New laws, new challenges.... new opportunities?

 As August draws to a close and September is just around the corner, Maiki and I are preparing to move to our seventh home of this year. We'll be going to dog-sit Maiki's buddy, Ecco, (who starred in the Valentine's Day video with her: click here to watch the video.) That'll be fun, but unfortunately it'll only be for ten days, while Ecco's owner and a friend with cancer are walking part of the Camino de Santiago. From September 10th, we'll be homeless once again and looking for our eighth home of 2023.

In a blog post at the end of June (click here to read it), I explained the factors that had led to the current housing crisis in Spain. A few things have happened since then... which have led to new challenges but possibly also to new opportunities.

At the beginning of this year, a main obstacle to my finding  housing was the fact that landlords were requiring renters to take out an insurance policy in case they found themselves unemployed and were unable to pay the rent (which is what happened a lot during the pandemic.) However, the insurance companies were refusing to issue such policies unless the rental contract and utilities were less than 30% of the renter's salary. This meant that to view a flat with a monthly rental of €1500, for example, you had to prove that your salary was almost €5000 a month. Completely unrealistic for most people looking for rental accommodation, and totally impossible for people like myself who can prove no salary at all.

In May of this year, it became obvious that something needed to done. Renting a flat or house was something that was now only possible for the very rich. So the Spanish government passed a new law. In "stressed housing areas," they said (places where the average rental was far above 30% of a normal person's salary), it would be illegal to insist on this requirement. The law further stipulated that the estate agent's fees should now be paid by the home owner and no longer by the person who was looking for a place to rent.

This initially suggested that house hunting would begin to look more hopeful for people like myself. While there would be no change in the actual cost of renting, it would again become accessible to people with a more normal level of income.

But the law came with its own backlash: some landlords, those who owned their homes outright, were willing to take the risk of renting to someone who wasn't "well off,' but many homeowners, including those who perhaps bought a property for the purpose of renting it out to pay the mortgage, just weren't willing to take the risk of renting to someone who might default on the payments and put their mortgage at risk. So, now there are fewer properties available for rental; you can search for weeks and there's simply nothing..... or you find just a handful of options with a genuinely extortionate price tag.  As some landlords have decided not to rent out their houses any more, those who are still offering homes for rent can afford to demand higher payments.... knowing that there will be foreigners, usually Scandinavians or Americans, who are happy to pay the high rents, finding them to be no more expensive than what they were paying back home.

The bad news is that this means there are even fewer rentals available than there were at the beginning of the year. The good news is that some of those properties no longer being rented out will very likely be put on the market and be for sale over the coming few months.

So I'm continuing to keep up my search for a place to rent.... but I'm also increasingly open to the possibility that my long term solution might involve having to buy something small for myself. That's a scary thought in some ways; I've dreamed of owning my own home, but never imagined it to be something that would be possible for me, living on a lower than average income.

But I'm getting so weary of moving house every month and not having access to all my stuff (furniture, books, clothes...) and I'm open to whatever solution God may bring across my path. 

Thank you for praying that I will have strength and wisdom for the weeks ahead.

And then there were two...

 

Today's post is just to give a final update on my Teddi...

and to say a big thank you to everyone who sent best wishes and prayers when I shared that he was going into surgery this morning.

In the end, the tumour was inoperable as it went too deep into his tongue. This morning we had to put him to sleep after all.  I'm at peace that our vet proposed at least checking out whether surgery could be an option; I don't need to wonder about whether I made the right decision to end his life. Teddi had a long and full life - almost all the years that I've lived here in Spain - and I'll have many happy memories of him.

So, now our little family has become very small: only Maiki and myself as we continue to look for our new home here in Spain.

Thanks for your prayers.

Teddi's going for surgery...

Poor Teddi (my cat) hasn't coped well with our enforced nomadic lifestyle this summer. Every time we've moved house, every time he needed to be put into a cat carrier and driven somewhere in the car, every time he had to get used to a new house, he has found it very stressful. 

At one of the places we stayed, we were looking after friends' dog, a big boxer. He was very sweet, but he wasn't used to cats. Teddi needed to be enclosed in a small room where he spent most of the time hiding under the bed, because the boxer barked at him if he appeared in the doorway (even though I'd put up a baby gate to keep them separated.) He's doing a bit better now that we're back in Alhaurín and have a house all to ourselves; we're house sitting while a friend is on outreach in the Ukraine.

