I realize I have not really said anything about my trip to Austria (Österreich) yet. This is because I think slowly. I need time to process everything. If you’ve read my blog since day one, you know it has been a rough year. But if you bear with me, you will hear of Austria (though probably in bits and chunks).
Right now I have a few thoughts that I will share. The last couple of days have brought my mind back to my team and the adventure we had, and I miss both sorely. Right now, though, I want to focus in on one moment from the trip in particular: Mauthausen Concentration Camp.
I learned a lot in Austria. But I think one of the biggest lessons I learned that will stick with me for the rest of my life came from Mauthausen. I should probably begin with some history to set the stage for my lesson (here’s the Wikipedia article on Mauthausen if you’d like more info than I shall provide here). Mauthausen was a concentration camp constructed roughly in the middle of upper Austria. A common misconception is that concentration camps and death camps are the same. They are not. Mauthausen was focused on forced labor mainly (though plenty of prisoners still died there). Now, Mauthausen stands as a Museum, as a testament to the atrocities that were committed. By the choice of the people of Austria, a portion of it remains standing to prevent Austria from forgetting the horrid acts they helped perpetrate. It serves to educate the country on the lessons they learned.
Now, I have been quite familiar with World War II and the Holocaust. So the lesson I learned ended up being more focused on the present day. Our tour guide-Liesel if I recall correctly-gave a wonderful and extremely educational tour of Mauthausen. But it was a few moments’ conversation about America that taught me a lesson. Liesel was telling us about the current political situation in Austria at the time (presidential elections) and made a comparison to America. In Austria, she was talking about how she had been seeing a rise in the Neo-Nazis. This, as you can imagine, was deeply disturbing for her. She likened that situation to our situation with Donald Trump (meaning both countries seem to be wrestling with problems and ideas that had seemed were solved).
It was during this conversation that it struck me that Austria is very much like the USA. Like the USA, Austria is a country full of real people, and together, as a nation, they made some horrible mistakes. Now, like the USA, they struggle with the consequences of those mistakes and seek to learn from them and grow. I realized that every country must be the same. Every country has a past riddled with mistakes. Every country wants to learn and grow from those.
We may speak different languages and we may have different cultures, but we are all humans and very similar in many ways. So why should we let the simple differences create rifts between us? No good reason to do so exists.
I miss Austria, and I miss the ability to learn lessons like this from the people of another culture and country. Some day, I may go back. Some day I probably will. And it might be to do missions. Pray for me on that one, will you? Europe in general has been growing darker. Europe needs the gospel too. They seek healing even still from events like World War II and the Holocaust. The gospel can bring such healing. And God can use me to bring that gospel. Pray for me. Thank you.
-JP
Cair Paravel 