Hey folks! So, I’m
sitting on the couch here listening to my iPod with my Spanish homework on the
table in front of me, but I feel like writing a blog. So that is what I am doing. The homework can be done after intercambio
tonight while watching the Olympics :]
I am going to start off with some fun facts that no one
really cares about :]
-
I stinking love the OLYMPICS! So the day that I realized they were starting
I was freaking out! The only minor
frustration is that Spain doesn’t really care about the Olympics that
much. It’s sad. So, sometimes the events are shown on one
channel, but that is not even guaranteed.
It’s pretty much the only reason we have used our TV so far except for
when we watch a movie every now and then together. But yes.
For all of you that are stateside, cheer on the USA for me :]
-
My car is everywhere here! Mini coopers are all over the place, and
there are so many yellow ones even!
Since yellow is such a popular color for them here, I probably wouldn’t want
it, but back at home, that would be my car.
Latte calls them clown cars. I
just picture Charlize Theron flying around in her little red one in The Italian
Job and it makes me happy
-
Running is terrible. I tried it this past week. Gross.
That is all I have to say on the matter for now, although it is quite
possible that we may be running in a 5K in Malaga in April. That might actually make running a little
more fun. We will have to wait and see
tho….
-
I am convinced that the sky is the bluest here
in Spain. It is gorgeous! I really love when the day starts off all
dreary and drizzly and then by the afternoon it is sunny and blue skies. So fun.
Kinda reminds me of Ohio and the bipolar weather. Stay strong, Ohioans. Spring is just a few months away :]
-
When making quiche, be sure to use nata para
cocinar (cooking cream) and not evaporated milk. Sigh.
I’ll explain in a bit….
-
A bad word to mix up in Spanish (or any
language) is the word “jealous” for the word “proud”. I ended up telling a friend that I was NOT proud
of him and all his studies instead of saying that I was not JEALOUS of him and
all his studies. Oops. And the worst part is that I didn’t catch
that I did this until the next day. Aye
aye aye. Learning languages is fun.
-
Also, reading in Spanish is really hard. It’s a humbling experience to get your
pronunciation corrected by the 6 year old that you are reading the book
to.
-
We are down to 98 days of outreach. Now, normally I am very against counting down
the days like that, but I had to calculate and make sure that I am doing ok in
my Bible reading. It’s so crazy how fast
time is flying by!
-
And finally, I’d like to give a big shoutout to
my grandma. Thank so you much for never
dying your hair purple, red, or blue. It
is an all too common sight here to see older ladies with crazy hair. I don’t get it.
Alright. Those
weren’t as fun as some, but those were the things that came to mind off the top
of my head.
Two Sundays ago was one of the funnest days of my life. We woke up and then headed to Sacramonte to
celebrate San Cecilio Day. It took us
about an hour to get there, and then we got in the HUGUNGOUS line for free
bread, raw beans, and this salty chunk of fish.
I don’t really understand why that is the traditional food at this
event, but we ate it. Very weird, but
kinda fun. Then we watched some cultural
dancing and songs be performed on stage.
There were a LOT of people there.
I love crowds, so it was great for me.
Before we left, we bought a whole stick of sugar cane for 5 Euros. Steal of a deal! Took me back to Uganda. So then we headed back home, and you wouldn’t
believe the amount of stares I got for carrying a stick of sugar cane through
town! Goodness. You would have thought I was an alien or
something. We had quite a few laughs on
the way back, and a lot of them came from the stares, so it all turned out
ok. When we got back to the house we
went up on to the roof to eat our sandwiches and fruit. It was a GORGEOUS day and very relaxing. Turns out that cutting up sugar cane is quite
a process, especially when all of your knives kinda suck. Luckily up on the roof I could hack away at
it and not have to worry about cleaning up the mess of little pieces that flew
off. But anywho. After that, I ended up falling asleep for a
bit just on the tile up there, soaking in the sun. Then I came down and got ready to go to
ch-rch which was great. After, I headed
to Mr. P and Mrs. J’s to skype with my family :] AND, I got to eat Oreos while doing it. SCORE.
