You know you're in Spain at Christmas time...

It's been interesting to hear about different holiday traditions as Kathy and I have our English "students" share on Wednesday nights. Many of them are very similar to ours and others are very different. Folks decorate here with lights and Santa and Christmas trees, like we do in the States. However, I was a little surprised to see this decoration hanging from my neighbor's balcony. I've seen Santa climbing up the side of an apartment, but I've never seen the three kings doing it.

This highlights one of the differences between a Spanish Christmas and an American one. They celebrate King's Day on January 6 and for many Spaniards, this is when they do their gift giving, since this is when the child Jesus received his gifts. Some exchange gifts on December 25, and some do it on both days, but I think most wait until January 6.

I found this article regarding Christmas in Spain that you might find interesting. At the bottom they tell about a custom here in Cataluña that is unusual, to say the least.

I leave for Denver in less than week and I'm excited to have a white Christmas and see my kids and enjoy my first Christmas Eve service at our church (we have always been away for Christmas). I hope and pray you are enjoying the real reason for the season and not getting caught up in the media-driven, and perhaps guilt-driven, excesses that can so easily take over.

Thanksgiving

I know, I'm a week late. But I wanted to comment on our Thanksgiving celebration. We celebrated with a traditional Thanksgiving dinner at Jon & Kathy's home with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, sweet potatoes, jello salad, biscuits, pumpkin pie and apple pie. Kathy worked very hard to make it as traditional as possible and Jon even drove to downtown Barcelona to find the turkey.

The three ladies in the photo are part of a family from our church (since Thanksgiving is not a Spanish holiday the husband had to work). The young man on the left is an American that is studying in Barcelona for the semester. His parents were missionaries to Spain and they were friends with our church family. So Isabel (the mom) wanted him to have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner and she was excited to try it herself, so Kathy offered to host it. It was great. We even did the three kernels of corn and I was able to tell what I was thankful for in Spanish!

After dinner, we watched a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and played Pit and had a very fun time. So even though I am far away from family, God provided people from my "family of faith" to encourage me. And I am very grateful.

Things that I'm thankful for...

It's always difficult for me to be away from family on holidays. This year seems especially difficult even though my teammates and I will be having a traditional Thanksgiving meal and sharing it with a family at church and an American student that is studying in Spain this semester. So I decided this morning that I needed to focus on all of the blessings that God has given me. Here is a partial list. I'm sure many of you will be making similar lists and possibly even talking about them today as you pause to celebrate this Day of Giving Thanks.

• I am so very thankful for my children. They love the Lord and they love each other. They also love and are ministering to the Body of Christ in the local church.
  
• I am thankful for extended family. Even though we are separated by thousands of miles, I know they are praying for me and surrounding me with their love.
• I am thankful for friends here in Spain who have made me part of their family and care for me in many, many ways.
• I am thankful for a myriad of wonderful, supportive friends in the States. Many of them support me financially so I can be here in Spain. Most of them email me on a fairly regular basis. They are a physical representation of Christ as they love and care for me and provide needed emotional, and at times physical, support.
• I am thankful for the love, grace and mercy of God that He has given me so freely and abundantly. I know I can never repay Him and it's wonderful to know that I don't even have to try.
• I am thankful for a job that contributes to the furthering of God's Kingdom here in Spain.
• I am thankful for the ability to learn another language at my age, even if I'm not fluent yet.
• I am thankful for missionary friends around the world that are giving up so much to bring the love and Word of God to the nations who so desperately need to hear the Good News.
• I am thankful for good health.
• I am thankful that I will be in Denver with my children for Christmas!

The list could go on and on. I would love to hear about your Thanksgiving celebrations and perhaps some of the things on your lists, if you'd like to share, as we celebrate all that God has blessed us with. Happy Thanksgiving!

November Update

Our Church
Our church is located in the neighboring town of Granollers. The service is conducted in both Castilian Spanish (Castellano) and Catalan. The preaching is always in Castellano so I can understand most of it. The songs are almost always a mixture of Castellano and Catalan. There is no pastor. The church is led by two Elders and the preaching is shared by several men in the congregation. Fortunately for us, the National Youth Director is a member of our church so our youth program is very healthy, with the older youth encouraging and discipling the younger.

English “Class”
Kathy and I have begun meeting with a group of 8 people on Wednesday nights that are studying English and wanted to practice with native speakers. One of the ladies in the group is a member of our church. The rest, we believe, don’t know the Lord. We are hoping that many of these folks will come to know Christ.

This month’s quote:
“It is sad to see that, in our highly competitive and greedy world, we have lost touch with the joy of giving. We often live as if our happiness depended on having. But I don’t know anyone who is really happy because of what he or she has. True joy, happiness, and inner peace come from the giving of ourselves to others. A happy life is a life for others.”

Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved

Praises & Prayer Requests:

1. We had a good time at our annual team retreat. Thanks for your prayers.
2. The dollar continues to drop, which means we have less and less money to live on. Please pray for a reversal in this trend.
3. Pray for the relationships that Kathy and I will be making through our English conversation group. Pray that we will be salt and light in their midst.
4. I was blessed by receiving birthday wishes from many friends and family in the States and a wonderful birthday lunch with my co-workers here.
5. Continue to pray for needed financial support.

Final Thoughts on Suffering

I finished the book "Suffering and the Sovereignty of God" by John Piper and Justin Taylor. I am becoming more convinced that suffering is the tool that God uses in our lives to cause the greatest growth and bring us into a position to minister to others in their pain and suffering.

Here are some final quotes from the book:

Profound good in our lives often emerges in a crucible of significant suffering. Jesus himself "learned obedience through what he suffered" (Heb. 5:8). Often faith and love shine most clearly, simply and courageously in a dark place. And what marked you for bad? Often our typical sins emerge in reaction to betrayal, loss, or pain. Hammered by some evil, we discover the evils in our own hearts (Rom. 12:17). And perhaps most often, in the hands of our kind and purposeful Father, the bad and the good both come out. A trial brings out what is most wrong in you, and God brings out what is most right as he meets you and works with you (Ps. 119:67). The endurance of faith is one of the Spirit's finest fruits--and you only learn to endure when you must live through something hard.

The problem that we deal with here in the West is that we don't like to confront grief or suffering. Through medicine and wealth we have avoided a lot of the suffering that the rest of the world still experiences (though our façade of invincibility was at least temporarily washed away with 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina). Suffering is a universal experience so we can't avoid it forever. However, when it does come, we fast-paced Westerners like to "deal with it" as quickly as possible...I believe this avoidance of grief in our culture results from not knowing how to deal with pain. We get uncomfortable when we hear people question God. We like to give easy answers to try to minimize the pain. When someone says that they feel God has forsaken them, we think we must quickly preach the truth that he will never leave us nor forsake us (Heb. 13:5), or they will fall away and lose their faith. Part of the problem is that we do not see such pain and deep grief as normative in the Christian life. Yes, we all know that suffering is normative, but we don't take the time to really talk about the pain involved in suffering. After all, it isn't suffering if it doesn't hurt.

There is much more in this wonderful book but I obviously can't record it all here. If you are going through a time of pain or suffering, or if you'd like to know how to come alongside someone who is, I would highly recommend this book.