Green growth... future fruitfulness

The LDC is over now, and last weekend the delegates began to head home to their different nations on different continents. They leave encouraged by the things they have experienced and by the good things that God has done in their lives. Perhaps the only piece of negative feedback was the fact that the weather was cooler and more rainy this year than normal (at least by Spanish standards) and some of the people hadn't brought enough warm clothes with them. In order to increase the course's fruitfulness in their lives, several of the staff will be connecting with delegates by skype over the coming months and giving them leadership coaching as they seek to apply the skills and principles learned during these rich six weeks together. I'll be coaching three ladies - one in Thailand, one in Cambodia and one in Australia.


The jacaranda trees are now in full bloom in Alhaurin de la Torre; they're slightly later this year because of the cooler weather than usual. They look so pretty along the main boulevards of the town, and there are also several of them in the street where I live. With their bright purple blossoms, they remind me a lot of the years I lived in South Africa. A couple of years ago, when I had left South Africa and moved to live in Spain, God spoke to me about the importance of allowing Spain to really become my home, just as South Africa had been. A verse in the book of Jeremiah (see here) tells exiles to "settle down, plant gardens and eat what you grow in them." In Cape Town, I had grown tomatoes and other vegetables in my garden, and so, full of enthusiasm, I decided to begin growing some tomatoes here in Spain - on the roof terrace of the first house I lived in, and later on the downstairs terrace of the house where I live now. Unfortunately, the weather always seemed to conspire against my tomato-growing efforts. Either the sun was so hot that the plants shriveled up before they had a chance to bear fruit... or the torrential rain was so relentless that the baby plants were drowned and killed off before the first blossoms began to appear. I just didn't seem able to raise the bumper crops of tomatoes that I'd had in Cape Town. If I'd been taking the tomatoes' fruitfulness as a symbol of ministry fruitfulness in this new land, it could have been very discouraging indeed.


This year I decided a new strategy was needed. I started the tomatoes off in plant pots, so that I could move them under cover whenever the heavy rain came back with a vengeance. And when they looked strong enough to survive, I transplanted them into our little garden on the terrace. This week, to my great delight, I saw that the first green tomatoes were beginning to appear, and that there were plenty of other blossoms promising a crop of tomatoes later in the summer months. At last, during my third year in Alhaurin, I am finally able to "plant gardens and eat what you grow in them."