Merry Christmas!

Al, Sal, Ellie & Joe would first like to wish all our friends around the world a… ¡FELIZ NAVIDAD!   MERRY CHRISTMAS!

At Christmas (& because of Christmas) we’ve got so much to celebrate! Cue the quirky dancing family…

We hope you all have a great celebration as well as a rest, and we wish you a really blessed 2012!

Our Christmas preparations have been a little different this year (you may have noticed a lack of cards for starters) because of our new setting and routine – and leaving our decorations in our attic in Plymouth might also have had something to do with it. So, for a new season, a new tree…and paper chains and snow-flakes, 5 advent calendars from over-zealous grandparents, a Spanish carols CD (weirdly unnostalgic) and a traditional Belén (nativity scene) complete with donkey and moss on the roof. ¡Precioso!

We’re looking forward to Sal’s parents and brother joining us tomorrow to celebrate a Spanglish Christmas with us – our newly concocted Christmas tapas will be featuring.

We feel like letting out a loud, public PHEW! We’ve got through our 1^st term here!! Well into our 4^th month, we can hardly believe it’s all happened and that, strangely, it’s beginning to feel ‘normal’. Ellie’s had her 1^st term at school (seen above in her school Christmas party costume), Al’s survived his 1^st term at work and now doesn’t feel like the clueless new boy, Joe’s mastered ‘hola’ and ‘hasta luego’ and constantly entertains the locals with them, and Sally made a declaration the other day that we have been longing for…

“I think I’ve turned a small corner with my language learning!”

Yippppeeeee! A small one it may be, but such an encouraging one! Now instead of being completely unaware of the nature of a conversation, she can regularly understand the gist and contribute a few key words (nay, sentences!) in the right places – what a star she is!!!

The language exchanges, lessons and personal studying must be paying off – not to mention Bob Esponja and Dora the Explorer’s invaluable roles (Sal’s preferred learning strategy).

In regards to our team we can also happily say that things have gone positively throughout this term. We’ve begun to meet up every Saturday evening (kids and all) for a meal and for fellowship together – a real highlight of each week – and although not in our plans at all yet, we’ve already started to have some locals join in with us from time to time.

Our amazing new friends Mike & Jess, from the church in Portugal (Penafiel), gave up a big chunk of their time last month to come over and spend time with us here. Sharing personal experience, testimony, teaching, and by their friendship and prayer they left behind a much bolder and envisioned team.

Some potential team members have also been spending time here and seeing if they feel it’s right to join us. We can so easily remember being in that nerve-racking position and would love you to pray with us that they would know 'with their knowers’ what God’s saying - and hopefully that it’s to be part of us really soon! Amongst this mix we are praying for our lovely friends the Capes family, from Yeovil, who are determined and anxious to join us but who need a way forward in the sale of their house. Join us in praying for a breakthrough in this!

When it comes to making Spanish friends, things are slow and steady – slow for Al and steady for Sal! Neither of us feels we have a close friend yet but in our more sensible moments we remember that friendships are built with time and what did we expect?!  However, on a positive note (and similarly to Kevin & Ness’s blog post) we’ve been planning to have some people over for ‘English Christmas tapas’ and quickly realised that we would need to do 2 or 3 different evenings to fit in all the people we’ve become ‘friendly’ with – so that can’t be a bad thing. But pray for us in all this as well, please!

Finally, two other recent fun and eye-opening moments:



• The 9^th November was a Madrid-wide holiday that celebrated her patron saint, the Virgin of Almudena. Songs, costumes and a huge wall of flower offerings marked the day in which we enjoyed the fun and sense of community but also silently prayed that the people of Madrid might know, love and honour Jesus above all other things.

 

                          

• The 8^th December was Al’s birthday and his marvellous parents came over for a few days, staying with us for the first time. So good to catch up with them, the kids adored playing with them and we were spoiled with some other 'firsts' for us all: our first 3-course meal eating out in the heart of the city, our first trip to the cinema in Spain (‘Gato con Botas’) and the kids' first time ever at the circus. ¡Fue genial!  It was great!

We hope to catch up with many of you via skype / phone over the holidays and look forward to hearing your news. For now we leave you with typical parents-proud-of-their-kids photos: of Elizabeth, who has discovered nail polish, and of Joseph, whose giraffe rides the metro with him. J

  

Practice, Passions, Protests...

Hola!

