by Anthony Cooke
Selling flowers outside Calvary Chapel in Las Vegas on Christmas Day. Lots of kind Christians bought flowers and me food. Christmas in the U.K. sucked. There was a deep feeling installed that it was wrong to go home or visit your spouse. I really had to fight to get one extra day to travel to Austria. In the end she left with a brother anyway. Church didn’t care, said it was my fault. Sorry people, but that’s the truth. Thanks. I survived and was re-blessed to another lovely Austrian sister and we live in Vienna and have two beautiful children. God wanted me in Austria it seems. Well my peer brothers and sisters were generally OK it was higher up the leadership chain where judgement fell. Do I forgive them, not really, because they hurt a lot of people but anyway it’s also not my position to judge them. What we need to do is not emulate them. Experiences like that made me want to build a kinder, more tolerant and more accepting community and I hope we are managing it here in Vienna, Austria is where I finally landed.