by love i sail: zu beginnin

(December 21)
I write this first entry to you from Wien very early in the morning. At 6am we attended mass at the church (kirche) just a 2 minute walk from Monika's apartment. It is an Austrian advent tradition in the last week before Christmas to attend an early morning mass as a means of penance and preparation before the joyous birth of Christ, the necessary beginning of our salvation.
And so, I have been in Wien only one week, but I feel I must write to you to send my love and prayers for a beautiful, meaningful, and exuberant feast of Christmas! Knowing that I cannot be with you this Christmas, I find a deep desire to be present to you still by giving you a detailed look at the first weeks of our mission. Hopefully reading the amazing works the Lord has already wrought in our little, anonymous lives here, your hearts will be expanded to receive all that God desires to give this Christmas and throughout 2011.

our first meeting

{Mary is no longer alone with her destiny, but consoled and secure in the knowledge of her cousin's similar fate. The angel reveals this related destiny to her so that she can give her life with more certainty, for no person can bear a divine mission wholly alone, to even the most solitary, a thou is given within his mission. --Adrienne von Speyr}

Monika, Alina and I went on retreat the weekend of the 17th-19th as a means of preparation for Christmas and for this foundation. Fr. Jacques, the spiritual director of our little community and priest responsible for the foundation of the home in Vienna, sent us on retreat with a few chapters from Adrienne von Speyr's book Handmaid of the Lord (Mary and the Angel, and Motherhood). I highly recommend it to everyone, and it turned out to be a perfect excerpt for our retreat. Within this text, von Speyr words beautifully God's gift of companionship to Elizabeth and Mary {the above quote}. Surely Elizabeth and Mary are models for myself and the two women, Alina and Monika, that greeted me upon arrival in Vienna {see picture} and with whom I have been sharing my time here. I am so thankful for the thous that God has give me to share this mission.

Monika Haas is a former Heart's Home missionary (2 years in Naples, Italy and some time at the Heart's Home village in Brazil), an Austrian native, and our lovely hausmutter while we are new kinder in Wien. Surely, this foundation would not be possible without her! We are currently living with her in her aparment, which is only a ten minute walk from our new, not-yet-liveable apartment. She is simultaneously ou chauffeur, our map, our tour guide, our alarm clock, our compendium of mass and adoration times, our translator, ou voice at times we need to speak fluent German, sometimes our chef, our mother, and our spiritual guide through the instruction of Fr. Jacques while he is not yet here. While being all these things for us, she has a full time job as a teacher in a school for handicapped children! She is truly a gift from God that we could never deserve, but graciously accept to lead us in these first steps! She is also a beautiful example of how Heart's Home is not simply a mission you live for a short period of your life in another country, but it is an experience that molds your heart forever and which you bring with you to guide your life wherever you live. Having finished her mission and returned to a normal life, she still makes sure she attends mass daily, says daily laudes and vespers and rosary (even before we began to live with her), and makes time of her own to visit the elderly, sick, and lonely that she knows of living in her neighborhood or other parts of the city. And now she has opened her well-organized life to the chaos of two foreign missionaries new to community life and Wien; taking on as her own the mission Alina and I are living. She is truly a model of love and service!

   Two of her favorite things are Mohn and Punsch. Mohn is poppy seed, a common ingredient in sweet Austrian pastries (unlike our scarce use of them...the only thing I can think of is everything bagels). Mohn actually has an addictive quality like its distant cousin cocaine (the level of the addiction is more like coffee rather than cocaine! ha) And Punsch is a rum based drink served warm along with gluhwein at Christkindl (Advent)markts all over the city. Monika introduced me to both of these loves when she and I went to an Adventmarkt at Simmeringplatz (my new favorite adventmarkt due to its lack of tourists) one night to spend an evening with her friend WeWe. In one night she succeeded in drawing me into her Mohn addiction as well, but I still prefer gluhwein over punsch! Monika has a wonderful, but dry sense of humor as well. On our way home from the adventmarkt with WeWe, she said to me in broken yet effective English, Maybe your first mission is me, a drug and alcohol addict! I could just eat Mohn and drink Punsch always. I think sometimes I need because I love so much and it is problem.> Haha. love it.

   Alina is my companion on this journey. She is Ukranian, but has been living in Naples, Italy for the last four years with her mother and stepfather and stepbrothers and sisters. She has lived very closely with the people of Heart's Home in Naples and has let her heart be shaped by the mission there. It was after Alina spent several months here in Wien last spring working for a family as a nanny that she got the idea, surly inspired by the Holy Spirit, to write to Fr. Thierry de Roucy (the founder of Heart's Home) and share her inspiration for a new home to be founded in Wien. To her incredible surprise, only 6 months later, we are both here to bring this intuition to fruition. How the Lord works quickly! Thankfully, Alina speaks some English, as well as fluent French, Ukranian, Russian, and Italian, and is learning German (she is much farther along than I am because she studied three years in school). So we manage to communicate with broken English and French while I am getting the elementary aspects of German down. Everyday the Lord astonishes me as He shows me ways in which He has prepared Alina and I for one another. He truly handpicked us for one another as exhibited by our many similarities. She is very passionate and she is very open--she doesn't hesitate to show her excitement, her care, her frustration, etc. She doesn't mind that I am a vegetarian, and she also has a horrible time getting up in the morning, which has forced me to be better at being a morning person (I know, those of you who know me very well are probably in disbelief, but I am the one that makes her get out of bed!...but it is by God's grace alone that either of us is able to get out of bed on time!) The Lord also extraordinarly blesses our prayer time together. If there is something expecially on my mind during prayer, I usually just have to mention it to Alina and her eyes will get big and she will smile and say, Ich auch! (Me too!) The Lord has given us a great gift in one another and continues to pour His grace upon us.

   After Alina and Monika picked me up from the airport, we returned to Monika's apartment where Monika had prepared a gourmet celebration dinner! Now to make your mouths water...

First Course: Carrot and Sweet Potato Soup with Chestnut Dumplings