Well, the first rain in Madrid in over 50 days and a very sudden drop in temperatures, from about 30 to 13 degrees, reminds us of the UK and that it’s about time we posted an update! 7 weeks in and a month since our last post, here are some of the juicier bits of our lives in recent days:

A scary milestone for every parent - your eldest starting school - came and went with remarkably little drama! There has been no sign of the tears and terror we expected on leaving Elizabeth every day in a class full of ‘foreign-speaking’ (& looking!) kids, but instead she comes skipping out of school at the end of most days. We are SO, SO grateful for this answer to prayer, relieving so much stress from Sal & I, and opening the door for Ellie to begin to make friends here. Last night in her bedtime routine she even prayed, ‘Dear God, please help my friend Claudia’ – breakthrough, indeed!

It’s fascinating to watch how she is now processing what she’s hearing on a daily basis. She might not understand any of it yet, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t going to try to copy & reproduce it! It’s hilarious to listen to her talking, playing or asking us questions in ‘spanishy gobbledygook’ with such sincerity on her face. She even sings in it:

As an aside, this was filmed nearly 2 weeks ago in the mountains outside of Madrid. We have started a car-share with Kevin & Ness which allowed us to get out of the city for the first time and see the beautiful sights that are near us. Really stunning – anybody else want to join us here? J

It feels like the ball is beginning to roll now with our team (Kevin, Ness, Dave, Al & Sal). We continue to build relationships with each other which is a really tough call, isn’t it, when that requires meeting up in parks, eating meals together and generally enjoying God in our team times! Kevin’s leading us in digging into the book of Nehemiah to grasp encouraging stuff from God in raising our vision & equipping us to see a church planted in the not too distant future. And then we’re regularly visiting churches together to see what’s out there and begin to network with other leaders. Great stuff!

Being really honest though, the last couple of weeks have been pretty tough. Things that we knew would be hard and a sacrifice are, funnily enough, really hard and a sacrifice! We miss our great family & friends (such as when Sal’s mates are having babies & she can’t be there!). It’s hard work settling into a new job (getting my head round 5 levels instead of 2 as in my last job) & spending hours criss-crossing Madrid each week. And the lingo is a constant source of frustration & fatigue for Sal (who’s being a real star in her determination to learn, even choosing to watch Spanish TV when chilling). Even for little Joseph we’ve noticed in his more challenging behaviour recently, the effects of all the upheaval and perhaps missing his ‘mates’. (Annoyingly there seems to be no such thing as toddler groups here – his staple diet in Plymouth & point of contact & fun with other kids.)

It’s far from all doom & gloom though. We’ve been blessed with lots of opportunities for family fun – Joe here on good form and making me laugh:

And loads of fun experiences that you just don’t get if you don’t leave home! Last Saturday we headed to the train station to find a day-trip out somewhere, only to find the station swamped as around 50,000 teachers from across the province converged in that area to march in a demonstration against education cuts. We were willingly swept along in the crowds and joined in the protest (it’s our kids’ future education!), enjoying the drums, orchestras, banners & friendly mayhem that resulted in main roads being shut down and bemused policemen looking on. The Spanish are passionate protestors!

 A peaceful Sunday afternoon walk by Madrid’s main lake was also pleasantly hijacked as we found a massive triathlon event in full motion, hundreds of hardy Spaniards diving into the lake, cycling by it and then running all over the place in 30 degrees at 2pm. We’d been told Spaniards love their sport, we’ve all seen plenty of sporting titles go their way, now we saw the proof with our own eyes – fanatics! J

A couple of weeks ago we also joined the crowds lining the streets on Spain’s national day, as the troops processed, jets flew overhead and Spanish flags were waved. We can’t yet say that we were proudly waving a flag, but we’re certainly getting insights into Spanish passions & pride and slowly growing an appreciation for these amazing people.

Well, thanks for sticking with me if you’ve read this far – a bit of a marathon! But hopefully it will have helped to inform your thoughts & prayers for us, as we also warmly remember you all.

Hasta luego,

Al, Sal, Ellie & Joe x

Connecting!

Oh no, wait, yes...I've LOST the piece of paper that means we're residents in Madrid!!
Hurrah, well at times like this we're trying to learn to laugh (& eat watermelon).

We're in a very bizarre situation of occasionally feeling like we're on holiday but on the other hand feeling stressed out as we grapple with 'the new' and as we press on down a list of things that need to be done to get our lives up & running here.