And finally, I went out and bought a GINORMOUS pizza that was quite
tasty to eat while watching the Superbowl.
Yeah. What a waste of my
life. We ended up leaving at the
beginning of the 4th since it was such a pathetic game, and by the
time I crawled into bed it was 430.
Yikes. Monday morning came very
shortly after that with class at 9, but it was a good Monday as well.
After class, I came home and took a nap while the other
girls were at their class. Then right
after lunch we went to pray with our friend that is going through a hard
situation. It was a great time of
prayer, but with it came some heaviness just from the situation itself. After this, we went straight to intercambio
with Fe Y Vida and then headed out for tapas with Gaby and Bekah. This was the last time we had to hang out
with them, since they left this past Friday for home which is the states and
Venezuela. I’m so thankful that it
worked out for us to hang out with them again.
They are very fun and encouraging ladies. *insert slow, inspirational clap here*
:]
Then, on the way home, a big heaviness came over me. I can’t really explain it. I didn’t feel like being with Bri and
Latte. I just wanted to be alone. There was no reason for it at all. But, we still had to do Bible study when we
got home, so we started that, and we hardly discussed anything. It was very dumb, and it just made me really
annoyed. So I said we were going to
debrief right then. Now, it was almost
midnight at this point, and we were all pretty tired from our very late night
the day before, and I knew that by declaring debriefing, not everyone was going
to be very happy. And sure enough, that
was the case. But, I really felt like we
needed to talk about the tension going on before going to bed or the next day
was just going to be ridiculous. To make
a long story short, we realized that we were under some very heavy spiritual
attackage. It was the creepiest thing of
my life, actually. We prayed, sang, read
the Bible out loud, and just prayed some more through it all. It felt like we were all alone…..like no one
was praying for us or something and we were just so vulnerable. By the end, which was almost 3 hours later,
we were exhausted, but there was a peace that I can’t even describe.
I love the way that God works. He takes the things that Satan tries to use
to break us and makes us so much stronger out of them. I feel a lot closer as a team as well. Seriously, if I said that I was proud of
these girls before, I am beyond proud of them now. If I ever need some serious prayer and for
someone to fight for me like that, I’m calling these two to lift me up. I feel like this experience really helped our
faith, and it also refocused us a lot, which was definitely needed. Lemme explain.
From my blogging, you all know that our time here has been
AWESOME and SO blessed. God seriously is
the coolest, and He has been teaching me so much. I kinda think that because of this, we had
lost a bit of our focus. Don’t get me
wrong, we haven’t gone completely nutso here.
But, we spent a majority of our time in prayer thanking God for what He
has done and is doing here, and while that is great and necessary, it is not
all of what we should have been doing.
We lost our dependence on Him in a lot of ways I think. So this spiritual attack, although very
difficult and so, so dark in the beginning, ended up being a blessing for each
of us. In the end, there was light,
peace, and also a sense of courage. I
actually told Satan that he could take our lives if he wanted, but if he came
for our hearts, he would never get them because they were the Lord’s. So although during there was a fear that I have never in my life
felt before, it ended with a courage that I had also not felt before. Not a confidence in myself at all because I had
just been shown how truly weak I was, but rather a sheer confidence in my
Savior and His warring angels.
In saying all of this, I would ask that you please keep us
in your prayers. We have obviously been
treading on enemy territory, and although this country doesn’t seem very dark
on the outside, when you are here, you realize that there is a lot of bondage
and heaviness under the surface. We want
to continue to have joy, but amidst this joy, we want to be depending on Jesus
with everything in us to lead and guide us.
But now to get back to the past week. We babysat for the marriage seminar thing the
past two Saturdays. The first time there
were 13 kids, and it was a lot of fun! I
love kiddos and spent most of my time making paper snowflakes and then reading
to any of the kids that wanted me to.
This past Saturday was a bit different.
