1st Post

Hello Everyone!

Grüß Gott! (God be with you) Life here in Vienna is quite a different mission than I have ever been on before. I do miss working in Third World, but God has special opportunities over the next year to work with the poor. I am finally getting used to being here and I am stunned at God's never-ending faithfulness and His generocity. After learning about the foundations of Kerygma Teams, I am slowly understanding that I am in some small way, a part of a BIG new step in the history of the Church, evangelization, ecumenism, and working of the Holy Spirit in all three areas. The leaders of Kerygma have been called by the Lord to impliment what Vatican II has called for by evangelizing in the Church. The love and passion the Lord has revealed to me over the past couple of years for lay missionary work is culminated in the mission of Kerygma Teams. It is just incredible. As for now, I live in a house on Quellenßtrasa street in Modling, Austria with 7 other missionaries and our staff lives around the area with their families. I share a room with Carole (from the U.S. and worked at Franciscan University). The rest of the team consists of Tomas, Zorka, and Doroltka (a family from Slovakia), Klemins (German), Joseph (Nigerian), Adam (from Iowa and also graduated from Franciscan). Our staff has 3 members: Bruce (started Kerygma, is originally from California, and has lived in Austria with his wife and 3 children for almost 20 years now), Frances (a single woman from Louisiana who just turned 50 - she is everyone's mom on the team), and Gavin (originally from South Africa and now lives here in Austria with his wife and 3 children). All of us our Catholic except for Bruce and Gavin...this is where the story of Kerygma (k-teams) gets very interesting, but I will write more about that later. I love living with these people. We have a happy home. Daily life consists of walking to and from the local parish (St. Othmar) for Mass at 8am, breakfast, Praise and worship, teachings, coffee break (always), lunch, chores, preparation for outreach, language lessons, and local ministries during the week nights. I also get to usually do some sort of workout in the afternoons. We have hiking trails about 5 minutes from the house - Thank you Lord! Almost every weekend we have an outreach somewhere. The pace of ministry is starting to pick up because we are ending a big phase of our teachings with guest speakers and now need to put into action what the Lord is teaching us. More later. 'Chow' for now.