I lived in Vienna, Austria after following a calling on my life long before I knew the calling existed. (Side note: picture on this post is Siena, Italy with my bride this past year.)

In college I partook of my first mission trip in Belgium,  France and England.  The experience of living full out, flung into the sustenance of His daily Provision captured me.

Upon graduation I couldn’t see myself doing anything other than returning and seeing what God had already prepared. 

So in 1987 I found myself standing on a train platform with everything I owned on my back in my backpack.

The ministry team who would become my family for the next couple of years found me and greeted me with a joyous welcome.   

Fred and his wife Gwyneth graciously opened their home and provided me with a couch to sleep on.  They fed me and coached me on how to make the leap to this new world.

I arrived in January.  It was a very cold winter that year.  True to expectation Austria was covered in snow.  The airport had 12” plus on the runway and the airport was running shuttle vans to the planes on the runways to transport passengers back to the terminal.

I didn’t take my long John’s off except to quickly wash and dry them for the first 3 weeks.  Learning to get around the city and find my way was a magical time.

You see, I had come to Austria with a support system in place.  A family who could guide me and care for me until I found my way was waiting for me.

Fred told me I had to earn the right to live in the city.  It was before the internet, cell phones, and GPS systems on phones.

It meant learning how to say in German:

I would like to buy a newspaper.

Be able to read ads for apartments in the newspaper.

Read the city signs and maps.

Buy street car and Underground transportation tickets.

Ask locals how to find my way when lost trying to find my own place to live.

Introduce myself and be interviewed by potential landlords. 

It took about two weeks of searching apartments to find the apartment that would be home for the first year.

It was in a 100 year old building that had a publically shared, unheated water closet/ toilet in the center of the open building to the elements.

It was 3 blocks away from the Austrian summer palace of the former King and Queen of Austria.  Schloss Schoenbrunn which translates to Beautiful Brook.

It had royal gardens that are meticulously maintained in these modern days of tourism.  It became my morning jog whether in snow or sun for my daily workout.  

To run where Kings and Queens had once strolled felt like God’s gift for following His Voice.

Fred had coached me the first week of my arrival in the process of finding my own place, signing a lease, and registering with the local government as a guest of the country.  He said when you finish that process you will have earned the right to live in the city.

I felt elated that I had found a place to live and earned the right to live in this historical and magical place.

And my roommates and neighbors came from Iran and Kurdistan.  Immigrants and refugees trying to find their way just like me….except they came without a support system as I had.  

It wasn’t magical for them.  

It was hard.

I was about to experience their stories first hand.

My roommate who rented a bedroom/living room of his apartment to me was from Iran and he spoke German, English and Farsi and was a university medical student.

We fast became kindred spirits from different worlds.  It helped that he spoke English but also German as over the next year he coached me along my way to German fluency.

There were no cell phones in those days.  Just a rotary phone in our kitchen.  

The Iran Iraq war was under way and hence part of the reason these new friends landed in an apartment building in Austria.

The status of being a university student granted these Middle Eastern transplants an Austrian Visa to avoid the hell that was Iran in those days.

I still remember the phone ringing in the middle of the night.   I could hear the excited and relieved voices in Farsi on the phone.  The calls were relatives from Iran calling to let my roommate know that they were safe.  Something had happened back home like nightly bombings, etc… and they had called to say they were OK.

The months passed and I settled into a routine with my ministry team of reaching out to local Austrian college students and students from Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

One of my teammates’ names was Valerie.  She was humble, kind and compassionate to all she met.

She was the one who met Mohammed.  He was in his 40s from what I could surmise.  

His life had been hard.  Really hard.

He had lived on the border of Iran and Iraq.  When the war broke out he was apprehended and arrested by the Iranian secret police.  They accused him of being a spy for Iraq and threw him into an Iranian prison.

At least once in the night they came to his cell, led him down a long hallway, blindfolded him, stood him against a wall and proceeded to torture him via a mock firing squad.  Except they used blanks…..

Somehow in the providence of God he was released once it became clear he was innocent of the charges against him.

He fled Iran and found his way to Austria and that is how Valerie met him.  He was selling roasted chestnuts on the streets of Vienna.  He had an education and a good job in Iran as an International Freight Forwarder, but here he was relegated to selling warm chestnuts on the snow laden streets of the city.

