Happy Easter

A plaza in downtown Granada.

Hanging hams that are aging. We went to this Tapas restaurant. When you buy drinks you get free tapas (which are kind of like big appetizers in the States)... of course we bought water and soda :-)

Big Cross on top of a mountain over looking Granada. 

Selling handmade products in the streets. 

A typical skinny street in Granada

The view from the top of a mountain looking down towards the base of the city. Granada is built on the side of a mountain range. It is a very big city with many steep streets and curvy roads. I dare say it is steeper and curvier than San Francisco.

Alhambra. An old Morrish fort. I am not sure the details yet, but we got to visit it on Thursday.

Our tour guide Paco. He is a native of Granada, living here his entire life. He goes to the Alliance church that Joel Martinez pastors. He speaks not English, and his Spanish can be hard to understand, so as you can imagine we did a lot of head nodding and que's? that night.

Christ is risen! Hallelujah! Easter in Spain has been incredible. Before I get onto today I must get you all up to date on our trip thus far. Let me apologize for two things:

1) Sorry for taking this long to get any worthwhile blog post written. A lot has happened and in addition I have been sick, which makes me want to sleep whenever I get a break.

2) This post will be quite long as A LOT has happened that I must share

Thursday: Day 1

As many of you may know we have been quickly getting our house fixed up, with the possibility to sell it in the next coming months. We have been burning the midnight oil, getting to be at around 1-2AM. The night before we left was no difference. We didn't start packing for the trip until 10PM the night before we were to leave and didn't get to bed until 3AM. Thursday morning we woke up bright and early. We were supposed to be out of the house by 6:30Am at the latest, and as we are normally late people, we left at 7:30AM. 

We had to drive from Oswego,NY to NYC to catch a flight at JFK. We had many stops along the way: bank, bathroom, photo shop in NJ, and coffee. Isaac spilled a huge cup of coffee on his nice khaki pants, which were his only khaki's for the trip. Bummer! We made all of our stops, spent 30 minutes too long in the photo shop. We were late, but I was sure that we were able to still check in 30-45 min before the flight leaves.

As we drove over the George Washington Bridge in NYC, we got stopped in traffic. Then after sitting in traffic for 20 minutes we got lost. There are so many highways in NYC that if you take the wrong one you are in big trouble. The worst thing about it was that when we got off an exit to turn around we now found ourselves on a crowded one way street in downtown, so now we were double lost. 

At this point Isaac and I realized that we could not be on the Amazing Race TV show, because the way we were acting was now way we would want the entire world to view us. We are people too... definitely not perfect. We finally arrived at the long term parking in the airport. After taking 10 minutes to find a flight we grabbed our bags and ran to the AirTram that was to take us to our terminal. JFK is set up in a loop. there is one train that goes clockwise and the other train goes counter clockwise stopping to let people off at one of their 9 terminals We took the wrong train. So instead of going right to terminal 9 we had to ride the AirTram around the entire circuit, stopping at terminal 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on. Another thing that made us miss time.

We finally arrived at our terminal. We got there and tried to check in. They told us that they closed the check in to the flight 2 minutes ago and that they could not let us on the flight. We ran around the terminal trying to find someone that could work their magic and get us on the flight. No luck. Again I say:I am so happy we were not on the amazing race because I was crying so bad and making a fool out of myself. I almost made an older lady in the line next to us cry because I was so upset. 

The fact that we missed this flight was not good. We were to fly to Boston and catch a flight to Madrid with only 30 minutes to spare. Once in Madrid we were to catch a separate flight from Madrid to Granada. If we missed the first flight we missed them all. Granada is a small airport, without many flights into it, so we knew it would be hard to find another flight to get us into Granada on Friday. 

We got back in line to try to get new tickets issued. This older lady let us in front of us. We said no because it wouldn't really matter. She insisted, so we skipped in front of her and took the next available agent. We did not know at that moment, that skipping in front of the line would make all the difference. Without this lady letting us get in front of her we would have not had this particular American Airlines agent to work with. The agent we got set up with was a gift from God. She tried everything possible to get us onto our original flight. Without luck she decided to start searching for other options. After 30 minutes, she noticed her supervisor walking around. She got her supervisor and told her the situation. 

There was this one flight from NYC to Barcelona that would get us into Spain in the morning on Friday (Our original arrival time in Spain, but a totally different city) This flight was booked solid with a long waiting list. Her supervisor gave our agent her very secret override code that overrides anything in the computer. With that one code we were bumped from the bottom of the wait list to a confirmed passenger on the flight... at no extra charge.

