2019 WorldVenture Team Retreat

We just got back from our annual Spring Getaway, a 4 day retreat for our WorldVenture Team Austria. We were blessed with several special guests at our retreat this year...

• our speakers for the week were former missionaries to Austria. They were a big surprise for our supervisors, who are retiring this year!
• a visitor on a vision trip who is considering long term service in Austria
• a couple who works at WorldVenture headquarters in CO but was travelling Europe visiting community centers. This couple also used to serve in Germany and attended the Austria Team retreat!
• a couple from Ireland who will be our new supervisors when our other team members retire

It's a tradition for our team to keep the schedule light, so the week is truly restful for everyone there. We spent the mornings hearing from our guest speakers and then taking turns sharing with each other about our previous year and praying for each other. Afternoons and evenings were free for outings and games. The weather was beautiful, and it was truly a wonderful week together. I am so thankful for our WorldVenture Team!

Here are some highlights from our week together:

Joe and Calla Jean Wright, our speakers for the week

Team prayer times

Our sharing time

Playing near the lake

The girls loved just throwing rocks into the lake over and over again!

There's a special bond between these two!

My favorite little people being themselves!

The whole group!

Spring Getaway 2017

We just returned from our annual WorldVenture team retreat. This is a longstanding tradition for team Austria, allowing us to get away together for 4 days for a time of learning, refreshment, prayer and retreat. Here are a few highlights from our time together:

Team game time

 * We played a few games together that Ellie could participate in. It's important to us as a team to include the kids in activities and time together, so they feel like a part of our team as they grow up. Ellie had fun with "hot potato" and a game where we guessed what objects were that we picked out of a bag while blind-folded.

* We watched video messages/sermons each day as a team and discussed them.

* Each family had a time of sharing about the last year and how we could be praying for each other. We had a focused time of prayer for each family.

Being commissioned as the new field leaders

 * Nate and I will be stepping into the team Austria field leadership role in the coming months (something we will write more about in our coming updates and probably a separate blog post). The group prayed over us and commissioned us as the new field leaders.

* Ellie got to spend our meeting times playing with our friend Mallory, who joined us for the retreat to provide childcare. They did lots of crafts, played on the playground, went swimming and had an all-around great time together.

* We took an excursion to a local chocolate factory and samples lots of delicious chocolate.

* We went swimming almost every day. Ellie is obsessed with the water, so she begged us everyday to swim in the hotel pool! Maya had her first swim and loved it.

* We survived four days staying in a hotel, despite some horrible night sleep from Maya. After several weeks of sickness, Maya was struggling to get back to sleep on her own at night. This has improved since returning home and we hope it doesn't repeat itself in the future when we travel! Unfortunately, the sleep deprivation made the week a bit difficult for me...but such is life with a baby!

Overall, it was a good time away. We will be planning the Spring Getaway for our team next year, so
we will soon begin to think about where and how we will spend our time in 2018. We hope to continue the tradition of getting away as a team to worship, pray, rest and spend time together.

Spring Getaway in the Alps!

 By far one of the most crucial parts of our Vision Trip was connecting with our WorldVenture team. WorldVenture has 9 missionaries on the ground in Vienna, and we are excited to join them in ministry. At the start of our Vision Trip in April, after spending 1 day getting over jet lag (at least a little), we spent the next 5 days on the “Spring Getaway”, a WorldVenture team retreat in a mountain town in the Alps. We stayed at an affordable hostel that allowed us to use a large room for worship and study time, group meetings and sharing time. In addition to the Vienna missionaries, the WorldVenture teams from Germany and Slovenia joined us for the retreat.

We were really blessed by this time on retreat. Here are some reasons why…

Our Vienna WorldVenture Team

• Conversations with our fellow missionaries over meals, hikes and down time allowed us to absorb so much about Austria, ministry and what to expect when we first arrive. 
• Each missionary or couple was allowed 20 minutes of sharing time in front of the group to talk about their last year in ministry and what they have been learning. It was valuable to get a broad perspective of where and how God is using each missionary.
• We were given the chance to share our story with the group – how God led us to Austria and what we envision for ministry.
• We got to know all of the missionaries and began building relationships with people who we will be serving alongside for decades. When we move to Austria, we will see familiar faces!
• We were blessed by quiet times with the Lord where we could pray and process all that we were learning and absorbing. God really spoke to me (Bethany) there and used that time to give me an overwhelming sense of peace about the next year of our lives and the journey we are on.

Sharing Time at the Hostel

• We got to worship the Lord together and we listened to sermons from the Willow Creek leadership conference, which led to some really encouraging and challenging discussions.
• We conducted video interviews with missionaries, asking them all about the spiritual needs in Western Europe and where they see God working. We are excited to share these with you over the coming months.
• We spent 3 hours in the car to and from the retreat with our team leaders, Celeste and Peter Persson. We talked the whole time both ways, all about their 28 years of service in Austria and what God has been teaching them. We asked questions and learned so much just in those conversations. 

We felt the retreat was the perfect way to begin our Vision Trip to Austria. It laid a solid foundation for the rest of our 2 weeks by connecting us with our team and with God, before the fast-paced experience in Vienna that followed. We were so thankful for this time!