Valerie invited him to come to one of our international evenings where we provided food, drinks, friendship and presented the message of Jesus to all who would listen.

Mohammed heard the Gospel.  He heard how Jesus’s life, death and resurrection had all been for him.  He heard the call of Jesus in his life and over time responded.

He believed in Christ and found new life.  He found his Savior, Shepherd, God and Father.  

The joy in his heart was palpable. 

Like the early Church’s persecution God had used something so evil and so tragic to lead His Children back to Himself.

Months passed and Mohammed grew in his faith.  

We organized an international evening some time later and invited all the Middle Eastern friends we could find to come.  

To hear Mohammed’s story.  His journey to faith.

Mohammed and I rode the street car together that night to the International evening.  It was crowded as word had gotten out that he would be speaking.

It is well known that converts from Islam to Christianity risk their lives especially if they go public.

On the street car that night not far from the Vienna City Park and the National Opera House I asked Mohammed if he was afraid to testify for Jesus in front of his Iranian peers.

I will never forget the look in his gentle brown eyes and the smile on his face.  A face weathered from life’s hard reality selling chestnuts on the streets of Vienna.

Mohammed looked at me through big over sized 1980s eyeglasses and with all humility said and I quote:

“I know who my Father is”

You see, he knew if God was for him who could be against him and he had no fear.  

Christ in him was so much stronger than he who is in the world.

I watched him testify and I can’t say that others found Christ on that night but that wasn’t the point.

He had testified before men and someday Christ will speak for him to the Father and Judge who reigns in Heaven. 

Many years passed and I lost contact with Mohammed…and then along came Microsoft’s Skype telephony software. It had a global directory of members.

So one day 25 years later I decided to look for my friend in the directory.

His name popped and it looked like he was in California.  So I called the number and a man answered.  Immediately I knew it was not my friend.

I apologized to the man on the other end for bothering him.  He asked me who I was looking for since they had the same name.

I gave him some information about who my friend had married and where I met him.

To my astonishment he said “you mean Mohammed #4”.  You see they all had the same first and last name but different middle names.

So I asked if he was still alive and could I reach him?  He told me he was living in London and gave me a number to call.

Excited, I made that call.  A voice answered.  It wasn’t my friend, but turned out to be Mohammed #3 who was his brother.  

My call happened at the exact hour that #4 was visiting his brother.   I heard laughter in the background.  Incredibly my friend recognized my voice and jumped to the phone.

He told me he had moved to London presumably to be nearer to other family members.

I asked him if he was still following Jesus….

He told me “Yes, but he was now handicapped and didn’t make it to Church often.   Then he said…..but my sister does as she had become a Christian too”.

God had allowed my journey to witness His Glory. 

We are all called, pursued and loved by God.  It is just a question of how we will respond and that response in some ways determines how much of His Kingdom we will see in this life.

He calls you just like he called me and Mohammed…….don’t miss that call. 

Listen for it ….and when you clearly hear it ….follow it.  

There is no greater journey than the one He calls you to and definitely no greater reward.

Following the call…..matters.

My first mission trip was with Operation Mobilization to France and then InterVarsity Christian Fellowship to England.

The trip started off in Sarnia Ontario where we spent a brief two days getting oriented and a dedication service. 

During the service at a local church the window was open, a bee flew in and stung me on the neck.  My body had an allergic reaction to the sting and they had to rush me to a local hospital where I promptly received an Epi shot in my fanny.  Later that day we flew to Brussels.  

Adversity started right  from the beginning of that journey.  A physical reminder that the spiritual battle we fight comes at a cost and sometimes it is painful.

In Brussels we joined several hundred other summer OMers (Operation Mobilization was the agency) at the Belgian Bible Institute for 3 days of training.

I got my first taste of old  Europe at breakfast. Warm brown milk with a simple cold breakfast.  

Funny how first impressions can last a lifetime.

Images of an old European building with ancient faucets, well worn hallways and old windows still paint pictures in my mind.  I still remember sitting on the lawn outside.  Somehow the low clouds drifting in from the coast and the bright green grass of early summer remain with me.  We slept on cots in a large open area within the building.