A MIRACLE! Thank you Lord. This was a true blessing from the Lord. We were so happy that throughout our mistakes and misfortune, God STILL took care of us. The only problem that is we still needed to find a way to get from Barcelona to Granada. Bus wasn't an option as it would have taken 15 hrs. Train wasn't an option as it would have taken 8 hrs and cost about $400. We decided to figure it out when we got to Barcelona. So we waited around the airport at JFK until boarding started at 6pm. We were to arrive in Barcelona at 8:00AM on Friday morning and we would have some time to find a way to Granada, which happens to be very far away. (300 miles I believe)

Right before we were boarding I decided to spent the $5.00 to get internet onto my computer at JFK. I knew that I wouldn't be able to have a restful flight, if I didn't know how we were going to get to Granada. I started to look up flights to Granada. Isaac almost booked a flight through Iberia that was quite expensive and didn't arrive into Granada until 6:30PM on Good Friday. As he was giving his credit card numbers to Iberia, I found a cheaper flight that arrive at 1:10PM into Granada. (Our original arrival time from our first itinerary got us there at 12:55PM.) We booked the flight and got onto our flight from NYC to Barcelona.

The flight was jam-packed, without a seat to spare. Again the Lord blessed us with our seats. Since we got our seats last minute they were not together. Sitting between two strangers on a 7 hr flight makes for a long journey, but we were just happy to be getting to Spain. At the last minute someone cancelled their seat and Isaac happened to be at the counter at the gate asking if it was possible to get seats together. The person that cancelled happened to be the seat next to him. So they switched my seat next to his. Praise the Lord, We could sit together!

Another blessing from the Lord was that when we got onto this flight to Barcelona we realized that we were in an exit row... meaning more leg room. Not only were we in an exit row, we were the first row in coach class... which means there is no one in front of you. We had a wall in front of us with lots of leg room, a personal tv, and we could put our legs up on the wall and stretch them out whenever we wanted to. We arrived in Barcelona the following day at 8AM. We arrived, got some food, bought a SIM card for our cell phone, and waited for our flight to Granada. 

It is in these moments of doubt that God provides. We had thought we screwed up big time by missing our flights. I was so upset that nothing was going to work out and that we will never get to Spain. It was at the moment of desperation, pleading to God to give us a miracle, that he provided. We have to give it up to him, so he can help us. Without trusting in the Lord to provide, you lean on your on capabilities, in reality we should be leaning on the Lord's capabilities, since He is quite a bit more powerful then us! 

We got on our flight to Granada. It was very uneventful, which at this point we were happy to have nothing happen! Arriving in Granada was amazing. hovering over all the olive trees was quite amazing. It was about 50 degrees and very windy when we arrived. Joel Martinez met us in the airport and took us back to his home: The Sunflower Center.

We were greeted very warmly with an amazing lunch right away. In Spain you eat lunch around 2-4PM. Nancy is a wonderful cook and I throughly enjoy eating here! One of the best things about eating here is that in typical Spanish households you have a large table cloth or blanket over your table. Underneath you put a heater. So when you sit down to eat, underneath the table is warm. That is the secret to getting people to eat for hours upon hours of time. We will spend 3 hrs eating sometimes. and not once do I want to get up because I am cold.

Alright it is getting late here: 1:45AM. so I will make the rest quick. 

The rest of Friday night we went to downtown Granada with Paco and his son... both spoke no English. They took us around Granada for 2-3 hrs, showing us all the cool building and explaining all the history of Spain to us. Of course we didn't understand much of it as we just arrived in Spain only a few hours ago and we were not used to Spanish yet. It was a blast anyways. I love this city so much. It is such a cool blend of old and new, young and old, modern and antique, Arab and Christian. 

Saturday: Day 2

I woke up very sick. I think the plane got the best of me and made me sick again. Isaac went off with two other missionaries and visited some of their local hangouts. I slept until 2pm. We went to the Tapas bar with Joel to visit "Jesus" who is a church member at the Alliance church in Granada. I have never had so much fun standing, eating tapas, drinking tea and soda. It was great to see that you can get to know people in your own town if you just got there often. When I get back into town I want to pick a place or two that I can go to regularly and start to get to know the people that work there and so on. 

During the night we were supposed to go with the youth group of the church. Isaac and I had prepared a 30 minute talk with the youth. We were excited to share our passion and purpose with them. Then we were going to go the the Circus with them. Unfortunately when we got to the church to meet with them we found out that they ended up meeting 2 hrs earlier and left without us to go to the circus. We were really bummed, but it turned out okay because I wasn't feeling good and this meant I had some more time to rest as it was only Saturday and I wanted to be healthy for the full week to come.

Tomorrow I will share with you all about Easter Sunday. It just turned 2pm here and I must try to go to bed... even though my body is still stuck somewhere between NY time and Spain time. If you want to see more photos there are two was to see them 1) Come to our pot-luck lunch on May 3rd to see the photos and hear more and/or 2) Become my friend on facebook. It is really easy to post a lot of photos there. Gracias por leyendo. Hasta ahora.