This is our first blog post from our PC, which means we have at least managed to get ourselves connected to the outside world with a landline and internet access - tick! Due to the quirky nature of our flat, however, the current home of our router is in the middle of our living room floor, halfway between power sockets and telephone sockets :-)  The surprises continue in our flat as we discover the hard way that the electrical system won't tolerate the oven, hob, washing machine & kettle all being on at the same time - 12 trips later down to the basement to reset the trip switch and we're beginning to get the balance right :-)

Our plaza is a really great place to get connected with local people. We come out our front door (1st pic) and straight into this park (2nd pic) which at key times is bustling with all generations sitting / chatting / playing /smoking weed :-) We've had some good first chats after realising that behind the indifferent looks many Spaniards are actually very approachable! And as I write this, one of our big goals is being achieved as Sally & the kids have gone out shopping with a Spanish girl and her young child - Hurrah, Sally's longings for girly chats MAY not be too far off!

I'm still to find potential Spanish friends (spare a prayer!) but it's early days: I start work on Wednesday, we'll be taking turns to take Ellie to the schoolgate once she is allocated a place on 4th October, and on Sunday we went to a really friendly church 5 minutes walk from our house. No doubt God has some mates for all of us somewhere in that mix.

One other great connection is that our 5th (adult) member of the team has now joined us in Madrid - welcome Dave! He's similarly left friends, job & home (in East Grinsted) to help out in this mad adventure and we've just spent a great weekend with him, including a cable car trip from the city into Casa del Campo (parkland) on Saturday. Spare another prayer as he looks for work & a house-share and settles in as a Madrilleno.

The kids are well, if a little moany at times with the heat and all the changes in routine. Ellie wants to go to school, Joe walks past people and says 'Hola!', and they are learning to walk 'tippy-toes' along our hall in a noise prevention strategy!

Thanks to all who have written, emailed, messaged, phoned or (more recently) skyped. We value and love you lots. Until next time! x

Sal might kill me, but I'll leave you with a mini-taste of our home situ :-)

We're Madrilenos!

What a whirlwind!
Today we were given our piece of paper that makes us officially residents of Madrid - hurrah! Our boxes arrived yesterday - 4 days late & rather battered - but it did mean we had time to clean the flat & slap some paint on some of the mustard-coloured walls and chocolate woodwork. What a relief.

We really do like our flat, especially its location near the Bartletts, metro stations, shops & parks.
We're beginning to get our heads round rubbish collection, shop opening times and the need for our kids to stop singing at the top of their voices in the 'quiet time' between 2 and 5pm :-)
The delights as far as the kids are concerned are: exciting underground choo-choos, yummy watermelons and fantastic parks & play areas everywhere.

We've begun to know who our neighbours are, with one of our first interactions being a request for us to help our neighbour opposite us to change the clothes line that runs across the yard between our flats! So far, generally a quite friendly if slightly indifferent reception, but hopefully we'll grow on them! ...come on kids, be more cute and less noisy!
It's hot, hot, hot (and not in the good way) but we're loving the bonus of our balcony where I enjoy this mountain view as I have the occasional quiet time in the cool of the morning. "I lift up my eyes to the hills..." :-)

Finally, on Sunday evening we also visited a growing church in the south of Madrid (we're towards the north). It was great to see the potential for the gospel in Madrid and be so welcomed by people there. Al had the trauma of helping Ellie & Joe to not be terrified by the kids' work (horrified looks & tears at a crowd of noisy Spaniards dancing and singing!) but amazingly they did stay in reasonably happily by themselves for a lot of it. Much of the evening flew over Sal's head but she enjoyed being able to join in 1 song she knew - 'Allelujah' :-)

We don't have internet or phones sorted out yet (red tape) but had the pleasure of receiving our first post in Spain today - thanks Cassie and Simon & Jane!
That's probably enough from us for now. Thanks for your interest, love & prayers. We'll be in touch soon, as our little adventure continues!
xox

Let's go!! Vamos!!

Aaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhh!!!! We're at the airport and awaiting the flight that will zoom us into a new stage of our lives and an exciting adventure with God.
It's been a year in the making since we felt God's leading to join Kevin & Ness Bartlett and family in Madrid, with the long-term aim of seeing a thriving, Word-centred, Spirit-filled, Jesus-worshipping Newfrontiers church in Madrid :-)
The preparation stage has been pretty long, challenging and costly, to be honest, and we are now so looking forward to getting into our little flat, finding our feet, getting Sally some language lessons, finding Ellie a good school and meeting some friendly local Spaniards!!
We will try to keep you updated on our progress but in the meantime we send you our love - thank you so much for your support and encouragement - and watch this space!
Al, Sal, Ellie & Joe x