Off to Germany...

By the time you read this, perhaps I will already be in Germany. Even though we turned the clocks back last night, it will still be dark when I head for Malaga airport at 4 o'clock tomorrow morning. By 9 am, I'll already be in southern Germany. I'll be spending a couple of days near Munich, where I'll be meeting with the other members of the KKI Europe leadership team (that's the three guys who're with me in the photo above.) Then we'll drive to Altensteig (see the other photos above) in Germany's Black Forest region, which is where our KKI Europe regional conference is being held this year. It seems that snow and ice are a strong possibility for much of the week, so I'll be taking some warm winter clothing with me. Thanks for your prayers during this week of meetings and conference. It will be great to reconnect with some of our KKI workers and young leaders from all over the continent.

The big breakfast

Click to enlarge the photo

I knew that hanging my washing out at 11pm was rather a risk.... but I thought maybe it would get a headstart on drying in time for packing my suitcase today. Fortunately I was already awake at 6 am this morning when I heard the next downpour beginning. In pyjamas and bare feet, I was able to run out onto the terrace and rescue my clothes from the rain before they got soaked again. The rain didn't last too long, though, and I was able to hang my laundry out again a few hours later. In fact, a helpful wind was blowing and the sun was already shining by the time I got into my car and went to pick up the ladies that I was ferrying to the big breakfast at our church this morning.

Romanian and Moroccan ladies were among those I drove to our church premises, which are in the Capellanía shopping centre in the middle of town. The church was already a hive of activity, as some fifteen or twenty helpers had prepared the food, laid the tables and were ready to begin welcoming our guests. Among the helpers were our group of 10-16 year old girls, who had been working with Ada all week to rehearse a dance that they were going to perform for the ladies after the breakfast.

A typical Spanish breakfast is to eat bread with olive oil and tomato, perhaps with some jamón serrano (Spanish smoked ham.) We gave this an international twist today, when my Canadian friend, Rite, gave a demonstration of how she makes her famous salad dressing with olive oil and honey. In true Jamie Oliver fashion, she stood upfront and mixed her olive oil, honey, apple vinegar, mustard seeds, etc (there's a Biblical interpretation for almost all of these ingredients) in order to make a huge bottle of the dressing. The ladies discovered that putting this dressing on their bread was even more delicious that just using olive oil on its own. We always give the ladies a little gift to take home with them, and this time the gift was a decorated serving bottle and the recipe (in Spanish, of course) so that they could make the dressing at home for themselves. (See photo above.)

The breakfast was a time of much conversation and friendship with all these ladies from Spain and beyond (while their children had their own breakfast and a special programme of activities in another room) and then the morning ended with a musical programme, including songs performed by church folks, and the dance performed by the girls group, before our "taxi drivers" got ready to drive all the ladies home again.

Their take-home gift included invitations to future events - such as church services and the special Christmas concert, as well as the Alpha course that will be beginning fairly soon. Please join us in praying that some of these ladies will be open to coming to one or more of these events and finding out more about what it means to know and follow Jesus.

It's falling from the clouds...

The torrential rain is back! It's been absolutely relentless this past couple of days... making me begin to wonder if there's any hope of my being able to wash and dry my laundry before I leave for Germany on Monday morning. As I lie in bed at night, all I can hear is the constant thudding of the rain - as if a gang of delinquent Wimbledon players were hurling tennis balls at the roof of my house. So this morning in our team meeting at the leadership retreat centre, I had to smile when we began to sing one of my favourite worship songs: the one in the picture above. The photo behind the words on the screen looked just like the reality of the weather outside; and the line about "cannons in the night" reminded me of the powerful beat of the rain as I made my way to bed last night. I have to confess that I'm not a great fan of rain... but the sheer power of it is nonetheless a reminder of how powerful and mighty our Creator God is.

When I went upstairs to my room last night, I discovered that all three cats - who have tended to sleep outside on the terrace over the past few months - had made their way indoors and each had found its own spot to settle down in my room. Generally speaking, they don't seem to mind the rain if it's not too heavy.... but the noise and strength of our autumn downpours seems to be a bit much for them, and they all choose to take refuge in a safe place. It reminded me of that verse in Psalm 32, where it says of God, "You are my hiding place." It's probably not the rain that we're hiding from, but there are plenty of other challenging situations in life, where it helps to know that God truly is our refuge and strength.

Even as I've been writing this, I took a moment to check the weather forecast and see whether I can plan to throw some laundry in the washing machine tomorrow morning. Things look hopeful: it seems as if it's probably going to be dry and sunny again tomorrow. I also took a look the weather forecast for southern Germany, though (I'm going to be two days near Munich and four days in the Black Forest region) and you can imagine my dismay when I discovered that it's snowing in Stuttgart at the moment! It looks as if the temperature will be below zero for some of the days that we are in Altensteig. I'll have to bring my winter clothes out of storage when I'm packing my suitcase tomorrow.

