Scotland and Spain: hospital, home and hotel...

The weather in Spain can be very unpredictable at this time of year: sometimes we get bright sunny days, but often we get days on end of strong winds and torrential rains. So when we planned to hold our KKI leadership conference this week in a beachfront hotel, it gave no guarantee at all that the weather would be conducive to taking walks on the beach during the conference's mealtimes and coffee breaks.
Well, despite the fact that this morning's weather report said Torremolinos was only one degree warmer than Falkirk, the overall weather picture is quite different this week. Here in Scotland, where we're commuting daily from home in Falkirk to the hospital in Larbert, it's raining non stop and our temperatures are dropping from daytime "highs" of 13 to night-time lows of 4 degrees. In Torremolinos however, our international guests are enjoying bright sunny days of at least 19 degrees and, when weekend temperatures soared to twenty eight, some of our conference attendees from Latvia even went into the sea for a swim!
After working all year to prepare the conference and liaise with the hotel, it seems very strange to me to be here in Scotland and not actually to be in Torremolinos to welcome our group of youth workers from all over Europe. With my Dad's condition not being stable yet, I felt it was important for me still to be here with my family. The conference is is good hands, however, as it's being led by three or four of our other KKI Europe leaders, and we're trusting God that the group will have a fruitful week together.

As the conference draws to a close, I was supposed to be house-sitting for friends in Spain: looking after their dog and cat while they went to Canada for three weeks. My being in Scotland meant that they had to begin searching for someone else to stay in their house while they were gone. For four weeks, they couldn't find anyone at all, and I was praying so hard that someone could be found to take my place. Praise God, at the eleventh hour (they leave today) they have found a young man, a friend of a friend, who will be able to stay with Brandy and Simba during December.