A special gift

I love, love, love autumn.  Actually, I love all the changing seasons and their reflection of God's creativity, but I especially love the beauty of the fall colors.  Living where we do, it is not something we get to see very often. Well, ever...  

We do have seasons as far as temperature goes.  Summer is HOT (but thankfully not humid) and winter is oh. so. cold.  I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever been as cold in my life as I was last winter.  The outside temperature never gets much below freezing but the cold gets locked into the buildings early on and just seems to crawl under your skin and stay there!  So, anyway, we have seasons as far as temperature but that's about as far as it goes.  

Don't get me wrong, Jordan has a beauty all it's own that we are truly learning to love.  Mostly I love that when I look at the rocky hillsides and rugged beauty of the desert, I can picture the wandering Isrealites or Jesus sitting on the hillside preaching.  It's a very unique beauty.  Sometime you have to look a little harder to see it, but it's definitely there.  It's more of a rugged beauty, really.  

Jason and I had the chance this past week to travel together to a meeting in Austria.  We knew going in that there would be no time to sight see or really do much besides travel in to our meeting sight (a 3 hour drive from Vienna) and travel back to the airport at the end.   Thankfully though, the beauty of this place, was nothing that you had to strain to see.   When God made this little section of the universe, He held nothing back!   We considered it such a gift to be able to see the amazing fall colors and the beauty of the first snowfall in this enchanting little village all in one week.  Forgive my less than awesome photography skills and try to picture the beauty we saw!  

Our village was nestled in the rolling hills and the first snow was so beautiful.  I really don't know that I've ever seen the combination of snow and autumn leaves before.  So beautiful and such the refreshment that my soul needed!

This is the main street in the village where we stayed.  

Some of the village homes off the main street...

(is that picture perfect or what?!)

The sun didn't come out until our last day when we drove back to the airport but it made the drive spectacular.   And I know, for many of you, autumn leaves are something that you have the joy of seeing, well, every year, but take it from someone who can't open the back door to catch a glimpse of this type of color display, don't take it for granted!

the perfect picnic spot...

...with a castle in the background

I marveled all week at God's creativity.  From Jordan with it's brownish desert beauty that takes a bit more effort to "see" to the breathtaking rolling hills of Austria.  What an amazing God we serve!