Introduction
So, I guess we should start with introductions: We are Matt and Abby Edwards. Together with our three daughters (Kylie is 16, Madeline is 14, and Audrey is 9), we are missionaries in Linz, Austria! I know, I know…”the hills are alive”! Sounds super exotic, right? It´s amazing, for the record, but let´s start at the beginning.
Matt and I met in college. 2001, to be exact. I was at Maryville University in St. Louis County, and he was at College of Pharmacy in St. Louis city. We were both involved pretty heavily with Campus Crusade for Christ at the time, and happened to meet at a Halloween Party. I had gone with friends, dressed as a paramedic, complete with cardboard ambulance, and Matt had gone dressed as a hick. Now, when I say hick, I´d like to paint a picture in your mind: overalls, baseball cap with fake, greasy looking, long, black hair attached to the back, thick framed glasses, and “Billy Bob Thornton teeth”, as we affectionately referred to them as. It was special, and although I liked the nice hick…he´d let me borrow his gloves, because it was cold outside… I had no idea what this guy actually looked like. Luckily, he showed up at the weekly Cru meeting the next week, and so I didn´t have to wonder for very long. He was cute, and it was really love at first sight.
We knew pretty early on that this was the real deal and that we were called to ministry, although whew knew that breaking into youth ministry would be difficult? We finally landed our first ministry job in 2008: 4 years after we got married, 2.5 years after Kylie´s birth, and 2 months after Madeline´s. We loved our time as senior high youth pastors at River of Life in Alton, IL, however when we were asked in 2012 to come and serve at New Voice Church in St. Louis, MO, we knew it was God!
Our time at NVC was challenging, but valuable. It was there that we learned about cross cultural ministry, and where God really shaped our idea of what ministry is, and how it´s most effective. We also learned what it meant to be more community oriented, rather than just church oriented. However, out time there was short-lived, because in 2015 we knew the Holy Spirit was calling us to missions, and we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that our future home was somewhere in Europe.
Guys…it´s a bit unsettling to hear the words, “Go” from the Holy Spirit. “Leave everything you know. Give up the future you envisioned, go to a new land, adopt a people and a culture, and live your life with radical faith, trusting me for everything.” It was terrifying and gut-wrenching to think about. But also exciting: adventure! Something crazy and new! After a long process of praying, listening, conversing, we´d narrowed down our list of countries to Ukraine, Ireland and Germany (note, we live in none of those places). One by one, the Holy Spirit shut the doors. Ukraine was particularly difficult to say goodbye to, because it had been in our hearts for years (for those who don´t know, we spent 2 months in Odessa with Campus Crusade for Christ, and grew to love everything about that land). However…how does the saying go? When God closes one door, He opens another? True to his nature, he closed the doors, but opened the door to Austria WIDE. We could´ve never imagined loving a land so immediately and completely as we love Austria, but we do. We visited in summer 2016, and never looked back.
In January 2018, we flew out of St. Louis, MO with 10 suitcases and lots of hopes and dreams, and headed to our new home!
We could´ve never dreamed what God had in store for us here, and we are constantly thankful that He knew exactly where he´d made us for. Austria is our heart, and we love the people, the culture…even the language (although Austrian dialect is sometimes a special form of torture!). We look forward to our future here and what the Holy Spirit has planned for this place.
Our prayer is that this blog can be a place where you get to know us better, and where we can be a little more open and detailed than we are in our newsletters. Let´s face it: newsletters are where you go to get the bullet points. They´re business. We want to share our hearts. We want you to catch God´s heartbeat for Europe and we want to share even the tiniest bit of love that we have for this place with you!
So, what can you expect from this blog? Encouragement. We want to celebrate the wins here, and how God moves. We want to share in the little tiny things that inevitably end up showing God´s amazing plan unfolding! Sometimes you might catch our frustration or confusion. It´s part of the process! When we live our lives out in faith, we often don´t know what the next steps are. But the Holy Spirit does. We will also dive deeper into the complex issues of our time; things we might mention as prayer points in our newsletters, we will dive deeper into in this blog. We want you to understand (if you´re interested) the broader scope of life and ministry in Europe.
Be blessed! We look forward to this journey with you!
