Austria

This past Wednesday, I returned from one of the most blessed and beautiful journeys I've ever been to. 

I first travelled to Germany to be with my family again for a few days. Then I took a whole day train ride to the south of Austria, a region called Carinthia, situated in the eastern Alps. This area is characterised by alpine lakes and mountains, as well as medieval buildings. Already the train ride was stunning to me, as I had never been to this particular area in Austria. 

My first destination was the TGM Institute, a self-supporting school which also runs a small lifestyle center. Young people are trained there in medical missionary work and agriculture, and anyone can come to attend the lifestyle sessions they offer. The place is beautifully situated, with mountain ranges round about and a small lake right by. I especially enjoyed my early morning walks, when I could not only hear the lovely birds singing, but also frogs croaking and deer grazing. 

The second European Agriculture Conference was held there. This is a lay movement within my church, and it's all about encouraging people to get into agriculture as a part of true education. And there are so many spiritual lessons we can learn from the garden. Actually, the spiritual aspects of the programme where the elements that spoke to me most. I especially found the speaker family from Sweden a great blessing. The Karlssons run an apple orchard there, and it was intriguing to learn about their experiences. Furthermore, Simon Karlsson is a physical therapist, and he gave an excellent lecture on good posture. Having been trained as an exercise physiologist, I came to realise again how important this issue is, and how desperately I need to implement in my daily life what I know about good posture.

After the Conference, some participants from the area around Vienna gave me a ride, as I was going to visit the capital for a couple days. This turned out a special experience to me, because I have gained new friends now. One couple actually offered me to stay at their place in the middle of Vienna - close by the hotel were I had originally booked a room. So I was still able to cancel that room and enjoyed their hospitality! 

The ride on the night train from Vienna to Brussels was quite an experience. I would have never thought that they would do border controls in Bavaria, but they actually did! When I suddenly heard them loudly knocking at our compartment, I thought I was in the wrong movie! So they asked me for my passport and whether I was traveling alone. After my response (in perfect German of course), they obviously realised that I was not an illegal immigrant, and so they didn't insist to see my papers anymore :-). 

All in all, it was one of the most beautiful trips I have ever made - and I'm actually planning to do the same again at the end of the year. I think winter in Austria must also be very nice!

At the conference, Simon Karlsson gave a talk about the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:3 23). One aspect that stood out to me was his interpretation of the seed that fell in stony places, and how we can apply this to our spiritual life. I really liked how he brought this home:

• They do not believe he will give them power to overcome their sins
• Many claim to serve God, but have no experimental knowledge of him
• They do not crucify self
• They do not give up their particular sins
• Love must be the principle of action
• We do not belong to Christ unless we are His wholly

"The effort to serve both self and Christ makes one a stony-ground hearer, he will not endure when the test comes upon him."

And finally this sobering statement from Ellen G. White:

”The “time of trouble, such as never was,” is soon to open upon us; and we shall need an experience which we do not now possess and which many are too indolent to obtain. It is often the case that trouble is greater in anticipation than in reality; but this is not true of the crisis before us. The most vivid presentation cannot reach the magnitude of the ordeal. In that time of trial, every soul must stand for himself before God.“ (The Great Controversy, p. 622.4)

In fact, I can't say that I'm afraid of the things that are ahead of us. Of course this statement makes you think somehow, but we do not know exactly what is ahead of us after all. Back in 1989, when I had my leg surgery, an osteotomy, I had no clue that the pain would be so excruciating when I would wake up. Nevertheless, I made it through, and I'm so thankful now that I did the surgery. And the same way we will be thankful when we enter the Gates of Heaven, the Golden City, the New Jerusalem one day. And we will all say it was worth it to go through all this trouble! Oh LORD, please come and take us home soon!

Aren't these mountains beautiful?

We all received seeds for microgreens

Beautiful flowers on campus

Early morning walk

The Karlsson family singing

At the highway direction Vienna

In the city park in Vienna

Handwash station in a pharmacy

They have such funny signs in this country

Public "showers", i. e. nebulizers

A Memorable Day

So our adventure last weekend turned out a great blessing! There were many people gathering at the "Bois de la Cambre", one of the most popular parks in Brussels, where the demonstration started. We had some very good conversations with the participants, and many took our literature. The police was present, but didn't have to intervene. They only didn't allow them to access the European Institutions after the crowd had marched down there. So the police systematically blocked all the entryways. However, there was no violence emerging. 

We were very thankful for the outcome. Please pray with us that this event will bear fruit for eternity!

The gathering in the park

Police checking the scene

Participants talking with police officers

Offering Literature

People were interested

March to the EU Institutions

Police blocking

Ramblings and Prayer Request

I usually only blog to report about some special event that has happened in my life. However, this blog will be different. If you are not so interested in my everyday life, you may skip the next two paragraphs. But please make sure you read the last one. Thank you!

So my main concern at this very moment is my shower. I recently made the unforgivable mistake not to refill the water in my heating tank (or whatever you call that in English) in the bathroom in a timely manner. So just before my vacation, it looked like the apparatus had given up the spirit, so no more hot water and heating. While the landlord was on his way to my place, I did manage to refill the water properly, but there was still this error message on the display! But he seems to have the "magic touch", because after he pressed just one button, everything started working again!

