Living the Longdrop Lifestyle

I don't know what it's like where you live, but for most of my life I have lived in places where you put all your rubbish in the bin (or in these days of recycling, it might be several bins) and, on a certain day of the week, you put those bins out in the street for the town council or municipality to come by and empty them. Here in the province of Málaga, it's a slightly different system: it's your own responsibility to separate your rubbish into glass, paper, containers and bio-degradable stuff (basura orgánica) and then you take it to the street corner, where a row of stainless steel bins awaits you. Except they're not really bins: when you open the lid and drop your rubbish inside, it actually falls far down into the bowels of the earth - rather like what my African friends would call a "longdrop" toilet. It's simply gone.... never to be seen again! (although one assumes that the town council has a way of getting rid of all those milk cartons and plastic bottles.)

The other day, as I dropped my basura orgánica into the depths of the pit, it made me think about a conversation that I'd been having with a lady that I met last week. This young woman had the feeling that there was too much rubbish in her past and she couldn't imagine that God could ever really forgive her for the way she had lived before she recently became a Christian. As we chatted, I read to her from Psalm 103, which says that God "rescues our life from the pit," and that, because His great love for us is as high as the heavens are above the earth, He removes our sins as far away from us as the east is from the west. A similar verse in Micah 7: 19 says that God forgives all our past sins and "hurls them into the depths of the sea."

As I watched my rubbish fall into the depths of the earth and disappear from sight, I thought that this is the way God wants us to live our lives: He wants us to be quick to recognise our faults and failings, so that He can forgive us and hurl those things far away from us. He doesn't leave them sitting around to remind us of wrong things we did in the past, but He puts them out of sight and out of His mind. By His grace, those who trust Him can live life without guilt or shame. When we walk by our Alhaurin "longdrops,"  my friend and I can remember and thank God for His compassion and forgiveness.

A token of her infection...?

A couple of weeks ago (see 29 October) I told you of my little medical adventure, when I was accidentally scratched while rescuing a cat. I'm pleased to report that the antibiotics got rid of the infection, and the swollen arm eventually returned to its normal size. An interesting sequel to the story, however, is that the cat in question (pictured here on the right hand side) has recently begun "visiting" me at my house - popping round for an hour or two, and then disappearing again. "Is this a token of affection and appreciation for the fact that I risked life and limb to undertake such a heroic rescue?" I ask myself.

Anyway, I nicknamed the cat Tamba, which is a name given in some African languages (such as in the Gio, Kissi and Kono tribes) to mean "second child." I called her by this name because she looks almost exactly like Tibo (pictured here on the left), my first little cat that I had to leave behind in Cape Town. In fact, they could be twins, so I had to laugh when a friend (a mother of twins) mentioned that TAMBA is actually the acronym for the twins and multiple births association!

Now that she has visited two or three times, my Spanish "Tamba" has even begun coming when I call her by name. It's been kind of fun to have this occasional "visitor" and I wonder how long the visiting will continue!

All kinds of good things...

My flat mate is on a trip at the moment, but this week all her stuff arrived in a removal van from England. Her bed, her couch ... and around a dozen boxes of household things were carried up the steps and into our house. It's been nice to have a toaster and a vacuum cleaner again!

This morning, I was reading through an old journal and I was struck to see the fulfilment of a promise that God had made to me in July of this year. At the time, I still didn't know where I would live when I moved to Spain, and I was struggling with the fact that I didn't have the financial support I needed to rent a flat from month to month or to buy the furniture and other things that I'd need to equip my new home. I was only too aware that everything I'd trusted the Lord for over the past decade - all the furniture and household appliances that He'd provided for me in South Africa - had been left behind when I moved back to Europe, and now I would need to "start from scratch" again.

That morning in July, I was reading in the Old Testament when God spoke to me from Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 11 - the part where the people are told that they would live in "houses filled with all kinds of good things that you did not provide." Another Bible translation says, "Your houses will be full of good things that you did not put in them." As I read this verse, I felt that God was giving it to me as a promise for my move to Spain and, after praying about it, I wrote the following sentence in my journal: "I have a sense that I won't need to come up with the money to completely furnish a new home, but that God will also have other ways of providing for its contents."

This morning, nearly four months later, I was amazed to see the way that this promise had been fulfilled. In the intervening months, I had found a friend to share with, we'd found a furnished house to rent, and now my friend's pots and pans, table and chairs, curtains and all kinds of other goodies had arrived from the UK. I looked around me, and realised that I was living in a house filled with things that I had not needed to provide for myself. Isn't God amazing?!

This month, my newest challenge is that I'm going to need to buy a car. Things are rather spread out here and, if you want to get from A to B, having a vehicle is a necessity, rather than a luxury. As I looked at various websites with second hand cars for sale in Andalucía, it wasn't particularly encouraging to read that Spain is one of the more expensive European countries when it comes to purchasing a vehicle. I saw that even a 10 year old car (the age of the "old Mazda" I left behind in Cape Town) would cost nearly double what I paid for that Mazda back in 1999!

At the beginning of the book of Deuteronomy (chapter 2 verse 7), Moses reminds the people that, "The Lord your God has watched over your journey thus far... and you have not lacked anything." Later, in Deut 29:5, it even says that the people's clothes and shoes never wore out, but served them well for many years! And I realised that this has also been so true in my own life: I've been a missionary for nearly three decades, and I haven't earned a salary during that time, yet God has been so faithful to provide everything that I've ever needed. In fact, down in South Africa, He actually provided two vehicles for me: good old Mazda (on the left in the above photo) which was the first vehicle I had ever owned in my lifetime... and also a Corsa bakkie (the little white van on the right in the photo) which we registered in Helen's name and used for all our outreach and ministry transport in disadvantaged townships.

And so my faith was boosted this morning as I looked at this house "full of things I didn't provide," and thought of those two vehicles that I left behind in Cape Town. What God has done in the past, He can do again in the future, so I'm just praying that I'll find the right vehicle here, and that I'll have the courage and faith to step out when the right time comes. Watch this space for further news of this "miracle in process" ... and thanks for your prayers!