A creative start to the KKI Europe Leaders' Forum...

This week saw the start of our KKI Europe Leadership Forum. After three days of meetings with the ELT (European Leadership Team), yesterday we welcomed 30 more people, national KKI leaders from all over Europe. We should have been in Poland this week, but coronavirus restrictions sabotaged that for all of us. Nonetheless, our Polish hosts did an amazing job of welcoming us "to Poland" and to the forum this week. The opening session was one of the most creative zoom connections that I've experienced since this pandemic forced us all online.

At the "airport," we were ushered to Gate 7, where we all boarded Flight 777 to Poland. A real pilot and flight attendants welcomed us onboard. We saw an "in flight" video of beautiful Polish scenery, and our hosts, the Skrobarczyk family, introduced to typical Polish food and shared an inspiring Bible meditation based on Ephesians 6 and the story of how the Polish Hussars were able to overcome the enemy in the 1683 battle of Vienna.

Today we had times of praying for each other as well as group times of talking about how our partnering with local churches has had to change and be more creative in these days of coronavirus restrictions. This afternoon, the 30 of us from Europe joined other KKI leaders from all over the world for our monthly global zoom call that is preparing for next year's international leadership assembly in Egypt.

Tomorrow, we'll be reflecting on God's heart for Europe and taking time to pray for our continent and our ministry in the coming years.

A new baby in the family...

With all my November ministry trips having been cancelled (the KKI leadership forum in Poland and the B2b in Holland) and those events now happening online instead, I'm going to be here in the south of Spain for all of November. In fact, current coronavirus guidelines mean that we're not allowed to go beyond the borders of Málaga province.

So I've done something a little crazy and I'm fostering a 3 month old puppy called Kenai. He's been adopted by a Spanish-Swedish family in Gothenburg, but covid restrictions around Europe led to their flights being cancelled and so they are only able to come and collect him in December. When I was asked if I could foster him for a few weeks, to prepare him for his forever family and do his basic obedience training in Spanish and Swedish, I agreed to help out with the need. And so a little golden puppy came into our home about ten days ago. (The cats are not especially impressed, but they're tolerating him and watching him with interest.)

During his first week with me, he began learning some basic commands (come here, sit, lie down) and I had fun putting together a little video for his adoptive family. You can see it on YouTube by clicking here.

Today we actually had a visit from his adoptive mum, who is here in Spain to sort out some paperwork. Sadly, though, she can't take him back to Sweden yet, as she's flying with an airline that doesn't carry animals. So they'll have to wait until Christmas time until they can finally collect him and take him home. I'll be looking after him and training him for as long as possible, but if it's possible for me to fly to Scotland for Christmas (which I'm hoping to do), I'll have to give him back to the adoption agency for the last ten days before the family comes for him.

It turns out that this family has never owned a pet of any kind before, and so they're extremely thankful that Kenai is with someone who understands dogs and who can teach him all he needs to know at such a crucial stage in his development. Their 9 year old daughter is an only child and has been begging for a dog for around three years, so this is something longed for and new for all of them. Knowing this makes it even more of a privilege for me to be able to give him a good start and prepare him to go to live with his bilingual forever family in Sweden.

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.

We've reached Zimbabwe...

 

I'm still without a vehicle (since my car accident at the beginning of July) so we haven't been able to get out and about this summer, which is rather a pity. But it hasn't stopped me and the dogs from going on our twice-daily walks in the fields and forests closer to home. Today we reached 1946 km. That's the same as walking all the way from my house in Cape Town to the Zimbabwe border. And it means that we've got fewer than 80 km to go until we reach our target of walking 2020 km in the year 2020.

Thankful for B2b...

 

I can't believe it's been nearly a month since the crazy adventure that saw us arriving in Switzerland only hours before new quarantine regulations took effect. Further quarantines have been put in place all over Europe during the past weeks and so I can truly see God's hand in making it possible for us to travel and to work with the B2b young leaders' seminar. There was good feedback from the participants and we could see the beginning of good fruit in their lives, so I am very thankful that we could be there.

