Here is the first one.
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29 Juni 1987 Tel.: 44-10-974Dear Mom & Dad
I'm terribly sorry that I haven't written you sooner. It's been difficult because the girl I'm supposed to be staying with (a 2-year termer) is very difficult to get a quiet moment with to be able to sit down and write. She's the one from Alaska that phoned about rooming together. Anyways, I've been able to spend some time with individuals and families to get to know them, what some of the struggles are, etc. For example, the issue of babysitting - assuming it's a single girls' ministry or dividing attention between Austrian life/ministry and [the Vienna mission]. It's nice to be able to find some of these things out now before I'm personally confronted with them. Then, too, I hope it'll help me be sensitive to others in these areas.
I've found an apartment about 20 min. walk from [the Vienna mission] office. It's a large studio apt., furnished, with lots of nice cupboard & storage space and a Christian owner. The utilities are still hooked up from the last renter ([a Vienna mission] bachelor), which saves on that expense, and there is no lease. So I could still look for a one bedroom apt. Also, it's on a hill (100 steps!!) facing the west, which cuts down on the heating cost and leaves a nice view of the Viennese forest on the hill it faces. Not bad, huh? The owner, Eliziabeth, is in Germany now so I'm waiting for her to get back before moving in. At least I'll have a place for the junior high group to stay at.
You're not going to believe what I just did (well, ok, so maybe you will). I bought this nice airmail stationery (actually, it's just the standard) so that postage would be cheaper. But I didn't realized that the top sheet was not airmail paper. (D-uh) So this is (what you are holding in your hands) something that is not airmail paper!
Anyways, I've been to the [Vienna mission] offices several times and [my sending mission] office serveral times. And today I went to sit in on some of the orientation of the summer workers, which is actually somewhere else yet. Tomorrow I'll go back there and then in the afternoon [my boss's boss's secretary] will start training me in my secretarial position. I had dinner at her and her roommate's apartment this evening and I think we'll work together really well.
I'm going to be secretary to the managing director. So I'll be involved with a lot of the highly sensitive aspects of the ministry. People often don't know from one dept. to the next certain sensitive facets of the ministry. On Mondays & Fridays I'll be filling in as receptionist till they get someone permanant for that.
I'm seeing a bit of a problem in locating a German church. There aren't very many here to begin with, and then I guess sometimes there are a lot of North Americans (like myself) in the church. Last Sunday I was supposed to meet [another missionary] & go to his church, which is evidently the nearest one. But I waited to meet him at the wrong corner. Oops! I ended out going to the International Chapel, which meets in the afternoon. I didn't like it.
I still have to "anmeld" (register with the police) then apply for a visa, and then sign up for the Austrian health plan. I have the form to anmeld, so I'll probably take care of that Thurs. a.m. (It's open Tues. & Thurs. a.m. at this particular place.)
More later.
Lots of love,
[Meg]
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I arrived in Vienna June 23, so this letter is written about a week after my arrival.
First of all, you'll note that the mission continued to make my desire to live alone an issue, but continuing to have me rooming with a roommate at all, but also with the same one they had plied me with while I was still in the USA, despite my having requested to live alone. When I arived and continued the request they did comply, but I had to be adamant and insistent, which is, of course, more stressful and also involves more moving around.
It sounds like they had told me that I was going to be working with great secrets. Whether or not that was to be true is another matter. Later on I learned to not trust these kinds of things they'd say. They could just as easily be testing me as anything else. But I wouldn't have known that yet, not at this early stage.
It's ironic that I didn't like the Vienna International Chapel and by the end of my time in Vienna I'd be attending there. The person I was at this early stage could not have fathomed what the person I'd have become by the end of my two years with the mission.
This letter is so peppy and upbead, it's just incredible. If I only knew what awated me.
