ChadwicksInAustria.org

So…today was Ellison’s first day of school. I’ve had so many mixed emotions leading up to this, but honestly today I felt at peace. So many of your have been praying for this transition and I really know that God honored your prayers and they were felt today.

Last week we went to the school board and they enrolled Ellison in an ubergangsklasse. This class is a special class for children who come from abroad and who do not know any German. That is a HUGE benefit for Ellison! All along I’d been envisioning that she would be going into a class with native German speakers just having to hold her own, but this alone is a big blessing. All weekend long she’s been showing everyone her bookbag filled with all of her supplies but this morning she was very nervous as the actual day arrived.

We tried as best we could to calm her fears and to remind her that she would not be alone even though we were not with her. As she walked out the door she was greeted by some signs that her daddy made for her last night.

These really helped to lighten the mood and she was smiling on the walk to the car. On the drive in, we listened to our Seeds of Courage CD (love this resource!!) and she was singing right along.

We loaded up the whole clan pretty early and headed in because the school is out of our zone and it takes about 25 minutes to get there. We got there so early that we stopped into a local bakery and had a second breakfast . I’m really glad we had this time with her to relax and that she didn’t feel rushed.

After breakfast, we all walked her up to her class which is on the 4th floor. After we caught our breath, we walked towards the class and waited our turn to meet her teacher who was talking to another new little boy from Romania starting today as well. When she saw Ellison she said “Hello Ellison. It’s so nice to meet you.” In perfect English! This put her at ease and she smiled so big! The teacher then told us that she would respond to Ellison in German and that she will allow Ellison to use English for the first few weeks. Gradually the teacher will move Ellison towards only using German to ask for what she needs and responding to questions.

School here ends at 11:20 on M,W and F (and 12:30 on T,Th) so we just ran some errands around the city and headed back to pick her up. When I met her at her classroom she was still smiling and said that it had been a good day. We talked about some tough moments (people whispering and her getting confused after snack time about where to go) but we also talked about some great parts of the day too. She actually wants to go back tomorrow so we are considering that a very good thing!

Thanks for continuing to pray for her quick language development so that she can interact with her new classmates and begin to really feel a part.

*BTW- The school year goes until the end of July and picks back up in September.

Call me mama and I am so thankful for that today. Hope you’ve had a great mother’s day!

We have a lot things happening this week and just in case another post doesn’t go up, we wanted to keep you in the loop .

Monday we will be meeting with a potential German tutor for us! I am really excited and am hoping to be able to buy some new notebooks and pens . I love learning and I’m pumped to get into language study!

Monday night, Ian has been invited to play men’s volleyball with a new group of men!

On Tuesday we get to be a part of a local children’s club that happens twice per month in neighborhoods. One of our friends here, Angie, hosts it in her home and invited us to be a part.

Wednesday we are headed to the School Board for our appointment with Ellison. There was a mix up last week and they had to reschedule. Ellison is really excited about heading to school soon.

Thursday we hope to return to the Driver’s License office to get some more questions answered and to start that process.

Friday is youth group at the church we will be interning at here. The youth group is for 7-12 year olds so Ellison is included in this group.

Somewhere during this week we will be moving to another temporary location .  We are not sure yet where that will be but we have some great potentials and are gearing up for the move.

Before we arrived in Germany, there were emails going around the alliance of churches here searching for living accommodations for our family when we landed. One of the offers that came back was from a lady who “happened” to be going out of town to visit her sister and to take some vacation time. For our first 5 days we stayed in a hotel near the Holzmann’s who graciously cooked for us and took us all around to help us get a start on setting up life here.

Once our time was up at the hotel we packed all of our stuff up and moved about 30 minutes away to Friedburg into this home. (The picture is actually of three houses but it’s the easiest shot to get. We are the furthest in the back.)

It is absolutely amazing that she was willing to let us come and live in her home after having only heard our story via email and then meeting us briefly one afternoon.  The community of believers here is awesome! She is one of many people who are really happy that we have arrived and they want us here.  We sense their excitement and are so thankful for their willingness to help!

We have really enjoyed her home. She is a grandmother and so her home is filled with lots of toys that our kids have really put to use. She also has a backyard, or garden, as it’s called here which is a bonus! It is so beautiful here and we have really enjoyed our stay.

We still have another month or so until our permanent space is ready in the actual city of Augsburg and details are still being worked out as to where we will land next, but for the next 10 days we will be enjoying our time here in Friedberg.

Adjusting has been the name of the game over these past 2 weeks. We have adjusted to the time change which has been great! Language, and culture will take quite a bit longer. One other adjustment that we’ve had to make is to the weather. We went from tanks and flops to boots and coats in a 24 hour period. We have been so happy to just be here that we haven’t really been bummed out about the weather. It’s just a part of the change.

Today we had a glorious surprise with 70 degree temps! After a crazy past 2 days of trying to register our family in the city we got a phone call from Dianne urging us to give ourselves a break and come over for lunch. She and her husband had us over for lunch and before we ate, the men checked a big item off of our list- setting up a bank account.

On our drive home we were taken aback with how beautiful the weather was. When we got home we didn’t even go inside. We headed straight for a nearby path to enjoy the beautiful weather. Today was so sunny and we were all really happy to be outside enjoying the weather.

Jude trying to catch a butterfly

Ellison picking flowers for a bouquet

Asher in action

Although we are still adjusting lots, we are incredibly thankful for the doors that God has opened for us here!  There’s been lots of hard work trying to get us set up but in only 2 weeks we are now officially registered to reside here, we have an appointment to obtain our visas, we own a car, we have a phone, we have consistent internet, a German bank account and we even have a contract on a place to live.

These are things worth running through the fields about! Wouldn’t you agree?

