.  It is a helpful tool to understand each other and we will be using this instrument in our local teams as well.

The last focus of our time together was having our Annual Development Reviews and talking about the coming years strategic plan. 

I won’t bother you with any more details but wanted to let you in on something I am invovled in and is new.
 

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.

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.

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.

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.

I have been the project manager for this and have put many hours into this as we are seeking to have three programs accredited.

Christy says I need to tell what this all means in a way that people’s eyes don’t glaze over when I try to explain what this actually is.  Basically the accrediting association evaluates us to see if 1) we have clear goals and processes to achieve these goals and 2) if we are reaching these goals we have set.

In order to do this efficiently we have prepared about 300 pages of documentation on requested material and sent it to them last October and now three people are visiting for 2 1/2 days.  In these days they are here they basically do interviews with everyone that is involved in the Academy.  We have had meetings with faculty, office staff, the leadership team, board of trustees, church leaders in groups and then they have talked individually with some of us to see how things really work.

As I type the three that are visiting us are writing the report and will give us a presentation tomorrow morning at 10.  I haven’t done a big project like this in years and it reminds me of a big school project only this means much more!

Just in their questions I have already identified some areas that I think we need to improve and in others I feel we have done a really. Now I guess I need to wait and see what they say tomorrow.

Again for those readers who like the bottom line up front:  We applied for a “first time” visa this morning and as far as we can tell we most likely made it into four of the 60 open slots.

For those who want some more details continue to read.

My day, Eric, started at 4:45am.  The Visa office opens at 8 and we wanted to be there early because to make sure we were at the front of the line. 

The first thing I did was look out the window to see if there was a lot of snow on the road to see if getting downtown would be difficult.  I saw no snow and was relieved.  Then I quick checked the thermometer knowing that we had a little over 2 hours of waiting in line outside before the doors opened. It was -2 Celcius which is 28 Degrees Fahrenheit and knew it could be much worse.

We had some Austrian friends agree to watch the girls while we went to apply.  Fortunately, they are early risers and didn’t mind the early hours. We dropped off the girls and arrived in line around 5:55am.

When we got there there were about 10 others ahead of us in line.  One had spend the night, another arrived at 2am another at 4am!  Our stomachs tightened and our stress level rose when we saw others cutting in front and were informed by the person in front of us that some people were being represented by a lawyer and the the lawyers had multiple cases.  The cases could “cut in” to be by the lawyer.  We were wondering just how many people would be in front of us.  When 8 o’clock arrived and went in we were 19 in line and made us feel much better knowing that even if the 19 in front of us had families we would be within the 60 available spots for a private visa that we need.  We also knew that not everyone in line was applying for the same type of visa as we were.  

Once we waited about a half an hour our number was called. After explaining to them our situation, the visa official agreed it was easiest to start over from scratch and reapply for the correct visa status.  We had thought this would be the case and I had already prepared all of our documents with this in mind, so we turned them in and by 10:15 we were on our way. 

They said that since our visas are in process, we do not need to leave the country even though our visa expires tomorrow.  They provided us with a paper that says we are in process of obtaining our visa and we would only need to show this in case there is any question. We were so relived not having to think or plan a short trip out of the country this week.

We’ll just wait for a letter and we’ll see if we have to jump through more hoops for getting our visas again. We even had friendly visa officials, which is amazing since this is probably their craziest day of the year. One official I spoke with today says they will process about 1,000 applications today!

Okay probably more information that you had wanted but there it is. Thanks to those who have been praying for us.  We did get close enough to the front of the line that I think we don’t have to worry about not being in the running for the 60 open spaces. Please continue to pray they will process our applications quickly and that we will be granted our visas.