Welcome to my new blog
I've had another blog for some time, but it seems its not publicly accesible, and so I've linked this to our website. I'm going to treat it as a diary of events that Andrew and I walk through in the next days, months, years....walk with me as I continue to learn and experience the sights and sounds, friendships, disappointments and struggles of living in southern Spain.
Most of you who know me well know that I wear a necklace shaped like Africa around my neck. It many ways it has become symbolic of what is close to my heart.
First, we bought it together after we got engaged in Ghana, W. Africa. Andrew and I walked one day into a little shop and he picked out the little pendant on a silver chain. The owner and designer is a Lebanese woman, self exiled from Lebanon in the 80s.
The symbol on the Africa pendant is an Akan symbol, meaning Omnipotent God. It is located roughly where Ghana is.
I forget that I wear it sometimes, I've worn it almost daily for close to 7 years. Today at church someone located at it and commented on it, and it set me thinking.
We live in Spain, the "africa of Europe". Granada is considered "the graveyard for missionaires" much like Ghana was in the 1800s. During our short three years here, we have already seen people come and go, broken by Granada. This is a hard place to be, more emotionally than physcially, although Andrew would be to differ when our days can be up to 115 degrees in the summertime!
Although Andrew's heart and soul come from Africa, the Spaniards like him...because he's closer to them than most NorthAmericans. I love it here, and that's obvious, and so the Spaniards have adopted me as some long lost cousin, who maybe should have been Spanish. They realize I'm Eastern European in descent, and they throw up their hands and say, "they aren't much different from us.."
Pray for us. Our hearts belong here, but its sometimes hard to stay. But we know, the Omnipotent God keeps us here, and so we do.
Most of you who know me well know that I wear a necklace shaped like Africa around my neck. It many ways it has become symbolic of what is close to my heart.
First, we bought it together after we got engaged in Ghana, W. Africa. Andrew and I walked one day into a little shop and he picked out the little pendant on a silver chain. The owner and designer is a Lebanese woman, self exiled from Lebanon in the 80s.
The symbol on the Africa pendant is an Akan symbol, meaning Omnipotent God. It is located roughly where Ghana is.
I forget that I wear it sometimes, I've worn it almost daily for close to 7 years. Today at church someone located at it and commented on it, and it set me thinking.
We live in Spain, the "africa of Europe". Granada is considered "the graveyard for missionaires" much like Ghana was in the 1800s. During our short three years here, we have already seen people come and go, broken by Granada. This is a hard place to be, more emotionally than physcially, although Andrew would be to differ when our days can be up to 115 degrees in the summertime!
Although Andrew's heart and soul come from Africa, the Spaniards like him...because he's closer to them than most NorthAmericans. I love it here, and that's obvious, and so the Spaniards have adopted me as some long lost cousin, who maybe should have been Spanish. They realize I'm Eastern European in descent, and they throw up their hands and say, "they aren't much different from us.."
Pray for us. Our hearts belong here, but its sometimes hard to stay. But we know, the Omnipotent God keeps us here, and so we do.
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