But last week, Teddi suddenly stopped eating dry cat food and would only eat soft wet food. I began to wonder if he had toothache and soon I noticed that he had terrible bad breath. On Monday this week, I took him to the vet and she discovered that he has a huge tumour under his tongue. That's what's been making it difficult for him to chew or swallow. As he's getting elderly and already has some kidney issues, it looked as if surgery would be too risky, and so I've been preparing myself to grieve and to put him to sleep. He's already lost a kilo from eating less, and it wouldn't be fair to wait much longer... even though he's generally happy and snuggly as always.

Today his blood tests came back and the vet phoned me to say that it's really not too bad: that his kidney failure is well under control and he has a good chance of living more years. As mouth surgery is so expensive in the veterinary hospital, she's suggested that she does it herself - tomorrow in our own vet surgery - to see how much of the tumour she can remove. If we're lucky, the root of it won't be too deep.

I'm not going to do a biopsy, because I already know that I'm not going to subject my old boy to chemotherapy... but I've decided to follow the vet's recommendation and have her operate on him tomorrow morning to at least give him a chance. As she pointed out, if she herself does the surgery, operating to see if we can give him an opportunity to live longer will not really cost much more than just euthanising and cremating him without giving him a fair chance to recover.

If all goes well, this op might be the end of the problem and Teddi can enjoy some more senior years. Alternatively, if the tumour comes back in the future, that would be a clear indication that it's time to make the decision to say goodbye and put him to sleep.

So, early tomorrow morning, 8.30 Spanish time, my sweet boy will go into surgery.... and my thoughts and prayers will go with him.

I'll let you know what happens.

Andalusian wanderings

It's been a while since I last posted here in this blog. Our nomadic lifestyle has continued over the summer months and we've moved house THREE more times since my post that explained more about the Spanish housing crisis.

At the end of June, we moved inland to the little town of Coín. Some friends had asked me if I could dog-sit for them while they went to the UK for a family emergency. I spent the first two weeks living in a little guest cottage on their property - one that they usually rent out to holidaymakers. Then I moved further up the road to live in their own house with their dog. As well as looking after the dog, I was responsible for looking after AirBnB guests who arrived to live in the cottage.

Inland towns are at a slightly higher altitude - colder in winter and hotter in summer. Our moving to Coín coincided with a heat wave and it sometimes felt like living in a pizza oven, with afternoon temperatures occasionally rising as high as 46 degrees. I was very thankful that they had a swimming pool on their property, but the very hot weather meant that the dogs couldn't go outdoors in the afternoon; the hot cement would have burned the skin of their paw pads.

Just as my time in Coín was coming to an end and I was wondering where I'd go on July 27th, I got a message from a young friend at church. "I'm going on holiday and then on outreach during August," she explained. "Would you like to stay in my house from 27th July till 23rd August.. or till the end of August, if you like?"

So, now I'm back in Alhaurín de la Torre, living not far from where I'd lived for the past fifteen years. But I still haven't found anything permanent and there don't even seem to be many options to view during the summer months. Please continue to pray with me that our permanent home will soon become available and our nomadic wanderings can stop. Thank you.

Caught in a crisis...

If you turn on your TV these days (something I don't do very often) and especially if you tune in to listen to the news, it won't be very long before you hear a report about Spain's current "housing crisis" or "rental crisis." Social and economic happenings over the past fifteen years - ranging from the financial crash of 2008 to the covid pandemic of more recent years - have led to a situation where there simply isn't enough available housing in the nation. Not only is there an actual shortage of places to live, the few places that are available are out of reach for most.  Rental housing has risen so sharply in price that renting is now a luxury available only to the very rich or to short term renters from wealthier nations. And current home-purchase laws are making it impossible for most people to make the down payment necessary to secure a mortgage.

There are thousands of people all over the country who cannot find a place to live. Even in my local church, there are five families at the moment who are searching in vain to find new housing. 

I know the crisis is not unique to Spain... (if I google "housing crisis," I find dozens of articles about the Spanish situation, but also a good number about the housing crisis in Australia and even a few about a growing rental crisis in the UK)... but of course, I just happen to be one of the people "caught" in this Spanish crisis and unable to find a new place to live... despite six months now of searching for a new home.

