The reorganising and the big clean up...

Friday saw us up at 4 am, as I tried to pack up the final bits and pieces before spending day cleaning the house from top to bottom. Two friends from church came over for an hour to help clean in the morning, so that I could back to the "new" house and help to re-organise all the stuff that had been rushed into the storage area after night had already fallen. I also had to make several trips in the car with the smaller boxes and bags that had got left behind.

Then two other friends, a Brazilian and a Nigerian, came over and spent several hours helping me to complete the cleaning. They worked tirelessly, cleaning all the windows, scrubbing all the floors and generally helping to get the house back in pristine condition. (Some areas had been a bit neglected when I was in Scotland for a month, and then cleaned only half-heartedly when I was back in Spain but still struggling with breathing difficulties after the pneumonia.)

I simply could not have completed the task of all that cleaning without the help of those two ladies. The photo above was taken when Maiki and I took them out to the Chinese restaurant to thank them for all their hard work.

The day was exhausting for us and it was obviously rather traumatic for the cat, who tried to run away, scratched me all over my arms and stomach when I caught him, and then spent the rest of the day catatonic at the back of an empty wardrobe. We had to spend Friday evening "camping" for a second time on the floor of my old bedroom.

So when did we actually move? Read on below...

Where do we find security? (or the differences between dogs and cats)

On Saturday, we reached our final deadline: the landlord was coming at 11 am to collect the keys to the house. By this point, the difference between dogs and cats was becoming noisily obvious: my dog was just relaxing and getting on with life because I was there and therefore all was well in the world. The poor cat on the other hand kept hiding, traumatised, at the back of the wardrobe, or wandering round the empty house, miaowing loudly and anxiously because there was not a chair or bed anywhere for him to lie down on, and he knew that something "serious" was going on.

I couldn't help thinking that, in my relationship with God, I want to be like the dog: able to trust and be at peace, no matter where I am or what's happening, quite simply because I know that God is there for me.

Wrestling Teddi into the cat carrier probably traumatised him even further, but finally we were on our way - making the last trip to our temporary home.

Once we'd arrived, the canine-feline difference was obvious yet again. Maiki obviously thought she'd arrived in heaven: she's never before been able just to walk out the front door and run around in a big garden. She had an absolute ball exploring the place... and anyone who came to visit made a big fuss of her and told her what a well behaved dog she is!

Teddi, on the other hand, thought he'd arrived in hell. For the first four hours in the new house, he was catatonic, not venturing out of the cat carrier, even though he can barely squish into it. Finally, by mid afternoon, he emerged and ate a little food... but then took refuge under a chair, just sitting still as if he was in shock. Poor boy! I gave him his space, leaving him alone in a small room where I'd put a bed, water bowl and litter box. He finally dared to emerge from his hiding spot at bedtime and came to the room where Maiki and I are sleeping. Now his new "safe place" is on the floor underneath my bed.

Perhaps Teddi is a lot like many of us believers. The big upheavals in life can easily get to us at first... but when we're given a little space and time, we know that we're actually safe and we just need to draw close to our heavenly Father . (Or, in Teddi's case, he drew closer to me.)

As the psalmist wrote, "Lord, you are my hiding place!"

A cry for help...

Sometimes it's in the small details that we see God's faithfulness in action. I have a few friends to help me tomorrow with moving house, but I've mostly been alone in recent weeks with the task of packing everything into boxes, and having to intersperse that task with ongoing ministry commitments and trips to see possible long term housing solutions.

Today I began work at 7 am, packing things into boxes and throwing out all kinds of stuff that it just isn't practical to take with me. I slogged away until 12.00, when I had a ministry commitment - an online class for an upcoming course. Then I started sorting and packing again.

By around 3.00, the unfinished task began to feel overwhelming; just the sight of my kitchen made me want to cry. "Oh, Lord, " I cried out, "Please send someone to help me."

About fifteen minutes later, I got a text message from a relatively new friend - a Brazilian lady who has moved into my neighbourhood and starting coming to church. "Do you need any help?" she asked. "I'm not doing anything at the moment and could come round to help you with the packing."

