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