Signs of the season...

Today I clambered up to the top of my cupboard and brought down my duvet which has been in storage since the end of May. Although we've had some unusually warm afternoons this October, the mornings and evenings have been a little chilly and today I decided that it's now too cold to sleep only under a sheet or an empty duvet cover. The cats seemed to approve of the decision; when I came home at lunch time, I found them all lying on my bed, instead of in their usual "summer" places like the cold floor tiles or the little bookshelf in my bedroom.


Other signs of the season are that our local ice cream shop has closed its doors for this year, and little stands selling hot roasted chestnuts are springing up on every street corner (Gabriela and I decided to buy chestnuts and roast them at home this year while we are working on her English homework for school.) If I walk to the library in the morning, I no longer walk through the tables and chairs of street side cafes where Spaniards are drinking their coffee or having chocolate and churros for breakfast. People are having breakfast inside the cafes now. Once I get to the library, I find that I no longer need to dodge the ice cold drafts coming from the air conditioners; it's warm air that's coming from them now.


Meanwhile, town council employees are climbing up to prune branches off the palm trees and to put a protective covering on the treetops in preparation for the rainy and colder winter months. People who have summer fruit trees in their gardens are also beginning to prune off branches.... and I've gladly collected some of these to add to our firewood pile at home. Although we usually don't need to make a fire until sometime in November, there's no harm in being prepared. 
We've been spoiled with mild sunny days of 23 degrees over the past week, but rainfall is forecast again for this weekend. It's still dark when we get up in the mornings, and I need to wear a sweatshirt when I'm walking to work in the morning. I guess it's official: summer is behind us now and winter will soon be on the way.

Internet insights: provision from an unexpected source

I used to think that poor and erratic internet was a challenge peculiar to life in Africa. When I lived in Cape Town, broadband internet was still rather expensive, and our outdated dial-up connection was prone to malfunction suddenly - just because it was rainy or windy, or because someone emailed us a large photo and crashed the server! When I moved back to Europe, I expected that life would be simpler when it came to the parts of my work that depend on an internet connection. Well, I was wrong!
It's true that a good internet connection is more readily available in Spain... but when you live in a town surrounded by mountains, you never really get the speed or the bandwidth that the internet providers promise you. And, it turns out, it's still a fact of life that strong winds or heavy rains can leave you without internet for a whole day or more (not to mention without electricity either!) Perhaps the biggest challenge, however, is that a good internet connection can still be pretty expensive: you need a rental contract for a landline phone (which comes with unlimited free calls within Spain) and then you add the internet contract on top of that. But if you're not really calling landlines within Spain, and all your outgoing calls are to people's cellphones, you'll probably end up paying more than €80 per month for your phone and internet.
That's roughly what we were paying in 2009, so when my flatmate returned to England that year and I had no one else to share my internet costs, I decided to switch to a mobile phone instead, and to try out a cellphone internet service that depended on plugging a sim card into your computer. Well, this turned out to be disastrous! It might have been true to say that it was "better than nothing," but the truth of the matter was that it often ended up being more of a frustration than a blessing. I ended up spending many of my days in the public library, where the free internet service was considerably superior to the connection I had at home.
However, you can't speak in the library. It was great for downloading and answering emails, but it wasn't any help when it came to the coaching sessions I was having with people in places like England, Holland and Tanzania. My coachees were very patient last winter with my somewhat erratic and fluctuating Skype connection. When LDC ended this summer and I took on more coachees from places like Thailand, Cambodia and Australia, having a reliable internet connection became even more of a priority, and I was faced with the prospect of having to pay a large amount of money for a landline phone and a more dependable broadband connection. 
Then something surprising happened: the "ayuntamiento" (town hall) in my town announced that they were extending their free internet service to several other public buildings, as well as the library. To my amazement, one of these buildings turned out to be the "polideportivo" - the sports complex that is across the road from my house. As no one takes their computer with them when they go to play sports, the service is used mainly by passers-by checking emails on their smart phones. I discovered that I could set up a deckchair in the street, in the shade of a tree if necessary, and could easily conduct my coaching sessions with people on the other side of the world. It's true that I get one or two strange looks from passers by (they don't see my earphones and so they wonder if I'm speaking to myself!) and I'm also gradually getting to know all the dog walkers of the neighbourhood. I guess I won't be sitting there in the street in my deckchair when our winter rains start up.... but I'm expecting that I can park my car next to the sports centre and carry out my coaching sessions from there. This internet connection has been a huge blessing from a very unexpected source. 

Family news...

My niece had her eleventh birthday last week; you can see her here opening her cards and presents. As her birthday usually falls during a school holiday week in Scotland, a special present this year is that she'll be going to Spain with her parents. Not here to Malaga again, but to a coastal resort in another part of the country.
One week from today, my Dad will go into hospital and on the 25th he'll  have surgery to remove the cancer in his colon. He'll probably be in hospital for at least a couple of weeks, so my Mum will have regular hospital visits during November.
Here in Spain, I'll also have a hospital appointment in November: I'm going on the fourteenth to the hospital in Torremolinos to see a foot specialist about the arthritis in my feet. They'll be assessing whether I need to have special shoes or insoles in order to be able to walk with less pain.
My brother, who had an operation on his wrist some months ago, has now been told that he can start work again. He's turned down the offer of an office job, as he prefers his old job out and about the oil refinery, so he'll need to be careful with his wrist at first.

