What seeds are you sowing?

It's great to have friends visiting from Scotland this week. They're helping us to run a seminar for people involved in ministry to children and young people. The seminar topics are built around a gardening theme: just as plants need good soil, plenty of sunshine, pruning and watering, children need an environment conducive to growth, lots of encouragement and sufficient healthy discipline/discipling in order to flourish and grow in God. Amongst other things, the seminar will look at understanding how God sees young people, creating a child-friendly environment, and leading creative prayer with children and youth.

The caramelo conundrum

The Christmas season in Spain concludes with three kings' day on 6th January - a day in the religious calendar that remembers the coming of the wise men to bring gifts to the baby Jesus. Most Spanish towns celebrate this day with parades through the streets; those passing by on colourful floats throw handfuls of sweets (the Spanish call them caramelos) to the people lining the streets. When we moved into our new house this month, we found that one of the kitchen drawers was filled with literally hundreds of these "caramelos" - mostly wrapped in shiny foil papers. We gave most of them away, but Ada displayed some of them in a decorative glass, high up on a shelf in the kitchen.

Something rather puzzling has been happening over the past two weeks. When we come home in the evening, we often find some of these shiny sweets scattered around the house, or outside on the terrace. Or we find one of the cats playing ball with them, but we can't work out where all these caramelos are coming from. The glass is on a shelf about eight feet off the ground and, even if it were possible for a cat to climb up on the microwave and reach the shelf, surely there's no way it could steal some caramelos without knocking the glass to the floor and smashing it.

This morning, the mystery was finally solved. I heard a rustling sound from the kitchen and guessed that it might be the caramelo culprit in action. Sure enough, when I got to the kitchen, I found Teddi high up on top of the freezer, carefully extracting caramelos from the ornamental glass!! Time to say, "Off, off!!" again, and to hide the glass safely behind cupboard doors.

Transformation

Well, we've finished painting at last and are really happy with how things look now that we're more settled in. Here you see Teddi inspecting our handiwork as we transformed the lounge from pink to white and then to ivory. (The cats are still in a process of discovering which surfaces are out of bounds in their new home, so "Off!" is a frequently heard word in our house at the moment!) The heavy rain is back again, so we're certainly enjoying the luxury of having a fireplace in the lounge.

It was raining in Barcelona too, but we had a good time of meeting together to process the regional leadership transition and to make plans for the KKI regional conference which we'll be holding there in November. We've found an excellent conference facility, which looks ideal for all the activities we'll be doing with our group of 200 - 300 people at that time. Thanks for your prayers.

Home sweet home

Well, as the first month of 2010 draws to an end, I'm pleased to be able to report that we have just found a new house to rent, and will be moving in at the end of this week. Time seemed to be running out and we were getting very tired of making phone calls and viewing flats that turned out to be too small or too expensive in the end. So it's a big relief to have found a house that is central, that is spacious enough for our needs (three bedrooms), and is at a price we can afford. It has a fireplace in the lounge, so we're looking forward to gathering firewood and making a roaring fire. (Our previous flat has been rather icy during these colder winter months.) And it also has two sun terraces, so that we can eat outdoors during the warmer summer months. The cats will no doubt enjoy the terrace too.

An interesting detail is that the house is in the same street as the local sports complex and indoor swimming pool. A couple of years ago, when Gabriela started attending gymnastics classes three times a week, Ada remembers praying that they could find a home that was within walking distance of the sports centre. Now it's right on our doorstep, and we joke that we can see "our" swimming pool from the front window! Gabriela will be able to walk to gymnastics classes by herself.

The house (up the mountain) that we first planned to move to was in a district called the "winepress" - perhaps because there were vineyards there in the past. Our new house is in an area called the "lemon," and the neighbourhood further up the hill is called the "upper orchard," so I'm guessing that this part of town used to be an area of citrus groves in the past. As we move to a new home, and as new ministry steps also lie ahead, I'm trusting God that 2010 will be a year of fruitfulness and blessing for all of us.

Talking about the weather

There's a stereotype of British people which says that they're always talking about the weather. I've discovered that this is true. If you stand at the bus stop in Scotland, or meet someone in a shopping centre, they will invariably tell you how cold it us, or comment that it's nice to have a warm day for a change.

I've experienced that this doesn't happen quite so much in other parts of the world: if you live in Cape Town or in the south of Spain, where it's sunny for at least 300 days of the year, the weather's not much of a conversation starter. It's just sunny most of the time.

In recent weeks, though, Spanish people down here on the Costa del Sol seem to be speaking a lot about the weather. Elderly people will tell you that it's been twenty years since they experienced such heavy rains, or young people will say that they don't remember the winter time ever being this cold before.

In many ways, though, I feel quite spoiled to live in this climate. Yes, it can be very cold indoors - especially at night, when a hot water bottle is a welcome relief. And yes, we've had a lot of rainy days lately. But as we move further into January, we're beginning to have some lovely sunny days again and I'm very thankful for that.

Happy New Year

Animals at the manger...

My flatmate's from Peru and her little figures for the nativity scene by our Christmas tree look just like indigenous people of South America. There's even a llama among the animals watching the baby Jesus in the stable! However, these are not the only animals showing an interest in our manger. Tamba's kittens, Teddi and Tobi, seem intrigued by the tree, the shiny paper and the small figures. We've had to put a rug at the foot of the tree, so that no little shepherds get knocked down and smashed on the floor.