Final Week!

We are one final week from completing our mission in Spain. It has been one of mostly ups with just a few question marks. This week I hope to fill you in on not just what we have done but what we have learned. We have one more Bible Study and we are going to show a movie on Friday night. We will be doing some cleaning at the campus house and a few other odds and end and then we are off. Please continue to pray for us as we are still meeting with people and doing our best to show them the love of God through Christ. This will be a great week! No slowing down for us. We value finishing strong and want to do our best to keep loving these people with every second we are with them.

Shalom,
Gregg

Missions 101:

Thanks to multiple trips to Haiti and lessons from my sister Heather and her husband Janeil, who live in Haiti, we have learned the first lesson in missions. Do you know what it is? FLEXIBILITY.

Things don't always go the way we plan them. No matter how many emails or phone calls or support letters we send out, sometimes God has to test us to see if we are still trusting in him.

We found out a couple of days ago that our plans to travel to Southern Spain have been changed. We were hoping to travel to Murcia to work with a church during an evangelistic campaign. We were hoping to see how they work with Muslims up from Morocco but it wasn't in God's plan for us. The church down there has changed the dates of their work and Bird and I will be gone during the new dates. So what do you do? You work with God. We are told our Bible Study tonight that we are going to do another study and have a movie night next week. So we are not shutting down, we are not slowing down, we have invested in Salamanca and some of the people here and we are going to give it another week here!

Pray for us as we have only a week and a half left in Spain!

We love you dearly and pray God's blessings on your life!

(Picture from Plaza Mayor--downtown Salamanca)

Close to Home!

There is so much to say about what was planned to be our last Bible study in Salamanca. First things first. Phylis and Charlie Cutler, our dear friends from Harbor of Hope in Lowell, MA told us that we may be in for a special treat over the summer. Thanks you guys! Your daughter Julie is wonderful. Julie is a Spanish teacher in New Hampshire and is away from her wonderful husband and daughter, India, for 5 weeks while she is studying to get her masters here at the University. This picture was taken tonight, the last time we will see Julie before she heads back to the states. We had the opportunity to spend just a short time with Julie but we have been so blessed by her warm spirit and her godly heart. Phylis and Charlie, you should be proud!

This is the room where we have our Bible Studies. Tonight, which was our fourth study was on Ecclesiastes 5. We had 10 people or so and then we all went out for Tapas and hung out until midnight. It was a blast.

A wonderful thing about tonight was that Margaret invited her Spanish friend Marta to the Bible Study and she came and hung out with us all night. Bird is meeting with her tomorrow for another "intercombio" session (Spanish/English talking). We believe that this was the first time she has ever experienced anything Evangelical and she was welcomed and fit right in.

In this room we will do one more Bible Study and then say good-bye to our friends in Salamanca. I'm not sure what text I will choose. I was only planning for 4 studies in Ecclesiastes so we will see.

Tonight was just a great night! All smiles, lots of jokes, we have made some great friends here in the city and will truly miss them. Carlos (to the left, just landed a job at the University of North Carolina working in Cancer Research and will be in the States for two years. He is a crazy fun dude and we hope to meet up with him in the States as well. Thanks for all your prayers...they are working beyond anything we could have imagined.

Pasta Night!!

Momma just loves pasta night!

That's right...it's even leftover pasta!

A Sad Night at the Plaza Mayor!

We had heard our teachers talk about "Charro" dancing, but Saturday night was the first time we got to see it. While Bird and I were in line to get ice-cream at the Plaza Mayor we heard the drums and the hand cymbals and we turned to see all the hoopla in the middle of the plaza. Charro dancing is the traditional dance of Salamanca. The only people dancing were over 70 years old and the scene was just amazing. We thought of the pain that this generation had felt during Spain's civil war (1936-1939) and the joy they must feel now to be able to dance freely without the fear of a dictator stealing their home or shooting the only evangelical pastor in Salamanca (all of which General Franco did). Anyway, after getting our Limon treat we headed to see the dancing. We stood and watched for a few minutes and I decided that I had enough skills to hold my ice-cream and take a picture. Which I did. The problem came in trying to hold the ice-cream and shutting down the camera. The result was a shattered camera on the Charro dance-floor. The dancing cool! Another example of Gregg's great ability to multi-task, not so cool!

Today we went to the local Carrefore (Spain's version of a Walmart) and bought a camera that would get us through for a while. ONE BIG PROBLEM: Actually TWO BIG PROBLEMS: 1. All the Instructions are in Spanish, including all the on screen prompts. 2. The plug for the rechargable battery is for a European outlet and will need an adapter if we are ever going to use it in the States. All of this hit us 20 minutes after walking out of the store.


Enough about the silly camera. Sorry for the delay in the blogs, we are eager to play catch up over the next couple of days.

We love you all and ask that you would keep praying for us as we are about to finish out time here in Salamanca and are getting ready next week to head to the South of Spain (Murcia) to work with a church down there.

Take Care,
Gregg