For a little bit, we had 3 kids, and I had a lot of fun making a train
track with my buddy King. But then him
and his sister had to leave, so it was Bri, Latte, Bethany (a 9 year old that
definitely doesn’t need watched) and Zeal (a 2 year old that most DEFINITELY
needs watched :]) Zeal is full of his
name……zeal. Lol He is super smart for
his age, but he is a little tornado of destruction. I don’t think I can count high enough to tell
you how many times I had to fix the bridge of the train tracks for King because
Zeal smashed through it. Heehee. Funny memories with that one tho.
Also, this past Saturday Bri and Latte had the opportunity
to go to a youth event thingy with people from Fe y Vida. From the sound of it, they had a blast and
spending the day by themselves with Spaniards really stretched and grew their
Spanish. YAY. I stayed behind to pray and talk with the
friend that is going through some hard stuff.
I left her house after lunch and got home just before 4, but the girls
weren’t going to get home until about 6.
So, I decided that I was going to doing something very impressive and
make dinner all by myself. I was
actually pretty excited to surprise the girls by it. Quiche was on the agenda, so I turned on some
tunes and started cutting away at the carrots, zucchini, and peppers. I have to admit, it was kind of relaxing to
just sing and think all by myself while chopping up stuff. I still don’t think I am ready to admit that
the kitchen is growing on me tho…..it’s much too early to tell. ANYWHO.
So I did that and everything was going great. I mixed it all up just in time to get
everything cleaned up before going to babysit.
When I got home from that then, I put it in the pan all nice and started
baking it. It is supposed to only take
45 minutes, but for some reason it was just not firming up. I don’t know how long it ended up being in
the oven then, but finally we just took it out and ate it. Whatever it was, quiche was not the name of
it. But it tasted good. We just chalked it up as being Melvin’s
fault, the poor machine, until Latte asked me which nata para cocinar was
expiring that we had to use it so quick.
I told her it was the stuff we made the meatballs with. She looked at me and started grinning as she
said, “Kirsten, that was evaporated milk.”
And THAT is why the mixture did not firm up. Sorry for blaming you Melvin. And Mom, I was so close! O the adventures that we have in the
kitchen.
After babysitting, we started an almost 24 hour Silent
Retreat. This was SO good for me. I enjoyed it a lot. I slept (much too long, but I feel very
rested now), prayed, read a LOT of the Bible and also another book called
Ordering Your Private World, and just had
a lot of time to think and reflect.
Like I said, I feel very rested now.
There are a lot of small details that I need to take care of and things
that I need to get done, but personally I feel like inside I just have a deep
sense of peace. Our retreat ended with
church, and then afterwards we headed over to Mr. P and Mrs. J’s for dinner and
to just hang out. It was so good for my
soul. Sunday nights at home are the times
that I miss the most. It is my favorite
part of the week, and so having a similar time of hanging out with good friends
and nibbling on food was great. Also, I
think that the next time I post I will have more to share on my thoughts and
stuff that I got during Silent Retreat.
It is all still very fresh and I am still pondering and processing it
all.
The past week has been fairly chill and normal. We have gone about the normal activities
pretty much. One thing that you could
all keep in your prayers is our friends Jamie and Eddie. On Monday morning, Jamie had surgery, and I
am not exactly sure of the technical name for whatever happened, but basically
on Sunday they found out that she was pregnant, but then Monday she lost the
baby. So sad. So they are still trying to process all of
that, and day by day Jamie is getting a little stronger. Just please keep them in your prayers.
This week feels a lot more filled with random things, but
its good. A huge thing that is happening
is that NICKY IS COMING BACK ON THURSDAY!
WOOOOOOHOOOOOO! We are super
pumped for this. Also, some fun things
with Valentine’s Day are also probably going to be happening. Sorry that this blog post isn’t all too
interesting. I have things to say, but I
can’t seem to get my mind to focus long enough on it to spit out the
words. It probably doesn’t help that I
am watching the US kick butt in the half pipe event on TV, but I will blog
again hopefully at the beginning of next week to update you all again. I am just going to put this struggling horse
down now. Thanks for all your support
and prayers! Love you guys and have a
great rest of the week!
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