the first meeting through Rachel

I thought that 2 days ago the load of information, detailed info, about my project in Klosterneuburg was, at some level, exhausting. Well, God has the best sense of humor and knows that I love learning new things. Hmmm...true, I do love that..but NOT that fast :)

This morning I got an amazing email(including pictures) from a lovely lady who works with those handicapped people in Whonheim (Wg) - residential care home. She wrote an amazing introduction of the inhabitants at Wg and I would love to share her email so that you could also have a glimpse at what I will be doing in Klosterneuburg for 9 months.

We have 2 Wohnheime. Called Wg1 and Wg2. I'm working in Wg1. It is an old house with a lot atmosphere. There are 10 person with a mental handicap. 1 Women (Elfi, 46 years old, a bit bossy, but also very helpful. She is also deaf, so we communicate with gestures and a bit of writing. She likes cooking, doing work on the computer, going to the cinema, doing art projects.) and 9 Men:

Markus (also called Maxi) 30 Years and Chris (Christian, 9 years). They are our "youngsters" and they behave like 14 , 15 years old and have like brothers a lot of word fights with each other. Markus likes sport (biking, swimming, skiing) and cooking (he cooks every second Sunday), doing art projects and going out. Chris likes to be lazy (but mostly because he is unsure if can cope with things - in the little village, where he comes from, he was always the stupid one). But if he starts doing things, he does them good and likes doing it (swimming, cooking, art projects).
Paul (60) is our genius. He loves working at computer and reading; His mind stores facts in an amazing way, especially geographic facts. He also likes cooking.
Helmut (43) is our musician, he can play the keyboard by memory (lots of songs but also improvising), he likes cooking and swimming.
Gottfried is our "witty clown". He doesn't lile being hurried and enjoys sitting in the garden doing nothing at all (he hates walking), except joking with you.
What he likes is dancing and eating :-)
Wolfgang (52) is the silent one. He enjoys doing things (like going out, walking, ...) and drawing.
Georg (41) is also deaf and autistic. He likes to watch TV and cooking. He is very interested in everything, but also likes to be on his own. If he doesn't get the things according to his wishes he likes to show his "I'm going to die from heart attack show". He can draw really nice pictures and together with his father he has travelled and travels a lot in Europe.
His sister (Gertrud) is working as member of staff in the WG1.
Karl 62 is the eldest and also blind. He likes the games he can play and is not a great one for sport and walking, but he loves folks music and likes dancing.

And last but not least: Rainer. I think he is the most demanding. He quite clever but also autistic and he never learned to take care of himself (his mother still feeds him). So dressing and washing and all those thing have to be done. He is nearly 2 Meters big and very active and restless (walking all the time). He doesn't like to be asked join in in the activities and at the same time he doesn't like to be alone. This makes him quite often unhappy.
His idea of us is we should be like his mother (which we don't want to be).
We all try to make him more self reliant.

I cannot wait till I meet those people in real life. Obviously, this it is going to be such a challenging time. But I hope and pray that God would use me in all the ways so that my character would be transformed and strengthen.