Mother's Day

Having Tea – Dad, Mom wearing her new shawl, Ray Benfield and Brenda holding Jeremy

I received a beautiful brown flowered-fringed-shawl-scarf from Brenda like all the Austrian ladies wear. As I was wearing my gold colored shirt and sweater set today, the brown scarf went real well with it. We left of church here in Bad Ischl at 9:00 am – it started at 9:30. The Baptist Church here is not part of the Southern Baptist but never-the-less a Baptist Church. Tom knew the Paster (named Gunter). We arrived early and the 19 of us took up almost the whole church! It was a room no bigger than Betty’s family room. It was real pretty with bouquets of fresh flowers, nice wooden chairs with cushions in them. About 32 (I counted them) men, women, children and 4 teenagers finally arrived and our song leader came in with his guitar. He was all dressed in his Austrian outfit. He played and led us in two songs. Then the paster had prayer. Then our song leader went to the organ and another man came up and led us in two songs. I did not recognize any tunes but they were beautiful. Then the paster dismissed all the children (there were 12 of them) to go to Sunday School. Then another man told us about a conference he attended. Then another prayer and then the sermon. We sat on next to the last row with Tom right behind us – so Tom whispered interpreting his sermon all the while for us. It was very interesting. His sermon was on Joshua and the Walls of Jericho. After the sermon, another prayer, and then all the children marched back in with the song leader. He was out with them practicing a song. The children marched to the front and sang (in German now) “He’s got the Whole World In His Hands” including one verse He’s got the fat and the skinny in his hands – and then He’s got the mothers in his hands. Kristopher sang right along real good. Then each child took from a basket a bouquet of freshly picked mixed wildflowers and took it to their mother or/and grandmother till every lady in the church had a bouquet. It was so sweet and cute. Then we sang a closing hymn. Immediately flowing everyone  stays for tea and cookies set up outdoors. Of course it only about 10:45 and so we stayed and talked to Gunter, the preacher spoke some English so I talked to him. Then one of the young girls wanted to show us her apartment that was part of this building. She is the 19 year old daughter of the paster of Brenda and Tom’s church here in Linz. They are going to retire next March and are re-modeling an apartment there in this same old house so she showed us around in it too.

Back to our hotel for a delicious Sunday dinner. I hated to leave “our hotel”, it was so cozy, comfortable and the companionship of the other missionaries and new friends we might not ever see again. (Plus no cooking or cleaning up!)

We got packed up and headed for Prien, Germany where we spent the night in a guest house. It was a very picturesque place, up on a hill, and our rooms were in front, right over an open air café! About 8:30 we decided to go to bed, it was a long day and would you believe there were about 25 people out there drinking, talking loud and some singing! But lucky by 9:00 pm they all left and it got quiet. Slept very good.

Sunday afternoon after we arrived Brenda and Tom showed us around; where they used to live, the language school they attended, Jeremy’s babysitter, Kristopher’s kindergarden. We then parked the car and walked down to the beautifully lake where hundreds of sail boats were out. It’s a large lake, big enough that it has 2 large boats for sigh seeing cruises. We counted 8 tour buses in the parking lots! Hundreds of people were out walking, sitting on beaches, and just everywhere. Because of the late, Brenda said it was a tourist city.

We had pizza and salad at a darling restaurant for supper. Then we went by the Millers to see their new apartment and Tom had to talk to Butch about meeting him the next morning to see about helping him get the children in school and registering them with the police.

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