Well, it's getting dark now, but the grey clouds are also looming, so I guess I'm going to hear more "cannons in the night" and find the cats seeking shelter in my room again tonight. Somehow the rain doesn't seem quite as bad, and I'll be particularly thankful for tomorrow's sunshine, now that I'm facing the prospect of snow and ice next week :-)

Mornings and early mornings...

I seem to have been so stiff when waking up in the early morning over the past couple of weeks. Of course, morning stiffness is pretty "normal" for me (because of my challenges with osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia) but it's seemed worse than usual over the past weeks. I wasn't sure whether it was a result of my early morning swimming, or from carrying firewood recently, or perhaps from spending a lot more time on the computer these two weeks, after the two previous weeks of seminars. Of course, it could also just be the changing season and the fact that the cooler, rainier weather is on the way.

Even so, I've continued with my commitment to early morning swimming at least once a week, and am trusting that I'll ultimately see the benefit of getting regular exercise over the winter months. I've also been working in the library every morning and am encouraged by the good progress I've managed to make with my computer work this month - including writing a project handbook for the SLC and preparing a powerpoint and workshop that I'll present at next week's KKI conference. My morning commitments seem to be bearing good fruit. As Ada said yesterday (speaking of a dance group she's working with at church): "No pain, no gain!"

A rather different morning activity will be happening this Saturday, when a large group of local ladies gathers at our church for breakfast. Our regular breakfasts (for the ladies who receive food packages from the ABC) haven't happened since we moved into our new building and didn't have a kitchen yet. But now we have a kitchen, and this Saturday will see the first ladies breakfast in our new church premises. More than fifty ladies (with more than fifty children) have signed up for that. Usually about half of them actually turn up on the day, so we're expecting that Saturday's breakfast will be attended by around 30 ladies and will have a kids programme for about 30 children. These ladies are usually a mixture of Spaniards, South Americans, Eastern Europeans and North Africans who live here in Alhaurín. Please join us in praying that they will be blessed and that their hearts will be softened towards the message of God's love and truth. Ladies from previous breakfasts have later come to Alpha Courses and have given their lives to the Lord. Two of them were baptised in August this year.

I'll be helping to drive ladies to and from the breakfast on Saturday, but I won't be very involved in the actual programme this time, as I've been preparing to leave for Germany after the weekend. That will be another early morning start. A friend is going to sleep over at my house on Sunday night, so that she can drive me to the airport at 4 o'clock on Monday morning. I'm flying to Munich, where we'll have two days of meetings as a KKI European leadership team. (That's Curtis, Andy, Gerhard and myself.) Then we'll drive to the Black Forest for the conference itself. And finally, on 4th November, I'll fly back from Stuttgart to Malaga - arriving on the same flight as some of our students coming for the Strategic Leadership Course that begins that day. Thanks for your prayers over the coming ten days of meetings, conference and travels. And thanks also for remembering the breakfast ladies in your prayers.

Selective hearing..?

Kylie, Teddi and Tibo

I have lived with border collies. That's like living with a couple of intelligent pre-schoolers in your home. You can speak to a border collie the way you'd speak to a three or four year old child, and be fairly confident that she'll understand what you're saying and do what you ask. Every border collie owner loves to entertain you (bore you!!) with stories of something clever their dog did when he overhead people speaking and understood what was being said.

Living with cats, therefore, has been quite an adjustment. I'm not going to join the debate about whether cats are as intelligent as dogs; I'll just say that my cats seem to have selective hearing. Even though we know that they're bilingual (they understand the word, "Ven," just as much as the word, "Come.") and each one of them knows their own name, we have absolutely no guarantee that they will cooperate and that they'll actually come when we call, "Come, Tobi," or "Ven, Tamba."  Call out the word, "Food," on the other hand, and they'll be there in a flash, with big Teddi leading the way and miaowing loudly.

On Sunday, after church, we were sitting in the living room and Teddi was snuggling on my lap. Jokingly, I said to him, "I hope you realise what a lucky boy you are. If we hadn't rescued your mother, you could have been born and be living in the street!" Suddenly Teddi leapt up and began rubbing against me, purring loudly and enthusiastically. We looked at each other in surprise: surely he couldn't have understood what had just been said. And then we all began to laugh as we realised what had happened. Teddi had heard the word, "street" and had associated it with his favourite word: "treat" - those long thin cat treats that you can buy in supermarkets. I don't know what's in them (liver and other meats, I suspect) but I've never met a cat that wasn't crazy about them. (See Tibo above, when my parents brought some cat treats to South Africa.) Teddi's sudden display of affection wasn't that he was showing his appreciation for being rescued from a life of homelessness; it was simply his usual excitement at the prospect of being given one of those treats.

