Looking down at the cloudy Austrian Alps from Eisreisenwelt, an ice cave.

By Philip Nice

Hey you guys! Just got back to the office after my first-ever trip overseas. I’m glad to see everybody had an awesome Feast! We sure did in Belgium. It was a brand-new site this year, and we all got along famously with the awesome European brethren. In spite of being so far from headquarters, they are so focused on what God is doing here. And everyone kept positive attitudes throughout the Feast, even through some of the inconveniences, etc. that popped up, and I thought that really showed how focused we are on the things that really matter at the Feast. The messages we heard early on set us up for a close-knit way of thinking and inspired us to make big changes in our lives—I felt like I need to really go to work on myself every day, making sure I improve and become more like God every day. It’s slow going sometimes, but I’m definitely inspired to overhaul and improve every major part of my life after the messages I heard. Also, it seemed like everyone mixed around really well like a big family, overcoming language barriers in some cases to do it. Some of the brethren over there speak five languages! They were in high demand for sure.

So, my random thought after all that is this: Travel!

I asked for some extra time off after the Feast and flew overseas for the first time in my life. Before the Feast, David Weeks, Benjamin Tauer and I met up with David Howard and spent Atonement and the Sabbath with the English brethren, who were wonderful; very focused on headquarters and sharp and good conversationalists. We took time to tour the Tower of London, where the crown jewels are located, and saw the crown that the Herbert W. Armstrong College crown is modeled after. We also flew to Ireland for a day to visit Mr. Conway, who is one of our few Irish members and is an extremely caring person. He took us on a night tour through the streets of Dublin and, after staying up late talking about our pasts and God’s truth, we took the next day to see Tarah Hill, where Jeremiah ruled in Ireland and built a school, and to have some authentic beef stew.

After Sabbath, we took a ferry from the famous white cliffs of Dover over to Dunkirk, France, the city famous for the miraculous evacuation of Allied forces from Nazi obliteration during World War II. We drove through the French countryside to Belgium, where we spent the Feast and visited Brussels and also Brugge, famous for being preserved in pretty much the same state it existed in centuries ago.

For our post-Feast adventure, our small group drove through the Netherlands countryside, visited the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, the Berlin Wall, the Holocaust memorial, the gigantic Hauptbanhof rail station and Museum Island in Berlin, Germany, while staying with the most generous and dedicated and fun German and Austrian brethren you can imagine. We also saw Munich, Germany, and the nearby Dachau concentration camp, a chilling and sobering but very important experience. Then we rocketed down the autobahn to Austria to see the towering angular granite faces of the Alps shooting out of the valley of Salzburg, where Mr. Mozart was born. Also, there was a spectacular ice cave, and a lodge on the mountaintop where you could eat and the birds would eat out of your hand. Oh the amazingness of it all.

We also drove up the Grossglockner, one of the highest mountain passes in Europe to Italy, where we saw Venice, the city built on water, and Pisa, plus Rome, an ancient, bustling, crazy place full of amazing ruins, particularly the colossally colossal Colosseum. Then we drove through the beautiful Tuscan countryside and the incredible vineyard- and garden-patched autumn mountainsides bordering the northern shore of Lake Geneva, Switzerland. After that it was the famous Paris, France. If you go, do the bike rental thing. In Paris you can rent bikes and ride all over the place and see amazing architecture in the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame as well as tons of other buildings, plus the River Seine, and about half a million cool restaurants, inns and shops—it’s the only way to see Paris, which looks even cooler lit up at night.

The whole experience was awesome: meeting different people, making new friends, seeing how different places do the same things in different ways, confirming or changing my perceptions of them—and, most importantly, eating new food! “Molte steppe,” a Belgian herb-sauce steak buried under a mountain of shoestring “frites,” good waffles, English fish and chips, zingy Indian food, German schnitzel, and pizza and gelato in Italy.

A once-in-a-lifetime trip for me, for sure. And only made possible by saving, prayer, “small” miracles, the generosity of my bosses—and the desire and decision to go for it! I could go on and on, and hopefully will, in future installments, to tell you the wonders of Europe that I experienced in my week-and-a-half whirlwind tour. But for now, the thought of the day is that you should travel.

Mr. Armstrong said travel was in the very definition of education, and it is so true. You learn new things, strengthen or change your perspective, and meet awesome people, especially if you’re in God’s Church.

You say to yourself, But Phil, I don’t have the ability to travel to Europe! Well, I didn’t have the ability either until my advanced age of 25. So I’m not talking about you making a whirlwind trip to Europe. I just mean travel! Understand the literal world of opportunities and education that lies outside of your house, and let the desire to see it and experience glow inside of you. Then, when God does open the door for you to travel, you’ll recognize it for the wonderful opportunity it is.

Start small is what I’m saying. Is there a woods behind your house? Is there a park down the street you’ve never been to in the 13 years you’ve lived there? Is there a creek to explore? Put on your boots, my friend, and travel! Go see the national park 45 minutes from your house that people travel hundreds of miles to see but you’ve never seen. Is there a science and space museum your dad would take you to on a Sunday? Is there a Church campout that you’d like to go to a couple of states away? Can you transfer internationally for the Feast if you help save up to pay your way? Go for it!

Of course, your parents are in charge, and it’s easier said than done, but if you look for and ask God for the opportunities to travel, He will give them to you! And your parents really want you to have the opportunity to learn and travel, so it’ll happen, if you want it and go after it.