WorldVenture Team Retreat

Every year the week before Easter, our WorldVenture Austria team escapes the city and spends 5 days together in the mountains. After 2 years of cancelled retreats due to Covid and after several new team members arriving or joining us, this year's retreat was especially important and blessed. We've known for a long time that one factor in helping missionaries stay and thrive on the field is a supportive team, and our goal is to foster that amongst our missionaries. Our time together really helped us all to grow closer, and we were blessed by times of teaching, prayer, games, outings and meals together. Our speakers for the week were Dougg and LeAnn Custer, former long term missionaries to Austria who were able to encourage and challenge us, as well as share meaningful stories from their time serving here.

My (Bethany) parents came for a visit and were able to attend the retreat and do the childcare for the 4 youngest kids. They had a blast and so did the kids! Many special memories were made, and we were so thankful for the rest and meaning time we had together.

Here are a few photo highlights:

Meals together - so many great conversations!

Praying over each missionary unit together

The kids enjoying time by the lake with their special friend "Cookie", the swan

Playground fun

Riding the funicular up to the salt mines in Hallstatt

Enjoying the Hallstatt view

Ready in our jumpsuits to go into the salt mine!

Posing with the mountains

The kids performing their bible verse and song from the week

E-bike excursion

Our crazy crew!

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!

Meet the Kosses!

Many of you may remember the Kosse Family. They visited in the fall of 2016 for a vision trip, and then began raising support to join our team with WorldVenture here in Austria. They recently had the video below put together to communicate their vision for ministry and how/why God has called them here. We are excited to share this - it not only allows you to get to know them, but also so clearly communicates the needs here in Austria. Take a look and pray for the Kosses!

Visas and Health Insurance

The last few months have been a journey, and we thought we give you guys an update. (We apologize for the long blogging hiatus...) I'll do my best to keep the story compact, because I feel like it could get away from me.

Recently, I had heard from some other field leaders and workers here that visas were becoming more complicated. There were questions about health insurance and coverage and needing to provide additional documentation. We knew of people still waiting on their visa renewal applications to be processed, and it seemed like we could also face these challenges. We took a "we'll see" sort of attitude because living in the "land of worry and what-ifs" is not a great place to be.

Last fall, we had our first new worker come to Austria since we have arrived. We were so excited to have her here and get her settled in. She started German classes, found an apartment (something needed for her visa) and started to figure out cross-cultural life. We started to get an idea that things could get complicated when she received a letter asking for more documents. One of the issues mentioned in this letter was about health insurance. Bureaucracy is a regular part of life here, and so gathering documents and submitting them has become a normal part of our life. First, we made sure we were reading the documents correctly, because legal German is a whole other language. After that, we gathered the necessary documents and brought them back to the office.

In the meantime, we also were facing a visa renewal. We now live half a mile from the Vienna city limits, which places us in a different province. We went to drop off our documents at a local office and received similar questions about our health insurance coverage and the need for more documents. We submitted everything and waited for a response from the office. 

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.

Two Years Later

On Friday, we returned from a week-long retreat in mountains with our WorldVenture team. We attended this retreat on our Vision Trip two years ago, and it was so special to return with our team to that same guest house in Grundlsee, this time as team members! I kept thinking back to our first impressions of Austria in 2011 and all that we were taking in during that trip. It's amazing to look back and see how far God has carried us on our journey these two years.

Here are some highlights from our time this past week with our team:

Leading worship for the group each morning and evening

Going on a hike and finding an old water mill

Toplitsee - a lake nearby that supposedly has Nazi treasure hidden at the bottom...

The whole group!

Celebrating with our Team

We have the privilege of enjoying a Christmas party with our WorldVenture team yesterday. We ate delicious food, played games and had a fun-filled white elephant gift exchange! (And Nate and I are proud to share that our gift was awarded the prize of the "best gift of the year".)

We're so thankful for our team here and the support they provide. They're welcomed us in!

(And if you're wondering why there are so many people in this photo...almost the whole Schneider family was in town. 6 out of the 7 kids were here for Christmas!)