JEREMIAH 29:11
WHAT?” I said when my parents told me we were going to be moving to Austria for a year to be missionaries. “I’m not going!” But about a year later I found myself crying on a plane as I was flying away from my country, my home, my friends, my family, my whole life. It was really scary going to a new school and a German-speaking church where I couldn’t understand anything. It was especially hard to know that we couldn’t do all the traditions we usually do with our extended family. I cried and asked God why He was doing this. But after a while, things started to change. I found three really close friends that I had as much fun with as I did with my friends back in the States. I was learning more and more German and was excited to go to our church to look up words I didn’t understand. We got to experience Viennese culture: the Austrian foods, cathedrals, museums, palaces, and a more slow and relaxed pace of life. When it was time to fly back home, I cried all over again, not wanting to leave my home in Baden, Austria but wanting to go back to my home in America too. God knew all along that I would love the year I spent in Austria and that it would change me for the better. Because now I know that if something happens that I really don’t want to happen, God has a plan to change it into good.
Allison Engel, 16, Wheaton North High School, Wheaton, IL
God, so often I fight and cry and say I don’t want
to do something. But then I do it and it turns out so great.
Thank You!