Feels like winter again

We had a beautiful sunny weekend for our Barnabas gathering. Temperatures were sometimes as high as eighteen or twenty degrees, and people enjoyed sitting outside to eat lunch. We had some good times of prayer and brain-storming about the sort of role that elder-type people can play within the context of the mission in Europe. It was also fun for me to chat with some of the people who had come from England and Ireland, as I'd worked with their children on King's Kids outreaches that I led twenty years ago.


Temperatures have suddenly dropped, though, and now it feels much more like winter again in Alhaurin. It's a cloudy nine degrees today and even colder in the evenings. We can see the snow on the mountains (thankfully not here in the town) and we're very grateful for the fireplace in our house. In less than a week's time, I'll be heading down to Africa, however, and so I'll be able to enjoy some warmer temperatures again. I'd appreciate your prayers for our Senegal trip, as we investigate possible future outreach opportunities for European and African young people.

Thankful for some Spanish sunshine

Well, in contrast to the weather of my previous post, we're having a lovely sunny week here in Alhaurin. Still chilly enough to warrant a fire in the evenings, but pleasantly warm-ish during the afternoons. That will be a blessing for the group of people who are arriving to spend the weekend with us at Villa Rehoboth. This "Barnabas Network" weekend is a gathering of a small group of older missionaries who have kind of an "eldership" role within the mission. Some of them are coming to us from colder places, like Britain and Austria, so they'll no doubt be glad to see some blue sky and sunshine. We're very thankful that we're not having our torrential winter rains this weekend. The seminar begins this evening, so I'll be busy with some trips to the airport in the course of the day.

Santa in the snow?

I looked out the front window this morning when it was still half dark, and was amazed to see that Santa Claus seemed to be making a return visit to our house! On closer inspection, though, it turned out to be my Mum in a red coat: she'd gone outside to sweep aside the four or five inches of snow that had fallen during the night. We heard on TV that Edinburgh airport is closed this morning, but open again by the afternoon. Fortunately, I'm flying from Glasgow airport on Tuesday, and it looks as if this most recent snowfall will be dispersed by rain over the coming days. Meanwhile, back in Alhaurin de la Torre, where there's been torrential rain for the past week, it looks as if it's only eight degrees warmer than our weather today... but I see that they're forecasting sunny days of twenty two degrees by the end of the week. That kind of weather would qualify as a summer heat wave in Scotland!

Dates in the diary

As I sat down this week to fill in the "year planner" in the front of my 2011 diary, I got rather a surprise to see that the year is already quite full with many and varied ministry events. It looks like there's going to be more travelling for me this year - with trips to Senegal in January, to Hungary and Switzerland in March, to Austria in June, and to PCYMs in Jordan and Togo over the summer months. There are also plenty of dates in the diary for Villa Rehoboth in Spain - with a leadership seminar or retreat roughly once a month throughout the year, and an eight-week period in spring that's filled up with a coaching seminar and the annual leadership development course (LDC.) We're also launching a new training course this year: a strategic leadership course (SLC) that will run for three weeks in November. This week I've been working on designing an information flyer for that. Also in November, I'm going to be hosting a KKI national leaders gathering (about 50 King's Kids leaders from all over Europe) in Málaga. So it looks like being an interesting year with a wide variety of projects. Let me take this opportunity to say thank you to those of you who pray for me throughout the year. May God bless you too in 2011.

New year's news

For those of you who got error messages when trying to open the links from my 1st January post, it's probably a web-sharing issue with the server, and I've sometimes been having hassle with it too. Try clicking on these images to enlarge and read my latest newsletter. 

Snow in California

I've been at a couple of meetings recently where everyone was turning their thoughts to the things that lie ahead for us in 2011. On Sunday morning, I was the speaker at the morning service of my home church in Falkirk. That's beginning to be kind of a regular fixture;  since coming back to Europe, I've been the preacher on the first Sunday of every new year and have had the privilege of helping people evaluate how they might grow closer to God and be ready for His working in and through their lives in the year ahead.


Then, yesterday, someone from church invited me to go with them to a ladies' meeting in California. (No, not the California on the west coast of the USA. This California is a little village about four miles south of Falkirk - "up the braes" as the locals would say. In fact, it's the village where my grandmother was born, but I think this was the first time I had been there since the 1960s or 1970s. A signpost at the entrance to the town welcomes you to the "sunshine village," but in fact it was snowing while we were there!) 


It was fun to go to this lunch and worship meeting which brought together women from different parts of Scotland, as it was held in the home of a couple I had known nearly twenty years ago when they and their two children were part of a King's Kids Christmas outreach that I was leading in the east of Scotland. To this day, I still share testimonies from that team if I'm speaking about how children and teenagers can hear God's voice. This family lived in Glasgow at the time, so it was quite a surprise to reconnect with them and discover that they'd moved to California.

Another new year, another new vision

Another new year, another new decade. Perhaps it's a sign of impending old age that makes me feel time has flown by since we entered the new millennium. Now the decade of 2000, 2001 is already behind us and the decade of 2010, 2011 has already begun.

Speaking of time passing, I also realise that this week has been the fourth winter Christmas and New Year's day since I came back to Europe. It's been three and a half years since I said goodbye to Africa and, to tell the truth, for much of that time I still missed it terribly. Africa gets under your skin and into your heart. I haven't been back there since leaving, and a big part of the reason is that I knew I needed to settle in Europe and really allow it to become home before going back to visit Africa again.

Anyway, after a gap of three and a half years, 2011 will see me making my first Africa trip since my last (2007) visits to South Africa, Madagascar and Malawi. As mentioned in my last post of 2010, I've just renewed my yellow fever vaccination because I'll soon be going to Africa again. In fact, I'll quite possibly be making two trips to West Africa in 2011.

During 2010, I resigned from the KKI roles that I still held in Africa and I became part of a new leadership team for King's Kids in Europe. We've been asking God to give us a project that would gather and mobilise young people from all over Europe... and we've begun to birth a vision that will involve partnership between Europeans and Africans over the coming years. That's the reason for my trip to Senegal at the end of January, and you can read more about that in my first newsletter of 2011. Click here (page one) and here (page two) to open and read about one of my new projects for the new year.