Yesterday I had class.

This statement wouldn't look strange at first glance. But what if I told you that yesterday was SATURDAY?!? Yes, I had a class on Saturday. Our university has made several "block" courses for exchange students that meet 3 times during the semester. This sounds like a pretty sweet deal! However, each meeting session lasts from 9 in the morning until 5'oclock in the evening on the scheduled days, AND the meeting sessions are on weekends. Not cool. -- I really needed to take Negotiation Management this semester, and this was the only available time that I could take it... so, when 9am rolled around this Saturday, my roommate and I rolled out of bed and headed off to the university. The city was pretty much asleep, and so was I! haha. I really was not looking forward to this day in any way at all.

Nina and I got to class a little early and helped our professor set up the room (good tactic for getting a good grade!). She told us to put all of the desks out of the way, and place chairs in a big circle! There ended up being about 30 people in the class, and they looked as un-excited to be at school on the weekend as I did. BUT, we all ended up being pleasantly surprised! Our teacher gave us breaks every 1.5 hours, and we even got an hour lunch break in the middle of the day! The class ended up being very interactive, and we got into several different groups to do activities. We had to do some role-play activities, where groups would have to go through the steps of the negotiation process and negotiate out a compromise based on several different issues. This made the class seem a lot shorter than 8 hours!

The best part of the class was during the first group task. We were randomly divided up, and I got into a group with several girls that I didn't know. They were from Greece, Norway, Spain, and Austria! The first situation was that each group was competing against eachother for a marketing internship. It was our job to sell our group to the class and convince them why we should be chosen to intern with this company. We had to come up with a USP (Unique Selling Point) for ourselves, too. We had about 20 minutes to prepare our spiel, and then 5 minutes to present. My group was the last to go. -- The first group that got up they had a pretty good show, and were fun to watch. When it was my group's turn, we lined up and presented ourselves. A lot of the other groups' presentations focused on the same things: the valuable characteristics of each person in the group, but my girls decided to take a little twist on it. After we introduced ourselves I (being the unofficial leader) said, "But that is all that we are going to say about us as individuals, because, after all, we are not here for ourselves. This is all about the company!" After that, we talked about the different areas where we could most benefit the company, and what we would be willing to do for them! I thought it turned out great! -- After every group presented, we had to choose a group that we thought was the best and explain why (but we couldn't pick ourselves). At the end, the group with the most votes was the winner........ AND WE WON!!!!! I was really excited! Every group but 1 voted for us! :) That definately set the tone for the rest of the class, and I ended up having a pretty good time.

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Since today is Sunday, Amber and I decided to get up early to attend the International Baptist Church of Vienna again. We have been traveling on most Sundays, and have really missed going to church. We came on a great day! -- The speaker was a guy named Scott Ward, who was originally from California. He used to be a commercial actor in Hollywood, and even grew up knowing Drew Barrymore and Michael J. Fox! WOW! He talked about how he wasn't a Christian growing up in Hollywood, but that for some reason, he knew that he would be unhappy there, so he left. He ended up traveling in Amsterdam and actually stayed at a Christian youth hostel (he didn't know it was Christian, though). He met a guy who was also an actor while he was staying there, and this guy led him to Christ... right there in the hostel! -- Scott's message was centered around miracles. He told some stories of some of the most amazing miracles and answered prayers that he had either seen or had happen directly to him during his 20 years as a missionary in Africa. It was incredible! -- He said that his mission team lives a Life of Faith. He hasn't had a pay check in 20 years, but his ministry continues to get exactly what it needs. Why? Because of prayer. -- Scott said that all of the miracles that have happened to him have all resulted because of earnest prayer. He said that in order for miracles to happen in our lives, we have to first believe that they CAN happen through God. "In order to find God's will, we have to have no will of our own." We must believe in God's power through prayer, and amazing things will happen.

I really got a lot out of his message this morning, and (along with Amber) have decided to write Christmas cards containing Bible verses to our friends here in Austria. We want to try to witness to them before we leave! :) Today was definately great!