However, now as I have returned from Germany, I noticed that I can only take contrast showers somehow! It's only hot for several minutes, and then cold for at least 30 seconds; then starting over the cycle again! Well, I know it's healthy to take contrast showers, but I would like to choose at least! And also the water pressure went down remarkably. So I need to contact my landlord again. I guess I will have a bill to pay soon. Just hope it won't be that expensive...

And here comes an urgent prayer request: I just found out that this coming Saturday afternoon, there will be a demonstration for freedom and democracy in Brussels (http://www.europeansunited.eu/). An SDA colleague from Luxembourg now suggested that we all go there to distribute the Great Controversy in different languages. What an amazing opportunity! So we have a few more days left now to mobilize people and get as much literature as we can. Please pray for us! More to follow later...

Germany - from West to East

At the time of this writing, I'm sitting in the ICE train heading back to Brussels, after spending more than two weeks in Germany. I'm thankful that I could do this journey, in spite of Covid. Of course I had to undergo testing again as well as a five day quarantine after arrival, but I could spend this time of confinement working from my parents place. 

As far as the encounter with my loved ones went, it was almost like pre-Covid times, as most of my family members are vaccinated by now; and thus, especially my mother and my aunt are not so concerned  about my dad and grandmother anymore. So we gathered without masks, hugging each other like in the past. Of course this was much better than Christmas, when we were sitting there with our masks on, not even sharing a meal together. 

I also spent a few days in our holiday apartment in the Black Forest, which was nice and peaceful. At the beginning of last week, I travelled on to spend some days with dear friends in Thuringia, Eastern Germany. We had a very blessed time together, although it was a little more rainy than we had wished for.  

As I'm writing this blog, I can see the Wartburg Castle near Eisenach from the train. This brings back nice memories when I was able to visit this place about five years ago. Yesterday, we went to a beautiful nature resort with a lake, and while the children were throwing little stones into the water, Alberto shared with us an illustration about these stones making circles in the water, which become bigger and bigger. I was just contemplating that the work of Martin Luther also made a big impact until this very present time. I think this man had no clue back then what far reaching influence he would have in the world. But in a similar way, we may not be aware what kind of impact our words and actions can make within our sphere of influence. May the Lord help us to continuously make circles that become bigger and bigger!

                                             Some impressions of the Black Forest

Three Blind Mice

It's been about eleven months now that the world has changed forever. There are still lockdowns in many parts of the world, including Europe. I'm thankful though that the situation in Germany and Belgium has slowly improved over the past weeks. In fact, there is a realistic chance that in the month of May, I will get to travel to Germany again, and I really hope I will not be disappointed. 

In the meantime, there is never a dull moment while I'm still stuck in Belgium. My roommate Janice and I have had to deal with mice in the apartment. Yes, you understood correctly: MICE! Some weeks before Christmas, I saw the first one in my living room (after they seemed to have disappeared for a while). And they became bolder and bolder over time, even coming out during the days while I was working from home, jumping around on the sofa, or tiptoeing on the kitchen counter on a mission to find something edible. We were at the end of our wits, because none of my "mice-friendly" measures (like live traps, an electric device, etc.) seemed to be working to get rid of them. So my last resort was poison, which was extremely effective. Within a few hours, we found three dead (respectively half dead) bodies in the apartment! 

Somehow, mice are cute little creatures indeed, however they definitely do not belong into the house! According to Leviticus 11:29, they are unclean animals. Doing some research, I found out that already the Egyptians had to deal with this plague, because mice found ways into the grain stores and fouled their contents (which held true for my multi-grain crackers as well...). Partial walls from houses made of unfired mud bricks were chewed through and patches have been discovered where they had tried to block the rat holes with rocks (indeed, we tried to tape every possible entry, to no avail!). The Egyptians hunted the rodents using cats and ferrets (no, I would not get a cat). There is also some suggestion that they were captured in traps made out of clay. They even spread around fat from cats in bags or bundles or burned deer feces as a repellant (we tried cayenne pepper, but this didn't impress them). They were largely superstitious and kept amulets in the shape of a protective God, or in the form of the pest they wanted to ward away. Such as the locust amulets that have been found in tombs. Well, we are not superstitious, but we certainly prayed a lot about this problem, and others did too!

After we found the dead creatures, Janice was reminded of an old nursery rhyme: 

Three blind mice. Three blind mice.
See how they run. See how they run.
They all ran after the farmer's wife,
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife,
Did you ever see such a sight in your life,
As three blind mice?

Ok, joking apart, it was a trial! I was so thankful to have Janice here with me, as it would have been so much harder to go though this all by myself. But compared to the 10 plagues of Egypt, it was probably a light thing. And also compared to what is still about to happen in this world, it was certainly a breeze. Maybe the Lord is using such minor nuisances to help us get ready for the real stuff! 

In any case, I'm thankful that He has promised that He will never leave us nor forsake us, even when the tough times come. And the past eleven months were probably nothing compared to what is still ahead of us. The other day, I watched a sermon by Pastor Mark Finley, entitled "Hope for Troubled Times." In this talk, he made it clear that the mastermind behind such events is Satan, and that it's certainly not God who brought this about. But it's definitely an opportunity to consecrate ourselves more to our Lord and Saviour. 

"Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost." Romans 15:13

So let us allow God to fill us with this joy and peace that only He can give; and may the power of the Holy Spirit make us abound in hope for a better world to come soon!

One of the three mice we found

Our Sabbath lunch - homemade pizza

Janice likes to prepare Asian food

Jubilee Park in Brussels (with snow)

And my latest sewing project: little key ring bags!