Christmas with family...

Although I've lived in Spain for eight years, I've never spent Christmas there, as I always visit family in Scotland for Christmas. Here we are this year in our festive jumpers.

A stormy season...

Seems I'm not the only one who arrived in the UK this week. Storm Barbara hit Scotland this week, bringing heavy winds and driving rain. Yet another named storm is forecast for Christmas: Storm Conor.

Preparing for Christmas

Christmas Day falls on a Sunday this year, which always means that the first Sunday of Advent actually falls in November. I've just spent a week in Sweden, where lighting advent candles is a popular tradition and families were lighting their first candle this past weekend.

Another way that we can prepare our hearts for Christmas is by reflecting afresh on the Bible accounts of the very first Christmas, and reminding ourselves of how God's love prompted Him to send His very own Son to be born and live among us on earth.

In recent months, I've been writing 36 simple Bible reading guides for young people to help them  spend personal time with God. One of those booklets challenges you, as an individual or as a whole family together, to read your Bible at least fourteen times during this month leading up to Christmas. You can download your copy of the booklet and start preparing for Christmas by clicking any of the links below.

Click here to download the English booklet.

Pincha aquí para descargar el libro en español.

Clique ici para télécharger le livre en français.

A bit of a setback

Things were progressing so well yesterday. I had finished preparing my Swedish powerpoint (for teaching in a seminar next weekend) and other documents that I needed for the leadership meetings in Sweden, and I was successfully transferring everything to my iPad.  Because travelling with hand baggage only was half the price of paying for check in luggage, I had decided to leave my computer at home, and take the much lighter iPad with me instead. (I originally bought the iPad for when I'm travelling and teaching in Africa.)

For some reason, getting the bluetooth keyboard to work with the iPad was causing me problems, and I was struggling with sorting that out when disaster struck. It all happened so fast, that I'm not quite sure how it happened. Whether my arthritic thumbs let me down, as they sometimes do, and my grip wasn't as strong as I thought, or whether I hadn't properly sealed the iPad safely back in its case…. it suddenly slipped out of the case and crashed to the floor - the tile floor, as we have here in southern Spain. It must have landed on its corner and, sure enough, the glass had shattered, causing lots of little powdery crystals and a bit of a spiderweb crack in the top corner. I could have cried! Although my iPad is four years old, it was like new, as I've always been so careful and protective with it.

The good news is that it still works, but I don't want to depend on it for Sweden next week, in case it cracks further or stops working during my trip. This means I'm having to completely re-think my packing, as I'll now need to take my laptop with me - which takes up more space and more weight in my little carry on suitcase. Fortunately, my friend in Sweden had already offered to lend me an extra winter jumper when I'm there, as temperatures are much lower in Sweden than Spain, and winter woolies take up a lot of space in your baggage.

As for my poor little iPad, I'll need to look into having the glass replaced when I'm back in Scotland for Christmas.

Buba's birthday

It's Buba's birthday today; she's two years old. Buba is my neighbour's dog, a rather unusual English Setter cross. When she first came as a tiny puppy, she really did look exactly like an English Setter. I had an Irish Setter when I was a teenager, and looked after my dancing teacher's English Setter for a brief time, so it was easy to recognise that Buba had the shape and markings of a setter. Her father was of unknown breed, though, and as she grew to adulthood she developed a different body and face shape from a setter; she reminded me a lot of the drawings of Timmy, the dog in Enid Blyton's Famous Five books that I read as a child in the 1960s.

At first it was quite amusing to see this terrier-type head and thick wavy coat on a setter's body. People often stop me in the park and comment on what a cute and unusual looking dog she is. Small children say she's like a "peluche" (a fluffy toy) and want to hug her. Because of her markings, some ask if she's part Dalmatian. We've often wondered what kind of dog the father was, and it was only recently that I encountered a rather likely candidate when I met a man with a "pastor catalán" (Catalunyan Shepherd dog, a breed from the Barcelona region of Spain.) It had the same body shape and coat texture as Buba, but without the setter markings.

So today our girl is two years old. I can hardly believe that I've been walking this dog twice a day for almost two years now. Her owner, my neighbour Matilde, calls me Buba's "segunda mami" and is extremely thankful for my help in exercising this largish dog. (Her other dog is a chihuahua-pekinese cross.) But I'm thankful too, because walking with Buba every day has given me the exercise that I was no longer getting since my arthritis pain prevented me from doing sports and dance on a regular basis. So Buba has been a "godsend" in many ways. I've had all the fun of walking a dog, without the responsibility of having to find dog sitters when I travel, and I'm getting regular exercise to keep my joints and muscles moving over the winter months.

Feliz cumpleaños,  Buba. Te quiero.

From Spain to Sweden

Nearly three months since I got home from Africa, and now it's time for another trip. This time, however, I'm not heading south to tropical climate, but heading north to the chill of Scandinavia. I'm spending next week in Sweden for several days of meetings with the KKI European leadership team, and I'll also be teaching a seminar for parents and youth workers on the topic of understanding human development: how to relate age appropriately and understand how to disciple children and teenagers at different ages and stages of their lives.

This coming Sunday, I'll fly from Malaga to Gothenburg, where my friends will meet me and take me to their home in Borås. The KKI meetings will be held at the home of my friend, Ingela, and her family. Ingela, who is the national leader for KKI Sweden, was a student on one of the first child and youth ministry schools that I led - way back in 1991 in Scotland. Later we led a European PCYM together in 2009. More recently, she was my early morning swimming partner during the two months we spent in West Africa for the Fortify leadership workshop. I know her husband and five children from King's Kids, and one of our sons even came to do LDC in Malaga recently. When the KKI-ELT meetings finish on Friday, I'll stay on for the weekend seminar, which will be held in their local church setting in Borås. Then I'll fly back down to Malaga the following Sunday.

This week, in getting ready for my trip, I've finished preparing my powerpoint in Swedish, and have also been putting the finishing touches to some of the Bible reading devotional booklets that I was working on this autumn. This is also a week of overseas coaching for me, as I connect with the KKI leader in Madagascar, as well as beginning coaching with two new clients - ladies from Costa Rica and Peru who are trainees in the Spanish language FOCOS coach training programme.

The recent good news about Teddi's health means that it's easy again for my neighbour to look after the cats while I'm gone. She'll only need to check on their food and water, now that Teddi doesn't need to be given daily thyroid medication any more. In fact, she'll only need to check on them for five days, as some other friends are staying the last weekend of November in my house, before driving a removal van all the way up to Germany to their new home there.

Thanks for your prayers during my trip to Sweden. God bless you.

Black cat tales...

It was at this time of year, back in 2008, that I was adopted by Tamba, that golden eyed, velvety soft, little cat that I encountered in the streets of Alhaurin. I never imagined that she would be with me for seven years and that she would introduce me to the adventure of raising a lively litter of little black kittens. She hovered around our doorstep for several months and it was only at the end of February that I finally took her into the house… and just in time, as she produced a litter of four kittens that very night.

Tamba's gone now, but two of the kittens, Teddi and Tobi are still with me. I can hardly believe that they're seven years old and are beginning to get some grey hairs - evidence of their growing into the season of being "senior" cats. Tamba must have been only around nine years old when she died, not a long life for a cat, but at least the last seven years of her life were good ones.

Until recently, it was looking as if Teddi would not outlive his mother's nine years, having been diagnosed this year with an over active thyroid gland and failing kidney function. But in an unexpected turn of events, he's made a sudden and seemingly miraculous improvement. (See post below this one.) Perhaps Tobi and Teddi will both live longer than Tamba after all.