We are so excited that we have finally made it! It’s been quite a crazy week so far filled with appointments to the bank, to the visa office, apartment hunting and ikea shopping. All and all we are doing well. We are having normal transitions that we expected and lots to take in for sure. This will be a short note because we are having to connect at a local McDonald’s because of very limited internet. Communication and life are slower on this side but we will try to maintain contact as frequently as we can until we are in our own space.

Thanks for praying for our trip over! It went very well. All 3 of the kids slept a great amount and we adjusted to the time change faster than we all expected!

Here are some ways that you can be praying now:
- Pray for school decisions. We just secured a place to live today!! Tomorrow we are registering at the local office here and we suspect that getting our names in the system will kick an inquiry for Ellison to go to school. We heard about a transitional school for kids who don’t know German and are praying that they will accept our appeal and let her in.
- We will be transient for the next month or 2 as things are worked out for our apartment. Please pray for patience as we continue to live in this mode. We are all ready to have a “home” of our own but we are praying that God will give us what we need each and every day to serve his well! We are currently living in the home of a widow in the local church as she is on vacation over the next 3 weeks. Once this time is up we need guidance for where we should head next as a family.
- Patience in this transition. It is very hard to not understand everything and to not be understood. We are thankful for people who are graciously taking their time to go to foreign affairs, cell phone companies and banks with us to make sure we understand everything and to help us get set up.
- Pray for the visa process. We are a bit burned from Austria although we  have been  told that it should be an easy process here, we are just putting our hope in the Lord and trusting him to lead us and others who are working with us.
-Pray for our kids as so much around them is different. Pray for courage for Ellison as she faces the biggest challenge of us all right now. Pray for Jude that he would be able to articulate his emotions and that we could support him through all of these changes with patience. Pray for Ian and Beth to be a untied force for our children and for peace and courage as well as we are put into lots of situations where we probably look really ridiculous trying to navigate this language.

Blessings to all of you! Thanks for your support.
The Chadwick’s

After a roller coaster of a month, we are so grateful and excited to announce that we will be headed to Augsburg, Germany as we continue to pursue life and ministry in Austria! I wish we could tell you about all the specific things that have happened in this past 2 months (even before the visa denial) that God used to gently nudge our attention towards Germany.  Augsburg is located a few hours west of Vienna and currently there is a couple serving there with TEAM (our sending agency). When they heard of our visa set back, they very quickly stepped up to the plate to help our family out. They have been working so hard to help us find accommodations and figure out the legalities of getting a residence permit for Germany.

Although our location will change, our first season will look very similar to what it would have been in Austria. We will attend language school, adjust to culture (this region’s culture is similar to Austria’s) and intern as well.

We will be leaving the US on April 11^th (less than 2 weeks)! We are really pumped about our new adventure. It is crazy here, but in an awesome way!

Between, Facebook, Twitter this blog and our inboxes, we have been inundated with kind messages and notes from you guys. We have definitely felt a sense of your prayers and concerns and we are so thankful. God is doing some really cool things and we are hopeful to tell the whole story of this past week and a half very soon.

Over this past week or so we’ve run into some encouraging resources and we wanted to share those.

-James MacDonald  did a message at Life Church entitled Passing the Test. It was hugely encouraging. You can go here to listen if you’d like.

- Sally Clarkson is an incredible woman who has a blog called I Take Joy. She served in Austria for a season of her missionary time which is a bonus! I wish I could read all of her resources and soak them in. If you are a mommy, then I highly recommend following her. Her insights and wisdom speak straight to my heart and she inspires me in so many ways just through her daily posts. Last week she posted this which brought me to tears.

- One final resource is Arabahjoy. This is another woman that I so wish I could meet. She too has served as a missionary and is a mother as well. She wrote about “How Not to Be a Negative Person“and I must have read it 10 times. It was convicting, encouraging and motivating.

Thank you again for all of your comments and kindnesses toward us. We are blessed by each of you. This is a big week as we await some answers concerning our next step. We would be honored if you would continue praying for us. We are praying for trust in God’s timing and ways, patience with this process and each other and to pass this test well.

Last week, we found out that our visa application to Austria was denied. It was crushing. We are still trying to process all that we feel right now but the number one overall emotion is hurt. We were all sorts of prepared to get on the plane very soon. We were positioning ourselves to be able to leave within 2 weeks of receiving our paperwork. We had just completed our final list of things to do once we had the visas in hand, so to receive a phone call saying that our applications had been denied really hit us hard.

So now what? For over 3 months we’ve been waiting on our papers to arrive and now we have to readjust our thinking about our next step. We can look back over these past 3 months and feel a sense of gratitude for having had the opportunity to live here with our dear friends, visit other friends and extended family and to grow as a family through this transition. But we would be lying if we did not say we aren’t asking why.

This week, we are really trying to lean hard in to our Savior and we are thankful to be surrounded by people from our church, our sending agency and those serving in Austria who are saddened right along with us. Thankfully, they’ve seen things like this happen before and they are a constant voice of reassurance that in the end we will look back at this with better perspective. We are all putting our heads together with a plan to get our family overseas as soon as possible.

A couple days after getting this news, Ian ran into one of his mentors from the past and he was surprised to still see Ian in the US. Ian told him that we’d just received some bad news about our visa and he abruptly stopped Ian and said “I am learning to say that things are good and things are hard. God will make good of all things as we trust Him…He often prevents what He could have permitted. Keep trusting.”

This is a big week as we all toss around ideas and we would love your prayers as a plan is developed for our family. Please pray as we continue to process this hard news. It is comforting to know that whatever plan we develop was already a part of THE PLAN from the start. Trusting in Him as he leads us.