Monday in Granada

Sorry I have been bad at posting lately. We have been so busy with things and traveling onto Madrid that I haven't had time to post. Tonight is our first night in Madrid. We are so happy to stay here with missionaries: Raymond and Mary Ebbott. Here is a quick update on Monday

One of the church members (Chris) took us down to the coast to "Salobrena" to see the Mediterranean Sea. We were going to head up to the Sierra Nevada Mountain range but we didn't have time. 

White washed houses of Salobrena.

I love that in 45 min we were at the coast in 75* weather in flip flops... but you cold still see the snow covered mountains of the Sierra Nevada.

Us on the beach... gotta love self timer. Front left to right: Chris (attends C&MA church in Granada), Laura (Lives in Britain and serves with Christians in Sports), Me, and Isaac.

Little kids in this awesome sports park in the part of Granada called "Armilla". These kids were Lance Armstrongs in Training.

Joel has asked us to photograph all different types of things for the church. He had a leadership meeting on Monday that we took some good photos they can use for website and to document the timeline of the church.

Most of the leadership in the church.

Isaac with Jesus. On Saturday we visited Jesus where we works, at "Las Cuevas" where there were the hanging hams.

Joel with a family that lives near the church. He thinks they have no family photo, so we were more than happy to take this photo and then provide them with a copy!

The house we stayed at in Granada. It is a huge house with many rooms and a huge fireplace. There is even a patio with an awesome pool! Thank you Joel & Nancy for letting us be a part of your family for a week.

Hola!

As I said yesterday I was going to update you on what happened here Monday and Tuesday. Today (Tuesday) was a really long day. We were out of the house for over 13 hrs... most of it spent on our feet. With that being said I am not going to be writing much more on the blog tonight. We have a slower evening tomorrow and I will get you all updated then. For now here is today's video:

Start of the week!

Hello! If you really want the full effect of these photos you will need to read below before you look at the photos. I cannot get the text above the photos. Lo Siento

Waiting to at the church to leave for the Easter Resurrection Celebration.

Que Bonita!

Singing! We sang 1o songs. 3-4 of which I knew the English words... how exciting!

Joel Martinez speaking

A mom and her 2 daughters watching from the side. They were from their own group but heard what we were doing and were very interested. How exciting!

The gang

Praying

Lots of games! Frisbee, futbol, etc.

Love it! I want to live right HERE! next to the reservoir.

Hola mis amigos. Nos estamos amorando Espana!

I have to catch you up on two days now: Saturday and Sunday in Spain. Tomorrow I will go through Monday and Tuesday... which should catch us all up! Again I must say THANK YOU all for your prayers, as we can feel the army of people in prayer for us. It is quite great. 

The Lord has been opening so many doors for us. Less actual doors, more metaphysical doors. The world has been opened to us. We have meet so many wonderful people from around the world: A graphic designer for Guatemala, a young lady in sports ministry from Britain (She is my age and staying in the same house as us), many local Spaniards, a young man whose is a sports missionary and whose brother is starting an arts ministry in Seville (about 2 hrs away from Granada), a young lady working with ambassadors in Sports from TN, a women who drove by us in her car was pointed out as being from Mexico, NY (Can you believe that!), A missionary family from Mexico, and so on. We are starting to figure out how we can fit into this bigger picture... and it actually starts right in our hometown. I cannot wait to become a local at the coffee shop in town so I can start to know people and be known.... so I can share my love and hope in Christ. 

Tonight was the first night we actually felt like our creative ministry of photo, video, and computers is a real gem from God! It was so exciting to be available for the missionaries and church members. I will try not to spoil it all now... you MUST read tomorrow's blog.

Alright well back to SATURDAY:

After Isaac went downtown with a younger missionary couple and after we went out to lunch (tapas) we came back home for a bit to take a siesta... I LOVE SIESTA.... and then get ready for our meeting with the church's youth group. Isaac and I prepared our testimonies and anything else we were going to say during our time with them. We left the house to meet them at the church at 6pm. It turned out that they met 2 hrs earlier. We were bummed, but what are you going to do, nothing. So we went to a shopping plaza to get me some more tissues, outlet convertors (which we forgot to bring) and a small bag to carry our camera in (we only brought our gigantic rolling photography suitcase). Isaac and I wanted to go back downtown as it was still early 7pm and dinner is not typically until 9:30pm. 

Joel dropped us downtown, without us having a clue at where we were, and where we were going. It was fun to be adventurous. As we were walking downtown we saw a huge crowd. As we got closer to the crowd we saw what looked like a procession... the Catholic church's way of celebrating Easter in Spain. Massive alters of saints, Jesus, etc., are carried all throughout the week before Easter all around town with hundreds of costumed guards and musicians. Photographing a procession was one of the most important things on my to do list. I wanted to capture it to contrast how we as evangelical Christians celebrate Easter. God Blessed us with an amazing opportunity to squeeze into an empty spot in front of the crowd of 5,000. It was truly a miracle that we were able to even see the procession because by the time we got there, people had already marked their spots well in advance. We we got our spot and settled in we got there just in time to witness the ONLY procession that is held on Holy Saturday. Click on procession to learn more. Take a look at the photos below to see what I am talking about. I was so happy that I would not go home without witnessing this elaborate production. I will speak about this in more detail during our pot-luck lunch on Sunday May 3rd. 

