September 13th Festival Day

Side note: Sorry that I have not blogged in awhile. My family and I have been packed with getting ready for my sisters wedding, school, breeding goats, more school, visiting my grandmother etc. I am terrible sorry. We only have one more Vienna blog post after this, yay!

September 13^th, 2015

We had breakfast, got ready, and I had another wonderful Skype time with my parents. I have thoroughly enjoyed being able to talk with my family every morning and night. I also enjoyed reading their sweet notes every morning. We had a short worship/ devotional time that morning because we had to rush over to the “Konservatoium” (the Concert Hall) to practice for 15 minutes. We all had to stay very focused because of the limited time. Practice went really well. The concert hall is rather small but very beautiful. There is maybe 200 seats in there but only 100 were open to the public.

 

After practiced we headed over to the tram to get to the art museum. We paid and got our passes and then headed upstairs. The first things that you see in the art museum are tall ceilings with beautiful paintings and then a very large naked statue of a man, completely exposed and that is how this whole art museum was like. There are a lot of beautiful paintings, especially ones portraying scenes from the Bible which was really great. I wasn’t too crazy about the art museum just because of all of the inappropriate paintings.  This wasn’t my favorite thing to do on this trip but it was still interesting.

 

We had lunch and then Emma #2, her grandmother Huntley, and I went on some last minute shopping. We headed back to the hotel to get ready quickly, grabbed a couple of snacks, prayed together, and headed to the Concert Hall. We sat in the third and fourth row to watch the other performers. They all did a wonderful job! Before we all walked onto the stage we all huddled up to pray because all of our voices were either very sore from singing so long to the refugees or our voices were completely gone. We prayed that He would restore our voices… and He did! When we first arrived onto the stage we smiled, took deep breaths, and opened out mouths to sing. We all just smiles and sang for our Heavenly Father.

 

A verse that kept coming to my mind when we were singing is Psalm 9:11, “ I will sing praises of the Lord, enthroned in Zion; I will proclaim His news among the nations of what He has done.” We were singing unto the nations. It was a wonderful experience and feeling. There were people from all over the world, and here we were proclaiming and singing of God’s news and love among the nations. We were doing what God has told us to do in His word. I had such a wonderful time singing in the concert hall. It was kind of like singing in the Cathedral because our voices carried out through the whole building and then you could hear your voice come back to you. When we finished singing they all gave us an Austrian encore! It’s when you start clapping slowly and then the clapping gets faster and faster. God was working in our lives and the lives around us. It was amazing to share the love of God to the people there. There was another orchestra scheduled to perform after us, but they had to cancel for some reason so our tiny American choir was the finale for the festival! This was all God. Thank you Abba Father!

 

After the performance, we headed over to a Indian restaurant with Mrs. Auliee, Yohanus, and Max. The food was kind of spicy, but yummy. After our fun dinner we all said our farewells and thank yous. Mrs. Auliee did so much for us, I can’t even explain how grateful I was for her. She was amazing help, supporter, and friend for our travels in Vienna. We headed back to our hotel and I finished packing for leaving the next day. I had packed the night before so I just had to wrap some things up. I got ready for bed, talked on Skype with my parents and then went to bed.