I got a bit of a shock the other day when reading a newspaper article about the situation. It referred to the many people in Spain who are living "below the poverty line," and I had to do a double take when I saw that the monthly income level described as the "poverty line" was almost double my current monthly support level.

So, I know that sometime down the line, I'm going to need to trust God for an increase in my missions support.... but for now, I haven't felt that support raising should be my priority. Even people who do live "above the poverty line" are finding it impossible to secure housing at the moment. There is literally none available in many parts of the country. So I've felt that my focus needs to be on finding a new home... and then I'll know how much increase I need to trust God for in my new situation.

As June draws to a close, I'm preparing to move yet again.... this time to an inland area that's about 20 miles from the town I've been living in for the past fifteen years. Some friends from church need to go to the UK for a family emergency and have asked me if I could look after their house and dog while they are  gone, as well as managing a little AirBnB cottage that they have on their property. (Washing laundry, cleaning the cottage, making up the bed for new guests, etc.) This means that I now have a temporary place to stay during July... while I continue the seemingly endless search for a more permanent home.

Teddi, my poor cat, has discerned this week that something suspicious is afoot. He's seeing the furniture being moved out of the little granny flat we're in at the moment (my host family are having to put all their things into storage before going overseas for three months to raise support) and perhaps he's beginning to anticipate the trauma of a third move in as many months. He sometimes just wanders around miaowing loudly as an expression of his discomfort. Thankfully the dog is taking it in her stride and seems pretty relaxed about the whole thing. As long as I am there, she doesn't seem to mind where we are or how often we move. 

As I wrote in a previous blog post, this is what I want to be like in my relationship with God: I want to be able to relax and trust like Maiki, knowing that God's presence is with me even in a constantly changing situation, and not become stressed and panicky like poor Teddi who doesn't handle the changes and unpredictability so well.

Of course, moving further inland to Coín means that I'm going to be leaving all my friends behind. I've already experienced the loss of relationship with people that I used to converse with on a daily basis, but I have at least managed to keep connecting with those people once a week. I've continued to be able to walk some of my former neighbours' dogs, even though it's meant driving over in the car to pick them up and take them to the forest with us. On a free morning this week, I went with a friend and four of the dogs on one of our favourite hikes, up to the mountaintop where the "wolf's lookout" offers us stunning views of the Mediterranean coastline on the other side. But that will be our last opportunity for a while, as we'll move soon to a country area further inland. So I've been saying some goodbyes this week, without really knowing how long that will be for, or even if I'll be able to return to this town again at any point.

In some ways, it seems like singularly bad timing - that I would just happen to become homeless at a time when the entire nation is in a housing crisis. But all I can hold on to is the fact that God is bigger than any crisis and that, somewhere down the road, He has a good solution for me. In the meantime, I'd like to say a big thank you to all of you who have been standing with me in prayer and who have sent little notes to share what you were sensing from the Lord.

Watch this space!!

When breakthroughs are slow to come...

I'm now in my sixth month of looking for a place to live and there still hasn't been any breakthrough. While I'm making a choice not to worry from day to day, I'm nonetheless beginning to notice some symptoms of the underlying stress of living with the effects of my homeless status... 

I get tired of not having access to my summer clothes, my books or my kitchen appliances. I'm noticing a fair amount of lower back pain and suspect it may be due in part to some months now of not sleeping in my own bed with its nice firm mattress.  I realise that I get tired more easily than normal and sometimes I fall asleep when I get home from church on a Sunday afternoon. (I'm one of those people who can normally never sleep during the daytime.) I find myself feeling annoyed by things that would normally only be a minor cause of frustration, and discouraged by things that aren't really such a big deal.

This morning, for example, I fought for almost three hours with erratic internet. As can often be the case here in wet or windy weather, the wifi kept cutting off every two or three minutes, completely sabotaging all the plans I had made for the early morning time slot - including an online connection for someone with a special birthday and an online payment that I needed to make. After many dozens of attempts to re-connect, only to be cut off again a few minutes later, I found myself dissolving into tears. That's not normal! No one breaks down sobbing over internet problems! And so I'm aware that, although I'm doing well on the whole, there's definitely a level of stress that comes with living with constant uncertainty about the future, not to mention the frustrating and tiring process of following up on every new possibility of a place to live.