In our walk with God, it's so easy for us to have "selective hearing" too: we hear the parts in the Bible that talk about God giving us peace and joy and answering our prayers.... but we ignore the parts that talk about how our faith will be made stronger through suffering, or where Jesus tells us that following God will often be costly and require us to make sacrifices. Sometimes we're as self-seeking as those cats of mine, focusing more on our own needs and wants than on what will be of eternal value in the kingdom of God.

I love my cats but, spiritually speaking, I'd rather be like a border collie - with their longing to please and their attitude of enthusiastic obedience - than like a cat with selective hearing!

Small world.....

It's always interesting to re-connect with people that you knew in the past. Since the start of October, we've had two different groups of people at the leadership retreat centre: the first was a gathering of YWAM leaders from all over Europe, and the second was a group of participants in the leadership development seminar that we've been running this week. Among these very diverse groups of people, I "reconnected" with:  a man who went to the church I attended when I lived in the north of France in 1979 - 1980; a young woman, now a missionary, who came on  King's Kids outreaches that I led to France and Belgium when she was only nine and ten years old; a YWAM leader who was a student on an LDC I worked with in the 1990s and another who was part of the last Scottish LDC in 2008; a lady who was a student on one of the first discipleship training schools I taught on in South Africa; another missionary who was a teenager on a KKI outreach when we took teams to Atlanta during the 1996 Olympic Games; two other KKI leaders that I had met during recent King's Kids gatherings in Jordan and Barcelona.....

It was great to have these different "faces from the past" coming to be with us at Villa Rehoboth. We've had two very encouraging and stimulating weeks. When giving feedback this week, seminar participants said that they'd been refreshed and encouraged, that they'd been given new "tools" for their ministry toolbox, that they felt strengthened to face challenges in their region, and that they'd felt honoured and spoiled by the generous hospitality and good food (cooked by our two new kitchen staff!!) When we hear such encouraging feedback, it makes all our hard work worthwhile, and we can only give thanks to God for His faithfulness in touching people's lives.

Locked out and helpless...

I've just had a bizarre and rather frustrating experience. When I got home at 10.30 last night (from the opening session of our leadership development seminar) I discovered that my bedroom door was locked tight. This made no sense, as there's not actually a lock on the door. I knew that the previous occupant, the owner of the house, had placed a small bolt at eye level on the inside of the door... but surely it's impossible for a bolt to close itself from the inside. Ada and I tried to force the door and break the bolt, but we soon realised it wouldn't be possible without causing major damage to the door. So we went out to the terrace and concentrated our efforts on the security gate.... but discovered that it well deserved the label "security" and that it was impenetrable. I have seldom felt so completely helpless. Around midnight, we gave up. Armed with a blanket and a pair of Gabriela's pyjamas, I went downstairs and tried to settle down to sleep on the couch.

This morning, we renewed our efforts. Realising that it might be impossible to get into the room without causing expensive damage to the wooden door or the iron security gate, we tried to phone the owner of the house. An hour later, when there was still no reply at any of his phone numbers, we decided that he must be on holiday this week. Time was beginning to run out, because I was scheduled to teach in the seminar this morning, but I couldn't get into my room to get any clothes, or to get my computer which had the teaching and powerpoint on it. 

Reluctantly, we called in a locksmith and asked his advice on what could be done.... with the least amount of damage and expense. He had the idea of cutting one of the bars from the gate, creating a tiny gap so that someone could squeeze into the room and unlock the bolt from the inside. Then the locksmith soldered the bar back onto the gate again. At last I could get into my room and have access to my phone, my computer.... and my underwear!! It had been such a strange feeling of helplessness (almost despair!!) to know that you were locked out and were completely powerless to do anything about getting in. 

The Bible tells us that people are "locked out" of God's presence if they haven't taken the step of inviting Jesus to take control of their lives. Sadly, most people don't even realise that they are stuck "on the outside" and so they often don't feel that sense of desperate longing to get back in again. Part of our job as Christians is to live our lives in such a way that people feel hungry and thirsty to "get in the door" and be able to relax in the presence of Father God.

(By the way, I immediately got a screwdriver and removed the bolt from the door. Now there's no chance of my ever being locked out again. Knowing Jesus is like that: once you know Him as your Saviour, once you enter in... no one can ever lock you out again.)