What a relief to have some help for a couple of hours. I'll probably still be up well after midnight again, but it made all the difference to have a bit of help with one of the biggest tasks. Thank you, Lord.

The cloud is moving...

This week is a very full one. Three afternoons are dedicated to staff training times for our "Children at Risk" training course that begins next week. In addition, I'm continuing my search for a new place to live; yesterday I had to drive twice to the nearby town of Coín (that's around 80 kilometres in total) to view possible houses... neither of which seems to be the solution for now. And, of course, I'm packing up my current home - living amidst the chaos of piled up furniture, neatly lined up suitcases and a crazy mix of packed up cardboard boxes.

Yes, the cloud is moving (as it did for the Israelites in the book of Exodus) and this week I will leave the house where I've lived for the past thirteen years. Tomorrow will be the day of the main move: we're hiring a van to move all my furniture and boxes to a basement storage area in another part of town. I'll probably move myself and my animals over in the evening... and on Friday I'll be back at the old house to do a lot of thorough cleaning.

So, apart from the CAR staff training times, I've had to almost clear my schedule for the next three days; there's still a whole lot to be packed up here and I can see that it's going to take most of the day, and probably well into the night, to accomplish. For some reason, packing up the kitchen stuff, glasses, cups and plates, seems to feel the most overwhelming and will be one of today's biggest tasks.

The hardest thing at the moment is the uncertainty around my upcoming ministry trips. I had short teaching and training trips planned for May and June... but of course it's impossible for me to simply leave the country if I have no home. I can't leave my belongings and my animals with relative strangers (who didn't sign up for the job) and just abandon the ongoing search for a place to live. Yet, some of the ministry plans (like a trip to teach in a youth ministry training school in Switzerland), were already planned a long time ago. It's hard to be in this position and not be able to confirm plane tickets yet, and I can only cry out to God for a solution.

Thanks for your prayers as I make this temporary move and continue to trust God for whatever other moves still lie down the road.

Deferred, but not denied...

In recent days I've been reading the Old Testament book of Proverbs, and this morning I arrived at chapter 13. There were two verses that really stood out to me - perhaps because they are so reminiscent of my own situation at the moment. 

One of them is the well known proverb in verse 12, which says: "Hope deferred makes the heart sick."           I don't know what Solomon's experience had been when he wrote this, but when I read it I thought how true it is. I could so identify. It's discouraging to keep hoping and praying, day after day, for a new home to become available... and for that hope to be disappointed as I constantly bump up against closed doors. It makes you feel so helpless and so vulnerable.

But the second half of the verse says, "... a longing fulfilled is a tree of life," and vs 19 echoes that, saying, "A longing fulfilled is sweet to the soul."

The news yesterday that I could stay for a month at a missionary guest house was like having a physical weight lifted off my shoulders, even though it's just a temporary respite. I still need to keep looking for a permanent housing solution. Hope has been deferred, but now homelessness has been deferred too.

As I was praying, I was reminded of another proverb, not a biblical one. There's an old saying that, "deferred is not denied," and this knowledge allows hope to grow again. 

I looked up "deferred" in the dictionary, and it says that the word means delayed or postponed. "Denied," on the other hand, means that something is refused; it will never happen.

Hope deferred can be really hard.... but it doesn't necessarily mean that what we hope for has been or will be denied to us. It just means that we need to hold on a little longer and keep trusting. I know that God has always been and will always be faithful, and so I choose to trust Him and to hold on to hope.

Homeless and counting....

It's an awful feeling to watch the days ticking by and to know that, in only a few short days' time, you have nowhere to live.  The friend who usually looks after my dog when I travel had said that we could move into her tiny flat as a temporary solution while I continued the search for a new home.... but then her landlord said no - that he didn't want two people and two dogs in such a tiny apartment!