We met our team members there.  And there were people from several European countries as well as the U.S. to serve that summer.  At the end of the training they paired us with our teams and sent us to France with one caveat….you had to go with no money and no credit cards.

The principle was a simple Biblical model.  Like the early disciples they wanted you to daily be dependent on God’s Provision.

Take nothing, trust God.

So 8 of us loaded up in an old 1960s VW van loaded with Gospel Tracts, Bibles and Evangelistic books.  Our mission, as part of a larger six year plan, was to place a Gospel tract in every mailbox in France.

We were given a map and a list of villages to work over the next couple of weeks.  They gave us tents and we each had our own sleeping bags.

We headed South into the Great Unknown ready for the adventure at hand.

At the end of one of our first days tracting through villages in Southern France we found a French farmer who allowed us to camp on his property in an open field.  We woke the next morning to the morning mist on the fields and the sun rising on the horizon as we climbed out of our tents. 

The freshness of the morning remains with me to this day as a reminder of God’s goodness.  

I can still see a tree in the mist of the morning in my mind. There was time for each of us to mediate and begin the day with God.  To be filled up in Christ before the adversity of the day.

We ate breakfast, packed up the van, filled our bags with tracts and books and headed out for a village.  

The mission made a competition out of it between teams to see which team could complete the most number of villages in a day and we sold Bibles and books along the way.  Those sales were always enough to cover our expenses.

God was faithful each day to meet our needs.  

One morning in my devotion I prayed to God to provide for apples and chocolate.  It was a treat that I missed and so I asked Him for it.

Later that day in a village in Southern France it happened.  

In a conversation with a local villager the person wanted to buy one of my books.  The village local told me he wanted the book, had no money, but wanted to know if I would trade him for apples and chocolate….there it was…God reminding me that He is My Provider.

I worshipped God that night and look back on it as one of the most important lessons of my life.  

He is faithful.  Sometimes we have to answer His Call to be aware of that faithfulness even though it is always there.

Somewhere along the way in a local village a house was robbed while we were in the area.  It was reported to the police and we were identified as possible candidates for the robbery.  Apparently someone had climbed through the window of a local house and stolen something.  We were called into the police station and questioned simply because we had been in the area.

Whoever climbed through that window left a footprint/shoe print in the mud outside the window.   The police checked our shoes for a match.  We knew it wasn’t us so we just experienced the disruption in our mission with curiosity.

That night we were scheduled to sleep in the sanctuary of a local church in Bayonne, France.  When the police released us the local church greeted us with a hearty welcome and a feast.  A farmer in the church in anticipation of our arrival had slaughtered a lamb and roasted it for us.

I was experiencing God’s faithfulness daily and it amazed me.  

The plan for that summer was to gain two different mission experiences.  One with OM and one with IFES (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students)

So after a short stretch tracting villages on the edge of the Pyrenees mountains the time with OM was about to come to an end.  

They arranged for me to stay one week in an empty apartment in the center of Paris and spend my days working in a salvage junkyard during the day.  

OM used the transitional week before I went to IFES as a chance to strip donated cars for parts that could be used to keep their fleet of vehicles running.

So for one week they gave me an old green Ford sedan to drive to the junkyard where I would strip cars for parts.

The evenings were free and it provided for the opportunity to experience Paris in all its glory.   To live as a local with a car and an apartment.  There it was again…God meeting my daily need.

He also gave me a new family during that leg of the journey.  It was in Paris during that week that I met Lindsay Brown who was the leader of the French version of IVCF (InterVarsity Christian Fellowship).

Lindsay was originally Welch and a soccer player.  He went on to be the Global Head of IFES years later.  A particularly brilliant mind and leader I count it all joy in God’s goodness to have spent a brilliant few days with Lindsay, his wife and larger team.

They ran a summertime evangelistic coffeehouse not far from the Latin Quarter in downtown Paris.  Each night interested seekers would come and discuss Jesus over coffee.   They had received invites during the day around the city from students like me who were doing their summer missions.

On two of those nights I had the opportunity to eat in the local bistros within the Latin Quarter.  To taste of the Goodness of God.

