Merry Christmas!

Here's a copy of our Christmas Newsletter. Praying that you have been able to celebrate Christ coming to earth. Missing all of you!

May God give you His peace this season.

In Spain!

Well, the wait is finally over! We arrived in Spain a little over a week ago, and we're having a great time! Praise God that He brought us through several potential problems at the airport. On our plane ride over to Frankfurt, we heard over the loudspeaker that our flight was going to arrive late, and they told us the flight number of our rebooked flight. Upon arrival, we went to the Lufthansa desk to see if we could get our ticket for our rebooked flight. We finally got to a person at the desk, and we found out that it might not be possible to get the ticket for the flight since it was a complicated situation. Apparently, Frankfurt was not prepared for the early snowfall, and because of that, there were hundreds of people with cancelled flights trying to get rebookings. But, thanks to the Lord, we were able to get our ticket for the same day flying to Madrid! Once we got our ticket, the airline employee who helped us told us that we were lucky that she was able to get us a ticket because we were actually supposed to be in this HUGE line that we ended up seeing was several hundred people long! We kept walking past the hundreds of people waiting in line, in amazement of what God had spared us from! Here's a picture of the snow in Frankfurt!

We have settled in nicely so far. Hopefully tomorrow or Monday we will sign the contract on our apartment and be able to move in that day! We've set up a bank account, gotten cell phones, and settled on a place to live! We've learned how to use the metro, train, and bus around town since we don't have a car. We've been able to meet with a lot of people so far, whether other missionaries or Spaniards to discuss their ministry and our possible involvement. We registered for language school, which begins on the 10th of January. We feel like we're beginning to get the hang of things! We also were able to attend the church in Camarma where we will be interning this year! We had a great time, and we were joyful to see Operation Christmas Child boxes at the church ready for departure! Here are some of the boxes!

We were excited to find out that the city where we will be living is having some sort of medieval festival this week! We were able to stop by and see some of the booths they had in the center plaza in town. Here are some of the pictures from the festival and also from our first week!

Micah ordered "fish" at a really good restaurant. Glad it wasn't me! This is a type of fried fish that came with our "Menu", where you pay a flat price, then pick a first plate (which might be a salad, soup, beans, etc.), pick a second plate (fish, other meat usually), and then a dessert!

A beautiful building in Alcala de Henares

The main plaza (where the festival was held) has a beautiful Christmas tree! I'll have to go there at night sometime to get it all lit up!

Part of the University of Alcala

These Santa's climbing up ladders are THE MOST POPULAR Christmas decoration here!

A candy stand at the festival! Don't you want one of those brightly colored candies!?

This is how they keep pieces of ham here!

They were cooking ribs and Spanish sausage over the fire! Yummy!

They had a few live animals at the festival! I particularly liked this spotted chicken!

They had a small scale model of Belen (Bethlehem), complete with Nativity.

And, my personal favorite find, Obama stickers! HA!

Thank you so much for praying for us! We look forward to sharing more of how things are going, and how God shows Himself to us in the upcoming weeks!