It was devastating to see the very last option suddenly disappear... but, even without a place to go to, I still needed to find a storage place for my furniture and all my other belongings. So on Friday, I set out to look at two possibilities: one was a large tent on a friend's property on the edge of town, and the other was a large basement underneath a big house that another Christian organisation uses as a guest house, a respite house, for missionaries serving in hard places. Hopefully one of those locations could be a temporary home for my furniture, even if not for myself.

The lady with the yurt/tent suggested to me that the garage basement would be an ideal storage space for my furniture and that would allow us to make the big tent into a temporary home for me and my animals. I was so thankful for this friend's generosity and the fact that it gave me a real alternative to finding myself "on the street," but - as I already mentioned on 17th March (see this post) - I was pretty nervous about trying to keep my cat inside a tent on a property with two guard dogs wandering around. But it had become the only option and I was grateful for it.

Later in the day, I set off to see the house in town, the one with the large basement. Sure enough, it was perfect, with plenty of space to store my few items of furniture and my many boxes and suitcases. Ironically, it has palm trees on the property and it's in the part of town called "Springs" - that I mentioned in this post of 2nd January. At least my furniture was going to be in the place of springs and palm trees!

But then something completely unexpected happened. “We don’t have any guests coming here during April" said the American missionary who lives on the property, "Partly because I myself have a ministry trip to the Ukraine in the middle of the month. You could stay here for the whole month of April, and that would give you breathing space to continue your search for a more permanent solution. Your stuff would be right nearby in the basement, and your dog and cat are both welcome.”

I just cried. The news that I and my pets had a secure place to stay in town - even if it's only for a few weeks - lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. It's not a long term solution... but it gives me a respite, some more time to keep seeking God's permanent solution to my need for a home here in Spain.

A strange little detail in the story is that a Scottish friend had written to me a few days previously, saying that while she was praying she had an impression of me in a "spacious place" where my animals were welcome and that had a "chapel" in it. This missionary guest house that has offered me temporary refuge not only has a prayer room within the house itself, but also has a little chapel-like room down in the basement. It may not be my permanent home, but it certainly seems to be God's provision for the short term.

Thank you for your ongoing prayers as I continue to edge my way forward in this perplexing situation of not finding a long term home here in Spain. I know that God is always faithful and there must be a good solution further down the road.

Déjà vu...

 Nearly fifteen years ago, when I was leaving South Africa and moving back to Europe, I remember being struck with the reality that you can't pack fifteen years of your life into a couple of suitcases. While my furniture and my pets on that occasion were staying with my South African house and housemate, I had to make hard decisions about all my other stuff - what to take back with me, what to give away to others and what to simply throw out.

That's a normal part of moving 10,000 km away to another continent, and I didn't really expect that I'd have to face the same experience again in the future. But, in a smaller way, the reality of having to move out of my house here in Spain, without having anywhere to move to, and the prospect of having to put most of my stuff into storage has brought a strange sense of déjà vu and forced me to be ruthless again about what I need to get rid of.

Plenty of shoes have been disposed of this week... I've thrown out any old dog-walking shoes that have seen better days and I've packed up for the charity shop all the pretty little summer sandals that I would actually have liked to keep, but in fact I only wear them a few times a year.

Some furniture will need to go too. The rocking chair and table from my porch can go to a neighbour... as I've no idea whether there'll be a porch or any outdoor space in the place I end up. That old sofa that the dog likes to use as a bed will need to go to the dump. She loves it, but it's not worth renting storage space for old furniture of little material value. 

There's a Bible passage where Jesus sends His disciples out on mission and tells them to take almost nothing with them. (In Matthew 10 and Luke 10, for example.) There was a good reason for telling them to "travel light" - He wanted them to depend completely on God and on others for all their needs.

And so that's been my experience this week: throwing away and giving away! As well as doing the normal "de-cluttering" that we all need to do periodically, and getting rid of old stuff, I'm also giving away plenty of newer stuff too... because I've no idea where I'm going or whether I can take it with me. 

With exactly one week left until I have to move out of this house, I guess that "throwing away and giving away" is going to be a big part of how I'll spend this coming weekend.