Austria

The Desert Flower youth group members went on a trip to Austria from August 1^st to 11^th, so that we could meet kids there and spend a whole week with them. We were 21 young people and 4 amazing counselors who organized the trip really well. The goal of the trip was to meet a group of European youth, to study the story of Ruth together and then at the end see a play on Ruth’s story.

But I will start the story from the beginning of the flight: all of us in Desert Flower arrived at the airport with family and friends. All of us had been eagerly looking forward to this flight for months, and on the day it finally arrived we left Israel with a smile and hugs for our parents. The travel was tiring and long; we reached Austria at night and didn’t know what we’d see in the daylight. When we reached the house where we would live for the week, they met us with a generous welcome with food and drink and had made the effort to write “ברוכים הבאים” (Welcome) in Hebrew with waffle bars. We were all tired and only wanted to sleep. The next day we woke to excellent food and then we went outside and were surprised and excited to see the view with the Austrian mountains and grass; and of course we enthusiastically took pictures of God’s natural creation.

The kids in the KISI house, where we stayed the whole trip, were from different countries such as Germany, Holland, Austria. At first, they distributed stickers with the names so we could get to know them. And they also divided us up into small groups where each group had at lead one boy/ girl from each country. In each meeting of the group we always told about our experience that day and learned about the presence of God in our own lives. The first Mass there was a really strange Mass, since during the Mass they started to dance and sing and it didn’t feel like a Mass but felt like a kids’ show since it wasn’t the Mass we were used to. And every evening after dinner each group from a country presented their culture through questions or quizzes. For example, Austria presented their special costume which characterizes them. Germany presented themselves as the country which invented many things such as chewy candies, cars jeans and more. Holland presented their country and we were surprised to discover that they have a king. We also presented Israeli culture with all the religions in Israel and the Israeli character through skits, and then we told them that Israelis like to celebrate and we had a small party. All the Europeans were in culture shock but also enjoyed it. There was a day where they taught all of us a dance together, and everyone enjoyed it and wanted to learn more moves to do the dance. Our Israeli group also learned a song in German; it was hard and funny to learn a song in the German language. After we understood how to sing it we showed the Europeans that we learned it, and they sang us a song they learned in Hebrew and we were impressed that Europeans sang in Hebrew - and they sang it really well. After several days we all chose a topic we wanted to participate in, such as dance, drama, song, technical. After we chose a topic each group had to perform what they did with their topic. The dance group performed the full song we learned from the first day, the drama group presented the experiences of the whole trip.

There was a day where they sent us to hike in the mountains so we could see the beautiful nature in Austria, in the mountains each of us had to take a partner he didn’t know and to speak of what they have in common during our walk. At the end each of us shared what they had in common and each couple had lots of things in common. On the mountain there was a little mountain train where each sits alone and chooses if he goes slow or fast; we encouraged each of the kids in the group and it put a smile on all our faces.

Another outing we had was in the city of Salzburg. The activity we had in the city was that we all split up into our little groups and had a navigation contest in the city. We walked around the city with zero knowledge about the place but during the navigation we saw how nice the people are and how beautiful and full of life that city is.

There was one evening with a quiet night prayer in the church, where each sat by himself and talked to God, each of us felt God’s presence with him. We were moved, for some of us it touched their hearts and they cried; all there came out hugging each other and feeling God’s love for them. It was one of the high points of the trip in the religious aspect, that quiet moment where only you are speaking to God and understand all the wonderful things He did for you.

As I said, at first the Masses were really strange to us but afterwards we got used to them and started to sing and dance; we understood that a Mass can be many possible ways in order to praise the Lord. One of the main topics of the trip was the story of Ruth, Ruth’s story is divided in four chapters and each day we learned one chapter and at the end we drove to a hall where there were other people who came to see the Ruth musical. We didn’t understand a word but we understood the story itself.

At the end we took leave of everyone there with peace and hugs and prayer and went home to Israel missing all the experiences we had there.

Grant