Tuesday, 17 July 2007

To Austria, With Love


I love Austria.

It's a beautiful place. And the people - simply marvellous. I've never seen such warm-hearted Caucasians in my life. The Austrians are simply beautiful - unassuming, loving, kind, and boisterous in a fun way.

And I love Austrian food.

And I love the colour and culture of Vienna.

I can't get enough of Austria.

Austria will always have a special place in my heart. After all, it's the place where the Lord led me to after months of struggle with my spiritual walk and my studies. God had a destiny for me in Austria. Before I came here, one pastor prayed for me and said that she heard the "blue Danube" and thought that I should go to France - but NO... the blue Danube was written in Austria.. and runs through Austria.

I was seriously contemplating whether I should go back home for the summer holidays, but I just felt that God wanted me to stay in Europe. And I received an email from Kathie Walters about the 777 Heart for God festival in Austria. I just felt a stirring in my heart to go there.

[An aside on how I got linked to Kathie Walters... This happend like 2 or more years ago. I awoke one morning and heard the name "kathy walters". I went online to search for "Kathy walters" but found nothing... so I thought I might have spelt Kathy wrongly (which I did - and a handful of you would remember how God let me to Europe for my studies with "Burtigny" which I mistook for "Brittany" - that is another long story). So I tried some other combinations - and finally found her name on the Elijah List. And so, I subscribed to her mailing list. Then again, there were so many emails a week that I decided to "unsubscribe" after a few months... When I arrived in Switzerland, I felt the Holy Spirit telling me to re-subscribe to the mailing list, which I duly did so. And so that was how I found out about the 777 Festival in Austria. Haha... God is amazing]

Now... back to the Austria story.

I heard about the 777 festival before the exams. But didn't really want to bother with it cos I had to concentrate on studying. But I exchanged a few emails with the organisers and found out some details on the festival and decided I would relook into this after exams.

And so... exams were finally over for me. I was lazing around in my hostel (feeling rather miserable about the whole exams - I felt that I really could have done better)... so I was just sleeping and lazing around - didn't feel like doing anything - didn't even want to read the bible. But then, God (as usual) got the better of me. One morning, He just spoke to me "you better get out of bed to get ready to go Austria. Go book your train ticket"... Ooopss... I got out of bed and emailed the organisers whether it was too late for me to go there... (it was already Monday). Festival starts Friday night - talk about being last minute. Funny thing was, when I clicked "send", I received in my Inbox a mail from the organisers "Are you coming?". Apparently, our emails crossed. Gosh... talk about confirmation.

So, I booked my train ticket and got ready to leave for Austria! But the journey there was not easy. (Kathie at the conference spoke about harressing spirits which would try to harress us when we are reaching towards our destinies. They can't stop us from getting there, but will make the journey difficult or unbearable. I could totally identify with it.) Anyways, it was a "perilous" journey. It's rather long to recount but funny and great to see how God paved the way for me to get there despite all the haressment I got.

So... I think I'll stop here for now. Will write more about how I managed to wriggle my way into a small little town in Austria by the name of Oberschutzen.

Blessings,

Barn

My results are out!!

I just got another miracle. I passed all my exams! Phew… and the one that I had the greatest fear – I had a 4.5 out of 6.0. This course has really been somewhat of a roller coaster. Up and down and up and down. I was really very worried after coming out of the exams for the "numerical methods" paper. It was TOUGH.

I went to review my scripts yesterday - Funny thing was, I got 91 out of 100 for one of the papers. And I only got a 5.0 out of 6.0. (Perhaps my presentation, which accounted for 50% of the marks was bad - it couldn't be, because I remember it was a very good presentation, and the professor said it was good). My groupmate, who also did the presentation got only 4.0 out of 6.0. I highly suspect that the professor made a mistake with our presentation grade - i.e. he probably mistook our group for another group, which did the same topic, but who had, in my view an inferior presentation. But anyways, I'll see if I have the "energy" to pursue the matter. My overall results are much much better than last semester, which I scraped through with the skin of my teeth! (Talk about grace. Har!)I had mostly 5.0 out of 6.0… i.e. out of 8 subjects, all were 5.0 out of 6.0, with one 4.5 and one 4.0. The surprising thing is that for the 4.0, it was one of the "easier" subjects for which I had 95% for the assignments... haha... so I didn't study much for the finals - only got 29 marks out of 100... haha... but overall, I passed.

I really give thanks to God for this. I remember telling Him before the exams - let my results be a testimony for You. I was still "recovering" from the lack of academic studies... come on... at my age - doing such a technical course with all the squiggly math formulae is NO SMALL JOKE. And I told Him after the numerical methods paper - "it's not fair... I studied VERY VERY HARD for the exams... but I 'blacked out' during the final paper. I KNEW how to do the questions but I simply blacked out. And so very much want to do You proud" (you know how these blackouts tend to happen for the most difficult of papers for which you have prepared so hard for?). Anyways, I just left the matter to God to "manage" and prayed that they would be more lenient with the marking. I was even prepared to retake the exam. But two days before the results were out, I heard God whisper to me “prepare to celebrate” – so I reckoned that it would be for my studies – and it’s true. Well…. God is really Good to me. What to say? But then, I now feel that the "celebration" might also be for something more.

Will update. Arh... yes... I'll also add in snippets of my journey to Austria. Apart from the diamond and gold dust, God did other amazing stuff with and to me. Haha.

God bless you.

Barns

Monday, 16 July 2007

Diamonds are Forever??





After exams, the Lord led me to Austria for a 777 festival in this tiny little town – We had a Jesus march there on 777 and a prophetic conference thereafter. It was an amazing time.


Some of you might have seen video clip about people in the US receiving gemstones from the Lord. Guess what? I received a gemstone from Jesus in Austria!!! A tiny little white gemstone that looks like a diamond. I was worshiping the Lord in my room and felt God’s presence and healing – and then when I opened my eyes, this shiny thing was on my table. It’s very small… but very shiny.



See Links below for other testimonies.

Video 1

Video 2

Friday, 13 July 2007

Exams are over!!!

Exams are over and I have had a wonderful time relaxing and just allowing my mind and body to just "cool off".

Went to Austria last week. God reminded me when I awoke one morning about going to Austria for a 7-7-7 conference.

It was a BLAST!!!

I had such an amazing encounter with God there, the story is so incredible, it just blows my mind away...

The story is pretty long. So, I'll need some time to pen it down. But it is nothing short of amazing (for me).

Will write later.

Blessings.

Barnabas