3 years in and 3rd one’s a charm!

Lots of mutual gazing of eyes filled with wonder, fights for epic cuddles on the sofa and a sudden surge in contact and video-calls from grandparents can all only mean one thing… the stork has found us in our Spanish hide-away and delivered a very cute little bundle!

As you may know, on Halloween morning little Daniel made his entrance into the world 10 days overdue, in a culturally-appropriate, laid-back fashion, and only after a lot of convincing that it really was time to emerge. He is in great health and feeding well (a Whitehead trait) and has received an enthusiastic welcome from our other 2 kids, neighbours and friends. I guess he’s a bit of a novelty at the school gate and also the first baby of the church plant! I (Al) have been on paternity leave and so with Sal we've been loving getting to know our little man and re-learning how to do nappies, night routines and public transport with a pram, to name a few things.

Sal, having trained in the UK as a midwife, got to see first-hand the entire process worked out differently in another country and has lived to tell several tales! But actually we’re both really grateful for the competent and thorough care received in our local hospital and are glad to have another link and experience in common with members of our community. Bizarrely, we have come across 3 other newborn baby Daniels in the last week. And also of note, we breathed a sigh of relief when an Ebola scare at our hospital turned out to be just a false alarm…

Hopefully you’ll excuse the fact that this blog post is limited to the one topic, as it’s a bit all-consuming for us at the moment. But on a related theme, it’s also exciting for us as a church to see that spiritual new births appear to be beginning to take place among us too! We have a new ‘brother’ in our church family who is enthusiastically part of us and another who recently had to return to his home city but who we've linked up with a church family there. New hope, new freedom, new relationships with God and his people… it’s what we’re here for and we are thankful for these small beginnings. Thank you too if you’re praying for the church here! It’s so appreciated – don’t stop! ;-)

Anyway, much love from us all and until our next post - assuming that Daniel continues to let us sleep enough to have functioning brains and that having 3 kids abroad doesn't lead to us losing our sanity,

Al, Sal, Ellie, Joe & Danny