Adventurous Life

I have found that I concentrate better on my PhD readings when I am on a train. Fortunately, I have a yearly ticket that includes about 95% of travel in Austria, so I decided that once a month I would hop on train, read and travel for a few hours with a destination in mind, tour the destination a bit, then board a train for home and read a bit more. This gets me out of hibernating in my hobbit hole, I see more of Austria, get some exercise, and am productive with my studies. Win-win-win.  This month's stop was Ebensee. I tend to choose a location not just based on how far away it is from my city, but also for what it offers culturally and the natural beauty around it. Ebensee did not disappoint. It is a small town on the southern edge of a lake, ringed with mountains at the beginning of the Alps. Yet, it has a dark past. Ebensee was a concentration camp site with the purpose of building tunnels in the surrounding mountains for armament storage. It is estimated that over 8,000 peopl...

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." ~ Hebrews 12:1 Last week I was talking with a dear friend of mine. She has been an active person her whole life and did something active every day. The past couple of years she has had some health issues that have forced her to rest and not be so mobile. To say that it's been hard for her is an understatement. She shared that Hebrews 12:1 is her life verse, and while she would rather literally run outside for exercise, she is having to learn to run and with perseverance in new ways. After our talk, I have been meditating on this verse, partially due to the fact that this verse holds a special place in my heart as it was one of the first verses I ever memorized, but also because I was and am inspired by my friend's desire to run in spite of her health. The pas...

Getting a PhD is something I have always wanted to do. During seminary, one of my missions professors advised the class not to pursue doctoral studies right after graduation but to wait until we had a question that needed answered. I followed his advice. During the lockdowns in 2020, I was able to read a lot in work-related fields: trauma, parenting, missions, children’s ministry. During all these readings, I also noticed what I wasn’t reading. Spiritual formation of children is not a common topic to write about, and most of what has been written is over a decade old. Trauma is a trending topic in society, but not so much within the church yet. I started to think, what would the spiritual formation of children who have been traumatized look like? Taking into account brain damage, psychological effects, bodily injuries, relationship/attachment issues, and the list could go on—how do these affect spiritual formation? How do these and the developmental stages affect spiritual formation of...

 A few years ago I started consistently journaling. It wasn't something I normally enjoyed doing, but I found that if I added scrapbooking to it (tickets, programs, receipts, stickers, pictures, etc), then I actually enjoyed it more. Each year has its own journal, and I buy a new journal every December in anticipation of January. A lot goes into picking out the journal. It needs to look different than the previous year's journal and feel...good. Not just how it actually feels in my hands but also the feeling I get from the journal about the year ahead. What color or design is catching my eye? What will keep me coming back so that I write? Because of all that I put into my journals they need to have covers that can withstand travel and being thrown into a bag, the elastic band on the outside to keep it all together, sturdy binding, and paper thick to keep the glue from staining.* My journal has to be strong and sturdy to be able make it through the year.  Today as I was conside...

Like many of you, I too have had my daily life affected by the coronavirus. Last week officials in Austria began issuing travel and meeting restrictions for the next 2 weeks that then became more drastic and widespread on Sunday. For the next 4 weeks, we are not allowed to be in public spaces, we cannot go outside with other people unless we live with them and have a purpose to be outside, non-essential businesses are closed, travel restrictions have been enacted, the civil services has been increased and along with the police will patrol and enforce the restrictions. You can read more about the restrictions (in German) here . Sounds almost like living in a militaristic state doesn’t it? That’s one perspective, and not the one I choose to have. I see it as a government trying to prevent large-scale infection, sickness, and death using the resources that they have. Hardly any country in the world took the news from China seriously at the beginning. Italy is an example as the hospi...

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to share a testimony at my organization's regional conference regarding what I had learned about hope during my residence permit issues. Below is what I wrote out and shared. It has been slightly edited for the context of this page.  I arrived in Austria in November 2017 on a tourist visa. What we didn't know at the time is that I would live the next year on a 90-day rotation between Austria and Ireland while I waited on a decision about my residence permit. We found out that my residence permit was denied about a week before my tourist visa expired. I had a short amount of time to get my Austrian affairs in order and to make plans regarding Ireland. At first, I saw going to Ireland as a great adventure and opportunity. I get to live in Galway, Ireland?! I had never been there before and had always wanted to go. I love the ocean and was going to be able to live next to it. I would also get to know different people from my organization. This ...