Happy New Year!

It's hard to believe that 2010 has come to a close! Are we really more than a decade into this millennium? I know that may make me sound old, but it's how I feel! 2011. Somehow it feels like there are so many new possibilities when you enter into a new year. And for us, this year is especially full of possibilities considering we're spending most of it here in Spain! We are certainly looking forward to it. But as a friend reminded me, Christ is the only source of new beginnings. I hope I can shed the hype of a new year for the True Source of change and possibilities.

We have spent the last couple of weeks adapting, touring, and settling in to our new place! We love it here! Of course, there have been things to get used to, accept that we may not ever understand why someone does something the way they do it (at least not for a while), and hopefully not look down on as inferior (it's just different, right?). But it's been a great time for us. God has provided us a great place in a really central location, which is nice since we have no car! Our place is a 5 minute walk to the bus station, and a 15 minute walk to the train station. Between those two places, we can go anywhere! We've had a great time touring around. We've been to a couple places downtown, and we plan to go back next week. We've also been able to meet a few people here, and hopefully get together with them this week! We're finding already that English is a big felt need here. Will you please pray that we'll have the courage to enter in to what God has for us and the strength to wait if we need to?

One of my favorite things that we've done (fun things, that is) is a tour of Belenes (Bethlehem's). Spain has a wonderful tradition to set up what we might consider a Nativity scene in each town hall and in many churches. But there's is not just the Nativity, it's the whole town of Bethlehem. All include the wise men, Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and the star. But we have also seen the temple, the angel telling the shepherds, the journey to Bethlehem, Herod's palace, general village life, Herod taking the baby boys, running water, markets, the angel telling Mary she would give birth... Some of them just tell the whole Christmas story! It's so great! The Belenes stay up until January 6, which is the holiday "Epiphany" or "Tres Reyes" (Three Kings), where they celebrate the wise men coming to Jesus. We hope to visit a few more around the neighboring towns before the 6th.

Here's a video of Plaza Mayor in the middle of Madrid. Right now there is a Christmas Bazar going on where you can buy little Belen figurines for your household one. It was packed!

Here are links to other photo albums that we've taken since we've been here if you're interested in seeing more pictures!

This album is of a Castle and also the gardens at the palace in La Granja.

This album is of all the Belenes that we've seen so far.

This album is just general pictures we've taken over the last month!

We are so grateful for everyone's support, and we can't wait to share what God has for us this year!

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!

VISAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OUR VISAS HAVE ARRIVED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have purchased our tickets and are departing on the evening of November 29th. We are just having family see us off at the airport, but we will be attending church at Faith the next 2 Sundays and would love to greet any of you there. We will make it to Spain in time for TEAM Spain's All Ministry Area Conference in January, where we will get to meet all of TEAM's missionaries who are currently on the field in Spain. We are looking forward to this as a time of learning and valuable interaction with other missionaries.

Us with our treasured package!

Two weekends ago God provided for us to attend the MTW Global Missions conference in Chattanooga, TN. We participated in four sessions of worship with 2000 other missionaries, church members, and students. MTW's leader, Paul Kooistra as well as Atlanta pastor Joe Novensen delivered God's word to the large group. We had the opportunity to attend 6 different breakout sessions taught by missionaries and ministry leaders from around the world. One of the big things that we feel God taught us was that on the mission field it is absolutely vital to keep our family, which for now is just the two of us, as the first priority. It is not worth losing our marriage or our future children for the sake of the ministry. Please pray that even in this first year we would hold our marriage as the highest priority and that God would continue to shape me (Micah) into the leader of my family that he wants me to be.

One of the main sessions at the MTW conference

This past weekend we went with the high school youth group from Faith, our home church, to a retreat in Myrtle Beach. There are some particular challenges with youth ministry in general that are ever present. God is working in these students lives in some unique and sometimes confusing ways, and it is our privilege to have been with them the past few years seeing God working and shaping them, walking with them when they fail and hurt, and rejoicing with them in the power of the gospel. We will miss them so much this year.

