We're back in Vienna, having spent Wednesday in Slovakia and Thursday in Lintz. We are spending the evening with students at an International Coffee House hosted by OSM. A number of non-Christian students may be there among other Christians that have heard about the event. Tara and I will both be sharing our testimony (we only get 5 minutes per person, though!).

Lastly, please pray for the Christrian European students as they long to see their friends and family know the one true God.

36 hours until we're back in Illinois.

Thank you,
Paul

Hello from Vienna to my friends, family and fiance!

The Grad IV team has been in Austria for four days and have done a variety of things. We all attended various churches with our hosts and friends on Sunday. Alan, Joe and I had a personal translator sitting behind us during the service. We hooked up with some Austrian students at the Agriulture University, BOKU, on Monday to pray and help with a book table outreach. Some also helped with that today. Monday evening we attended OSM (Austrian Student Ministry) large group to worship together as students. This was encouraging all around. I was told by one of our friends that "the singing was really loud tonight." Yes, it was joyful, too! Praise God! Today Alan and I went with Ewald (OSM Staff) to Lintz (sp?), west of Vienna to hand out flyers for an evangalistic talk that will be held at Keplar University (in Lintz) Thursday evening. The whole group will be staying in Lintz Thursday to hear the talk, and we will return to Vienna on Friday.

At this point most of us are just really tired. I'm on schedule with the time, but have yet to catch up on sleep. We're also spiritually weary, needing that precious alone time with God. Please pray over these things. Please pray, too, for our friendships with our hosts, that we would encourage them, and pray that God's work would be accomplished at the Universities and through the Austrian Students.

Thank you!

Paul and the team.

Good morning!

Kindel and I are at the apex of wedding planning, as many of you know. Thanks for your help and prayers! God has been so wonderful to keep Kindel and I desirous to acknowledge him through the whole process. Our Bible study this week discussed that the precursors to idolatry are failing to recognize God's work in the world and neglecting to give him thanks (Romans 1). God is helping me learn that it is good to be weak and to trust in Him.

I'm off to Vienna, Austria this evening. We'll arrive in country about 11 am Saturday morning. Our schedule calls for us to be home in Chicago at 5 pm Saturday, March 24th. Thank you for praying for this! The entire team is very excited.

I'll update, if possible, from Austria.

Cheers!

Paul

Wedding!

Yesterday evening, I proposed to Kindel! More details to come at a later date, but I have a few photos available at my PhotoBucket and some below.

Most important, though, she said 'Yes'!

And for my distant family and friends, here's your first glimpse at her engagement ring.

Since starting graduate school I've become accustomed to hoping that each semester would be longer. I always get crunched for time and once week 12 hits, I feel as though one or two extra weeks we make everything apple pie - sweet and good. I was feeling completely overwhelmed Sunday morning with all of the events of this semester coming to a mini-climax here in early March. I really, really wanted an extra week. God answered that request with a 'Yes'.

I had thought for the past, oh, six months that the Vienna trip was scheduled for the 10th through the 18th. This made my schedule a little complicated with all of the traveling and presentations that I'm giving. After speaking to my church on Sunday about the Spring Break trip, some friends informed me that I had my dates wrong. My initial reaction was "No way. I couldn't have gotten this wrong." I did get it wrong. Praise God! And I now have an extra week in my schedule! Amazing!

On another note... the Stanford trip rocked! Next year, this blog will be titled something like "Fighting illini-ichabod in the Bay Area". Doesn't that roll right off the tongue?

More later...