News about the Swiss B2b is in my recent (September) newsletter. Now we're waiting to see if we'll still be allowed to travel when the time comes for B2b in the Netherlands, during the first week of December. 

Unexpected adventures...

When I sent out my August newsletter at the beginning of last week, I titled it, "Summer Adventures." Little did I know just how adventurous life was about to become!

Our main upcoming ministry project for August was a trip to Switzerland to run the first ever French-English B2b seminar for young and emerging leaders. We were supposed to be flying to Geneva on 12th August, staying for ten days and returning to Spain on the 22nd.

Then, just three days ago, disaster struck. One of our team mates within Switzerland contacted us to let us know of pending legal changes being made by the Swiss government as part of the ongoing coronavirus restrictions. Anyone arriving from Spain, or any of 40 other so called "high risk" countries would need to go into isolation on arrival in Switzerland and spend ten days in quarantine. We were horrified, as our trip was only to be ten days in total, and we had no desire to spend it locked up in a hotel room somewhere. It would make the B2b impossible!

We were faced with a difficult dilemma. Should we cancel our trip, and try to work from a distance, helping our Swiss colleagues to run the B2b without our leadership involvement and experience? Or should we drop all our plans for the coming week and try to find a way of flying to Switzerland on the 7th instead of the 12th - so that we would beat the new quarantine regulations by one day? One problem with that second option was that there were no flights from Malaga to Geneva on that date; we would need to fly via France instead, perhaps to somewhere like Lyon.

But the biggest hindrance from my perspective was the still unresolved situation with the insurance from my car, which had been involved in an accident at the beginning of the month. The car had been written off, but I still hadn't been told what the compensation pay out would be, and so my car was still sitting in the workshop. The people from the workshop had begun phoning me, saying they wanted to get rid of the car before closing for the summer holidays.

So, on Thursday morning this week, it looked highly unlikely that everything could be resolved in time for me to travel nearly a week earlier than planned. I wrote to my intercessors and made an appeal for prayer. I couldn't participate in B2b unless a number of pretty big miracles happened.

It was a complicated and rather stressful day, trying to sort everything out in time but - to cut a long story short - all the miracles happened. I finally managed to get a verdict from my insurance company about the pay-out for my car. Then, I managed to arrange for my mechanic to tow it to his family business, so that I didn't have to start paying storage costs at the other place. And, after a long time of phoning the airline and searching online, I managed to change my flights (for a fee, of course) to make it possible for me to travel on Friday. All three of these things were truly miraculous, given the short timeframe involved. (Then I had to stay up till nearly 1 am, packing my case and getting things ready at home for my cat-carer during my absence.) But God had answered prayer and had proved Himself faithful. We would be leaving for Switzerland the next day.

Click on this photo to enlarge the maps

After only around three hours of sleep, it was time to get up again and head to the airport. I met my team mates there for the morning flight from Malaga to Toulouse. We had to hang around a bit before our afternoon flight from Toulouse to Lyon. Finally, in Lyon we were met by two of our hosts from Switzerland, who had driven the seven hour round-trip to take us back over the border into Switzerland.

Despite our exhaustion, and the four hour drive, it was a pleasant scenic trip through south east France, then over the border into Switzerland with four hours to spare before the quarantine regulations were introduced. From Geneva, it was only a short drive to the YWAM training centre in Burtigny, where the B2b is being held; a nice final leg of the trip, with lovely views of the lake and the snow-capped Mont Blanc in the background.

How strange to sleep with a duvet on my bed (It's way too hot back home to have any bedding) and to wake up this morning to the sound of Swiss cow bells instead of twittering birds and shrieking parrots. How strange to go for my morning prayer walk among green fields of corn, with rose hips and apple trees at the roadside, instead of olives and fig trees. Burtigny is a small village in the heart of Swiss farmland and I clearly remember when we as YWAM French Switzerland were able to purchase the farm, a former Christian orphanage, forty years ago. So, on my walk this morning, as I was thanking God for the beauty of this place, I was also thanking Him for His faithfulness and for the many little miracles that have made it possible for us to be here today and to be part of the exciting B2b ministry that will begin next week.

Thanks for your prayers for protection on our health and good fruit from our ministry while we are here.