Us with the Faith high school group at Myrtle Beach

Also, it looks like much of the stuff we've published before has out of date dates and such. So, here's a copy of our newsletter. And, like we said before, we're leaving on the 29th!

Please pray for us this next week-and-a-half as we say bitter-sweet goodbyes to family and friends. Pray for our transition out of American life and into Spanish life. The next time you hear from us, we will most likely be in Spain. Thank you all so much for your prayer, support, and encouragement thus far, and we know that it goes with us the rest of the way.

Be encouraged with God's word as we have been, "After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, 'Do you want to go away as well?' Simon Peter answered him, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know, that you are the holy One of God.'" John 6:66-69 ESV

Alcalá de Henares

Here is a video about Alcalá de Henares, the town where we will be living (hopefully soon!). The titles are in Spanish, but the pictures are beautiful and give you an idea of the town! Also, if you didn't know, this is the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote de la Mancha. Also, the university in the video (where we will attend language classes) was founded in 1496! Enjoy!

The Times Between

Today marks the 3 month mark since the Spanish Consulate has had all of our paperwork. We're still waiting for our visas. I wish there was other news to report about the status of those certain government documents, but, alas, God has other plans. So, we're trying to live in the space between here and there. We struggle in what to invest our time. We try to prepare ourselves both mentally and spiritually for Spain. While we're here, we've been trying to gain some semblance of closure in our ministry here. And yet we wait. How much more can we dig deep into people's lives without being unfair to them. How can you ask people to be vulnerable and open up to you about things they have never dealt with in their lives, while knowing that at any moment you may have to leave? Will you pray with us that we may have wisdom in knowing how much to delve in and how much to stay back?

This past weekend we were able to attend a Missions Conference put on by the PCA mission board. While we're not with that particular mission, it was still so wonderful to attend the conference not only for the fantastic content, but also because we were able to attend with 8 other people from our home church! We learned so much this weekend, and we're still processing it all. Some of our favorite sessions were about post-Christian Europe and ministering to the upcoming generation and Third Culture Kids (like children of missionaries, for example). I would try to sum up all that we learned, but I'm not even sure I can do that yet! But God certainly used this past weekend to teach us a whole lot about Him, about missions, and about ourselves. And for that, we thank Him.

Pray with us also for our contact with the Consulate. We have put in a call to the consulate to see if there is anything they can do to find out what's taking so long with our visas. They asked us to give them 3 months for the resolution of our visas. Like we mentioned earlier, today marks 3 months. Would you pray that we would be firm enough to really see if they can do anything without putting ourselves at odds with the Consulate for future visas? Thank you all so much for your support!

Esperar, περιμένετε, الانتظار, 等待, kusubiri

There are a lot of ways to say it, but they all mean the same thing: wait.

I know we've been using that word a bunch lately, but it truly is one of the only ways to describe the last few weeks. We had hoped to get our visas by the last week in September in order to make it to the start of the language classes we hoped to attend. Well, they didn't come in time for us to go, so we're looking into other options for language study. We know that God must have another plan for us to learn Spanish and schedule our year in Spain. I feel like God has prepared us for this time because we knew all along that it was uncertain when we might get our visas, so we have been adapting the flexible mentality all along. For that, I am grateful. I honestly don't know how we've done it apart from God's grace.

So right now we're, that's right, waiting. Now that the language study deadline has passed, there is not so much of a rush to get to Spain. Once we get our visas, we don't have to hop the next plane. We can wait a few days or a week or so before we leave. So, right now, we're living our lives one week at a time. Would you please pray with us that our visas would come in soon?

And you can be PRAISING GOD with us--He has provided for all our financial support! We are at 100% of our one-time expenses and at 100% of our monthly pledges. We thank all of you who have given, whether one-time, or are giving monthly throughout the year. God has used you greatly in our lives, and truly you are a part of ministry in Spain. Thank you! And praise God for his faithfulness.

Thank you for joining us on this journey!