Climbing to the highest peak...

This week saw an anniversary slip by: it has been 12 years since I moved to Spain and set up home here in Alhaurín de la Torre.

Because this week also saw the end of the intense schedule of the 2-week online leadership development encounter, I decided to take a nice break this morning and go for a long walk with the dogs. One of the things I had never done during my 12 years here was to climb to the highest mountain peak in our sierra: the summit of Jabalcuza. To be honest, with my limited lung capacity, I doubted that it would be possible for me. (Taking your body uphill against the pull of gravity requires quite a lot of lung power. I lived nearly 15 years in Cape Town and never managed to make it up Table Mountain.) But our hike to Paloma Peak at the end of June took us almost as high as Jabalcuza, and made me wonder if I should at least give the last ascent a try. Aware of deteriorating arthritis, I've had a sense that if I don't do it this year, I might not be fit enough to do it next year. So I decided today was the day to try it out...

It's not a long walk, but it's uphill through the forest for most of the way, and so it did turn out to be quite strenuous at times. We took lots of short rests for water breaks on the way up. (I carry my own water pack, and it was Hugo's turn to wear the backpack with the water bottles for the dogs.) And yes! it took us two hours to get to the summit, but it was really worth it. There were stunning views of Alhaurín and all across the Guadalhorce Valley on one side, and equally impressive views of Málaga, Torremolinos and the Costa del Sol on the other side. As it was Saturday, we met plenty of other dog walkers, as well as families with children on our way.

I had decided to take Bonnie, our "super-chihuahua" with us. Over the past month, she's got a bit lazy and gone into voluntary retirement, refusing to go on walks with us. If I take her on walks closer to where we live, she slips her collar and goes running home at top speed. So now I can only take her if the outing involves a short car ride to our starting point, so that it's too far for her to make the solo journey back home again.

The photos above give definitive proof that Bonnie's recent reluctance is not due to "old age" or any inability to stay the course. She reached the summit long before I did, seemingly having no trouble at all keeping up with the bigger dogs. (Nelson, the black labrador, was also with us, but you don't see him in the photos as he was off investigating a passing mountain goat.)

At the end of two weeks of fruitful ministry, it was really rewarding to get out in nature and finally realise the achievement of climbing to our highest nearby peak. We can all be proud of ourselves, not only Bonnie.

A target reached and a vision fulfilled...

 As mentioned in my previous post, I had set myself a goal this year of walking 2020 kilometres with the dogs. I was thrilled when we managed to reach our goal during the second week of September. (No doubt some extra kilometres were added to the total during the three months that I had no car. I was relieved to finally be able to buy a car towards the end of September.) Now, that our official goal has been reached, we'll continue counting our kilometres and see if we can beat last year's total. In 2019, we had reached 2324 km before I was struck down with whooping cough in mid December. Perhaps we'll easily reach 2500 km this year.

Another goal has been reached over the past two weeks. When the Covid situation meant that we had to cancel our leadership development course (LDC) here in Spain, we came up with the idea of offering something different instead. The vision was to run an online leadership development encounter (LDE) over a two week period during the dates that would normally have been for LDC. It was the first time we had offered a training course completely online, and we have been really encouraged at how well it went. We had one hundred missionary leaders (80 students and 20 staff) connecting from 30 different countries spread over 12 time zones.

Our challenge and our goal was to keep the course interactive and creative, even though people were connecting from behind their computers, and we did this by incorporating all kinds of breakout groups, polls and other small group activities. The course finished yesterday and the feedback from participants has been really positive. We will very likely offer it again in early 2021.