The following weekend there was an Evangelistic training seminar in a conference center on a hill high above Paris.  We broke French bread, shared common French red table wine and ate supper together while learning about all that God was doing across France that summer.  I still remember looking out over the city lights and being grateful for the Goodness of God.

At the end of that week it was time to pack up and head to Bournemouth England.  A popular beach town on the southern coast.

The model in Paris was replicated in Bournemouth.  It is a popular place for international students to come and learn English.  A way for students from all over Europe to come and have a vacation and learn English.

Our targeted population that week was these students.  Young people eager to learn English and practice what they learned in schools around the city during the day after hours in local pubs, churches, and restaurants.

We capitalized on that opportunity by inviting them to come, have a cup of coffee, and discuss social and religious topics to expand their vocabulary.

Of course our aim was to take the opportunity to share Jesus with them.

About mid week I was out on the beach giving out invitations to come to the evenings.  It was a hot day and I grew weary.  All the travel of the prior days and the heat of the midday sun were taking a toll and I needed a brief rest.  Just a few moments to re-energize for the second half of the day.  

Fishing for lost souls can be exhausting.  He never promised us that it would be easy.  Always an emotional challenge to constantly be meeting people who had no interest or minimal interest.  

To ask yourself if it matters to anyone and push through the physical and emotional fatigue.

That’s when it happened….almost as a reminder to me that it is God who draws people to Himself and not us.  If we are faithful and diligent maybe we get to see His Glory in regard to individual conversion but it is not promised.  

So in the heat of the day I wandered into an old local Church sanctuary just to feel the coolness of the building and rest.  I had no idea what was about to happen.

I quietly slid into a back row pew to rest.  In a way to hide from the exhaustion of the beach.  

We always knew who the targeted students were because the schools provided branded backpacks to them as a way of advertising their programs to other students.  It made it easy for us to find them.

Apparently some language students had the same idea as I.  They had come to rest and feel essentially the coolness of the hour in the building.

A door swung open to my right from a hallway.  An older English man came out and looked straight at me.  He came over and said “nice to see a young person in the church that day”.

I thought it odd, but then came the procession of people and a coffin.  I had stumbled into a funeral.  A visual symbol of the spiritual death all around us.  The reminder of why we were there in the first place.  To bring the Light of His Resurrection to a sea of lost students.

I noticed the students in front of me were just as startled as I was and quietly got up to leave before the service got started.

We all exited the building at the same time and on the steps I jumped back into action and started handing out invitations to the evening coffeehouse meetings.

That’s when I met Annilee from Finland. I introduced myself and explained what I was doing.. asking her if she had any interest in spiritual things.  In her newly formed broken English sentences she nodded and said yes.

Not wanting her to misinterpret my intentions I explained that there were girls on my team and she could come and have coffee with them.  We parted, I handed out the last of my invites and then waited to see if she would actually show.

She came that week.  She heard the Gospel clearly and made a decision to give her life to Jesus and follow Him.

The whole journey of the summer had led me to her on a chance meeting.  God showed up in the life of one woman.  Isn’t it like God to go to great links to pursue us.  To send people to find us…

Two years later I found myself trekking through Finland on a summer break and decided to follow up with Annilee as she had given me her old school physical mailing address.

I looked her up, called and she invited me to come and visit.  She and her pastor met me at the local train station and they invited me into their lives for two days and to speak on a Wednesday night service at her local church.  So that Wednesday night Annillee and I spoke to her congregation.  Together we explained how her journey to a tourist beach town in southern England had led her to Jesus.  I spoke in English she translated it to Finnish.  We had come full circle.  From death to life in Christ.

You see what I didn’t know was that she had contemplated suicide during that week when she was raised to life in Christ…just like God to show up in the nick of time..

And the story wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t finish with a short note on the goodness of God.

Her Finnish pastor invited me to experience Finland at its historical and cultural best.  He took me to a 200 year old wooden sauna built on the edge of a local lake…just a simple wooden structure, with a dock to the lake.  The Fins sit in that cabin, build a fire under a stack of heated rocks and pour water over them to steam the place up and then run out on the dock, jump in the ice cold lake and do it all over again.

There it was yet again….the Goodness of God in all its Glory.

So today if you hear His Calling….go….follow…and make Disciples of All Nations.

You will always be grateful you did!