Fun with free figs

Our house is built in an area that used to comprise citrus groves and fig orchards. There are still some orange trees (the sour kind, not eating oranges) and fig trees at the end of our street. When my friend Sue was visiting from England, she used to go fig gathering, as she jokingly affirmed that she "loved to find free food!"

Looking through my new recipe book (see previous post), I found a recipe that involved camembert cheese and fig chutney.... so off I went to the end of the street to pick the figs that I needed. The chutney turned out to be really easy to make.... and I'm beginning to wonder if I should gather some more figs and make a pot of jam too.  

Sue is also something of a bird-watcher, so when she was here we also went to another part of town where a flock of green amazon parrots have made their nests in the palm trees. What a noise they make!                                               The last piece of news today is that I've finally received a letter with a date for my hospital appointment to see the foot specialist in Torremolinos. It will be on the morning of 14th November. Unfortunately, that's right in the middle of the Strategic Leadership Course that we're running in November, but at least it's not on a day when I'm scheduled to do any teaching.

Transition and transience...

Last week, I was busy from morning to evening with the WELT Leadership Team meetings. We were a large group, comprising YWAM leaders from different European nations, as well as the "Barnabas" group of older leaders who came to offer prayer and support. We had a full but good week together. Then, at the weekend, I went to a "garage sale." Some friends of ours are moving back to live in South Africa and were selling off all kinds of bits and pieces that they don't want to take with them. I bought a South African recipe book (by Ina Paarman, who's something of a South African institution when it comes to cooking and baking) so I now have the recipes for old favourites - like bobotie or rusks - right at my fingertips. I'll need to try out some new soup recipes over the coming winter.
My friends' departure and transition made me reflect on the transience of life here in southern Spain. People talk about it all the time: how common it is for expat friends to return to their home country or move on to somewhere else. I realised that the same can be true of life as a missionary. Thinking about the (non-Spanish) friends that I made during my first months here in Spain, I realise that almost all of these people have moved on now: three families have moved back to England, four people have moved to the US, and now these other friends are relocating to South Africa. What a paradox it is, and yet what security to know that we live in a constantly changing world, but we serve an unchanging God.

Health Update

My parents got word today that my Dad's surgery will be at the end of this month - on October 25th. When he was originally diagnosed with cancer, doctors told him that the surgery would be done quickly, probably within a couple of weeks. In fact, it will be closer to ten weeks by the time he goes in for the operation, and my Mum is finding that the long wait is quite an anxious time. Please would you join me in praying that my parents will know God's peace in this waiting time, and that the wait will not have any adverse effects on my Dad's condition. Thank you.
As for me, I still haven't had word of my hospital appointment here in Spain; the wheels of the health system seem to be turning rather slowly.

October occupations...

I've just had a visit from a friend and prayer partner that I met nearly 30 years ago. Sue, who works with the world prayer centre in Birmingham, has been a long time friend since we met on outreach in France in 1982. She's visited me in various parts of the world - including France, Scotland, South Africa and now in Spain - and she also travels to different parts of Europe and Africa, taking prayer teams to serve short term in a variety of locations. As well as taking time to pray together over the past week, we were also able to visit Málaga and Benalmádena, and even to have a swim in the sea one day! (With autumn on the way, our swimming weather is almost over for this year.)


Now that October is with us, I have a varied programme of activities to occupy my time. I wear two "hats" in my missions involvement (the King's Kids ministry and the Leadership Development ministry) and sometimes these two roles bring a list of duties and deadlines together at the same time. This October will be one of those times. I'm working on the preparation of our KKI national leaders' gathering that will be held in Torremolinos during the last week of November; people are registering now for the conference, and the deposit needs to be paid to the hotel by the end of this month. I'm also proof reading/editing a new KKI publication that will be printed before the end of this year. Alongside these KKI roles, I am working with the applications for three upcoming leadership courses: the Strategic Leadership Course (SLC) which will be held here in Alhaurín during the first three weeks of November, an intensive coaching seminar in January, and the Leadership Development Course (LDC) which will be held here next spring. I'm also working on registering the SLC and the LDC with the University, and over the coming weeks, I'll be putting together a students' handbook for the SLC. And, just to add a little variety, in my local church role, I'll be leading three weeks of creative discipleship programmes with a group of girls aged 10 - 13 (which means I'll be preparing a range of Bible worksheets in both Spanish and English.) So there are certainly plenty of things to keep me occupied this October.


This week, however, I'll start the month by being involved full time in the annual meetings of YWAM's Western Europe Leadership Team (WELT) where I represent the work of KKI throughout Europe. Meeting concurrently with the WELT this year is an eldership group of long term missionaries called the "Barnabas Network." The Barnabas people are coming to serve the Western Europe leaders by praying for them this week or being available for counsel. A few of us, including myself, are in the Barnabas Network, as well as in the Western Europe Leadership Team, so we will have a dual role this week.


Meanwhile, both my Dad and I are still waiting for news of our hospital appointments: mine to see an arthritis specialist about my feet, and Dad to have the surgery that will remove the cancer in his colon. It's been almost seven weeks since his diagnosis, and things are beginning to drag a bit, so we're praying that he'll get a date for the operation very soon. Thanks for standing with us in prayer.