And so I'm needing to be even more intentional than usual about spending time in God's presence and drawing on His peace amidst challenging circumstances. As a number of old songs expressed it: we may not know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future.

I was reminded this morning of one of the Bible accounts of a seemingly delayed answer to prayer. In the Old Testament book of Daniel, we see Daniel praying and fasting on behalf of the people of Israel. In chapter 9, God had answered Daniel's prayer before he had even finished praying, but in chapter 10, a few weeks go by and there seems to be no answer at all to his prayer.

Finally, an angel appears to him one day while he is praying on the riverbank. The angel tells him (Daniel 10: 12 - 13) that on the very first day Daniel began to pray, God heard his prayer and began to answer it. But there was some enemy opposition to that answer and for three weeks the angel had been fighting against a spiritual entity called the Prince of Persia who was seeking to delay the answer to Daniel's prayer.

It can be easy for believers to think that God isn't listening or that He doesn't care, when in fact the delay may be due to a battle in the spiritual realm. This demon in Daniel 10 was not able to stop the answer to Daniel's prayer (at least, not as long as Daniel continued to pray) but it seems that he was able to delay it.

It might not be accurate for me to assume that there's a element of spiritual warfare around my failure to find a new home; after all, there are thousands of people all over the country, believers and non believers alike, who are in the same position as I am at the moment. It seems hardly a week goes by without my hearing of yet another person or family who is looking for a place to live.

However, when there's a preponderance of such delays going on (my Mum is Scotland is also having to battle with a number of situations that are still unresolved) it would certainly seem that the enemy has a hand in it.

Our response needs to be twofold. Whatever we do, we mustn't stop praying, thinking that God's not doing anything. We need to continue in prayer until the delaying spirit has been overcome. 

And secondly, we need to protect ourselves from discouragement and fatigue... and we do this primarily by spending time in God's presence and declaring our trust in Him.

Thank you to those of you who have been standing with me and my family in prayer during this challenging season. Thank you for trusting with us for a breakthrough.

How unconditional is your obedience?

I've been reading through the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, and this morning I came to three very short chapters (41, 42 and 43) that contain a valuable warning for us.

To set the scene: the powerful nation of Babylon has invaded Judah, Jerusalem has recently fallen and most of the people have been carried off into exile.... exactly as Jeremiah and other prophets had been warning them for a very long time. Only a small remnant remains in the promised land and the Babylonians have appointed a man named Gedaliah to be the governor there.

In chapter 41 of Jeremiah, this man Gedaliah is murdered and, fearing retaliation from the Babylonians, some of Judah's military leaders want to flee to Egypt for safety. 

But first they ask Jeremiah to seek God's guidance for them and, in chapter 42 vs 6, they declare that they will obey the Lord, no matter what. "Whether we like it or not, we will obey the Lord our God... for if we obey Him, everything will turn out well for us."

Jeremiah seeks God's will and gives the people the news that they are not to fear the King of Babylon, but are to stay in Judah and God will protect them there. He warns them not to flee to Egypt.

In chapter 43, despite having declared themselves willing to do anything God said, the people completely ignore the warning and go to Egypt anyway, taking Jeremiah with them. There, Jeremiah prophesies that war, famine and disaster will catch up with them.

It's easy to say that we will obey God unconditionally. It's quite another thing to be radically obedient when we don't like what we hear or when it makes us nervous or uncomfortable. But, as happened with the servant in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25), fearful disobedience will never bring a good conclusion for us. 

When God asks to stay in a challenging work, school or church situation; when He asks us to persevere in a difficult relationship... or perhaps asks us not to continue in a toxic relationship; when He urges us to persevere in prayer rather than trying to take matters into our own hands... it can be hard at times to follow through with that and not to seek an easy way out.

In my own situation at the moment, it is incredibly hard to be here in Spain, homeless and in my sixth month of looking for a new place to live. It would have been much easier to leave and grab hold of one of the options offered to me in other countries.... But for now, I really sense that God is still asking me to stay here and to trust Him.

When we need to "hang in there" in a challenging situation, we can pray for ourselves what Paul prayed for the Colossians. (See Colossians 1: 11) - "We pray that you will be strengthened with all His glorious power so that you will have all the endurance and patience you need.... and may it spill over into joy."