New Year, New Place

Yep. It's official. We are moved into our new place. We packed personal stuff on Monday, Dec. 26th. We packed all the rest on Tuesday, Dec. 27th. Movers came on Wednesday, Dec. 28th and Thursday, Dec. 29th. And, here I sit this morning in my new place with just a small list of things to do to put the final touches on making this place our "home". We've cleaned and packed and unpacked and cleaned until our hands are red and bones are tired ... but ... it's done!


We "officially" said goodbye to our neighbors. It was such a bitter sweet thing, something I wasn't really prepared to experience. As we wiped out the last gunga (personal term of endearment for stuff unidentified, usually green, that is left in the bottom of the fridge) and closed the door for the last time of what was my home, I made the trek over to my neighbors house where she prepared me and my family a coffee.

That one cup of coffee helped me push through any sadness and move on towards an attitude of hopefulness. Sound a bit dramatic? Good. That was the intended effect. However, it is dramatic when looking at it through my lens.

American’s are friendly. We are quick to invite the paper boy in for a glass of milk, quick to offer a stranger a lift, quick to make small talk with the fellow customer in the line at Wal-Mart, quick to start a conversation in the bathroom yet slow to really reach into our emotional bank reserves and build a relationship that could potentially cost us something. Overt friendliness is a safety net that keeps us busy with lots of pretentious “relationships” and bankrupt with really deep levels of intimates.

Austrians are not that way. After living in my former flat for a few months shy of 3 years, this was the first time my neighbor invited me in for coffee.

However, one cup of coffee means that my attempts to be friendly over the fence, feed her children pretzels, offer to water her plants, hug her baby when he skinned his knee, plant flowers, show her how to dip a tortilla chip in homemade salsa, bake cookies with her daughter, speak grammatically incorrect, give a Christmas card, wave from my balcony, and … pray my guts out over her and her family wanting them to know the definition of LOVE in the form of Jesus Christ … God used as a way to penetrate her heart. It’s a sign that God is at work … and a flicker of a flame of hope that burns bright in my heart that God will use my good deeds to produce something wonderful.

Isn't it just like God to use a move, something we perceived as potentially relationship harmful, as being the single thing that catapults this relationship to the next level?! I love the super-human logic of a creative God!


We are now living a very different life from what we jokingly call our “suburb"experience of our former flat. However, it’s all city life. Now our city life is just closer to the inner city, the historical part of the city tourist scramble toward, that involves more daily contact with more humans and more public transportation.


Wien (Vienna) is divided into 23 districts. We now live in the 2nd district. What I’m about to share is information that has been passed on by my Austrian friends. If any misrepresentation of facts occurs, it is not the intention of this writer, but attributed only to my hearing or their re-telling of the facts incorrectly.


The 2nd district is the former Jewish district. Before WWII, approx. 200,000 (one neighbor say 500,000 but his wife says it's 150,000) Jews lived in this part of the city. After the War, 40,000 remained. Surrounded by the Donau River on one side and the Donau Canal on the other, the “Jewish Island” housed many famous writers, musicians, and city planners. Currently, a Jewish center, school and synagogue, now call the 2nd district home, just a few blocks from our place. It is highly secured, complete with round-the-clock video surveillance.

Just a few buildings down from my front door, there is a plaque at the base of one of the buildings. It lies in a state of memorandum to the 23 Jewish men, women and children that were taken from their homes, deported, and exterminated. It’s one of many plaques you can find in my new neighborhood.


I will pass by this building and plaque every day.


I often hear people tell me that I am “living the life” … whatever that means. From their perspective, I live in a beautiful city. It’s true. However, the call on my life (and the life of my Chris) to live in this beautiful city has such a parallel meaning to that Jewish plague I pass everyday day. A Jewish Savior has paid the ultimate price for my life. I, in humble obedience to his specific call and purpose for my life, have chosen to lay things familiar and American aside. I hope that every day, I am living in obedience and making a small difference … an intentional difference to make an impact on a society, a people, one person. Yesterday it was my neighbor.

My prayer is that many years from now it will be a movement of people that began right here … in my new apartment … just down the street from a place Jews were stripped from their freedom. May it be freedom from sin and death that comes to this same street …