SUNDAY:

Happy Easter is right. Jesus is risen and we have proof of it today through the lives of all of us who believe in him. Although I was sad to miss Easter with my church family back in NY, we were overjoyed to be a part of the Alliance church in Granada's Easter celebration. It was quite exciting to see how a different culture celebrates Easter. Other than the processionals in the Catholic church, not too much is different. The world seems rather small when you can be around the world worshipping the same God in a different language. 

Easter in Spain is a huge holiday. The country shuts down for many days. Most people get Thursday and Friday off of work, some even get the Monday after. Since some people have a 5 day weekend, they usually either go away to visit family, or have family visit them here. This creates for almost a "vacation" weekend. This year Joel decided to do something different with Easter Sunday. Because almost everyone in Spain is in "vacation" mode with family, he decided that having Easter service in church, like we have all done for years now, would be against the celebration spirit the whole country is in. People would be more excited about brining their relatives to the countryside for a day of worship, fellowship, games, and eating instead of bringing them to a "stuffy" church. 

So off we went as a whole church to a reservoir up in the mountains. It was a spectacular sight to see almost 85 people drive the 45 minutes up to this secluded spot. We had an hour worship service, where Joel Martinez shared a story of two blind men, that were so spiritually blind that they rejected Jesus, even when he was right in their presence. I am not exactly sure what it was about... because it was in Spanish, which is very hard for my to understand the details. We spent all day up there having so much fun! A mom and her 2 daughters were so touched by Joel's message, that they wanted to hear more. They became Christians that day. Praise the Lord! 

One of the most emotional times of the day was when I was videotaping the singing, I looked down at my phone and realized that it was 1:10pm... 7:10am in NY... the exact same time our church in Oswego was supposed to be having their sunrise service. I was so excited to think that the songs we are singing in Spain are being sung by my brothers and sisters back in NY. The world becomes so small when you have Christ in your life. Puts a smile to my face and a tear to my cheek when I thought that I was raising my hands up to the sky at the same time Oswego Alliance Church was too. 

(It is now 1:30PM so I am sorry for the bad grammar/spelling/sentence structure.) 

We met so many people at this resurrection celebration that I will remember for the rest of my life. Isaac and I brought Reese's peanut butter cups to Spain with us from NY. Joel told us that Peanut butter is not very popular in Spain because of its price and lack of variety. Since we didn't get a chance to meet up with the Youth Group on Saturday like we had planned, we decide to bring the Reese's cups with us to our Easter service and pass them out there. It was so much fun passing out this NEW candy to all the people... both young and old. Most of them thought it was okay... weird... but not bad. Some people were disgusted at the sweetness of it, and some people wanted more. I loved being able to share one of my favorite things of mine from the states that they have never experienced before. 

Once we got home from the service we rested and hung out for a while. We got these huge baked potatoes for dinner, they call them "papas asadas" which is like a loaded potato. I could not believe the size of these massive potatoes, about the size of my head. They were so heavy once filled with your favorite goodies, such as ham, cheese, aioli, salsa, corn, tuna, etc. I will definitely make these once I get home! 

Alright well it is now 1:45 and I must get to bed. Tomorrow we are cleaning the church, going to a small group, attending lunch with a Deacon and his wife and then going to visit the Alhambra! It will be a fun packed day.

Don't these kind of look like the US guys in white... you know the kkk. I do not know the story of the outfits, does anyone know? I know the tradition dates back way before the kkk ever existed.

There are about 40-50 men underneath this. This procession lasted for about 5 hrs and went up and down windy streets until 11:30pm. 

A little boy having fun on a mini carousel type ride that was powered by a man in the center on a bike.

 Thanks for reading yet another LONG blog! God Bless and Ciao!

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. 

We arrived!

What a long two days of traveling this has been. We are here and loving it. We are about to leave to meet up with a youth group, so I have to make this short. Thank you all for your prayers. I will write more when we get back later tonight! God Bless

1 week

We are leaving in 1 week.
I am so excited to be in Spain along with the other missionaries. God is so great and He has definitely paved the way for this trip. We reached our funding goal... with $135 to spare. Praise the Lord for His provision. Thank you to all the people who have supported us financially and through prayer. Please continue to pray that God will guide our steps as we go to Spain.
As we planned this trip the Lord guided our path and our plans. We will be doing a multitude of photography related projects. I want to provide the missionaries and families in their churches with photographs that they can use for personal and business use. We will be taking a lot of "stock" images. After we are done, the missionaries will have 1000's of images at their disposal to use for any project they need.

We will be leaving JFK in the afternoon on Thur April 9th and will be arriving in Madrid at 7am on April 10th. We decided to book a flight to Granada instead of carrying all our luggage and photography equipment around Madrid to try to find the bus station. While all of the Good Friday celebrations are going on. Just too much! So we will be arriving in Granada at 12:15pm on April 10th. We will be staying in Granada until Thursday April 16th, at which point we are going to take the train or bus to Madrid. We will be meeting up with missionaries in Madrid and Tres Cantos (A suburb of Madrid) and documenting their lives.

I am hoping that during our visit we will be able to see some of my family, who all live in Madrid, and my family's exchange student, Maria, who also lives in Madrid. We will be posting to the blog every day so please feel free to bookmark this link so you can check up on our whereabouts everyday.

God Bless.

1 month!!!

This past Monday we hit our 1 month mark until we leave. We are getting very excited about going!