It's been a good week

Hello everyone!

It has been a good week - in so many ways!

--We had a GREAT trip to Dublin - what a cool city! We loved it - and think we must go back to see more of Ireland! (are we going to feel this way about every place we visit?!?) The people were so wonderful and friendly - and they speak English!!! :-) Always a plus :-) We definitely enjoyed the English "break" - and the English bookstore that we found there. I visited the bookstore each of the 3 days we were in Dublin - and spent enough there to earn a "free" book :-). That in itself was a treat! It was nice to feel like we were coming home though as we arrived back in Madrid! I'll write more about the trip soon. (with pics!)

--Katie loves her new school and did not want to come home "early". (she only stayed until noon both Tuesday and Wednesday) She made several new friends and seems to be fitting in fine. She is excited about staying long enough this week to eat lunch with her new friends. We also found out that her teacher may be a Christian. She grew up in a Southern Baptist church and was interested in visiting our church here. God is so good - more than we can ask or imagine. It truly blows me away how He led us to such a perfect place. And Katie's school was wonderful for me as well - I had a coffee with a different friend each day! :-) I feel like now we'll be able to establish a routine and that we'll have more structure to our weeks which will be nice. (of course the getting up and out early was a bit of a shock to my system after so many weeks w/o having to be anywhere before 10:30!) I hope to be able to find a gym to work out in (which don't provide childcare!), and explore more of the area around that I just haven't had a chance to explore. (and yes, that does involve shopping :-) Not buying necessarily :-), just figuring out what's out there!) On Tuesday, Katie told me we had to take a picture since it was her 1st day of school :-). Guess that girl is figuring me out already! :-)

--Our small group did go very well on Tuesday night (I think Jason mentioned it a little in his post from Dublin). And several more couples were asking this morning about coming next time. There was 1 lady who came who doesn't attend Mountainview - and she heard about the group at 5:40 Tuesday night to join us at 8:30! She has been praying for a small English speaking group to connect with here in our area and was so thrilled to come. So that was exciting. (and her husband plans to attend as well when work allows) She has several Christian contacts in our area who might also be interested - so we'll see who God brings to our group. We see so many people who are struggling here - it is a hard thing to move to a different culture! So I pray that God will give us many opportunities to minister to others and help make their time here a little easier. (with the selfish motivation that it will be company for me too!)

--Our ocean shipment arrives tomorrow!! It will be so good to finally have all our belongings back together again - though we are scrambling a bit today to figure out where to put some of the bigger things that are coming :-). The weather has been very warm at times recently, so it will be very nice to have our summer clothing, Katie's bike, our coolers etc. And my parents will be here on Wednesday, so it will be nice to have a few extra sheets and towels! There had been no word at all on when it was coming (originally they told us it would come shortly after March 26!) and then Thursday morning in Dublin I got a call saying they would like to deliver it Thursday afternoon!

--My parents are coming on Wednesday to visit for 2 weeks. We are so looking forward to seeing them! Jason has business in Valencia next Tuesday, so we are toying with tagging along with him. We'll see. I had hoped to have things all unpacked when my parents got here... but instead I'll have some good help with that job :-).

More on Dublin soon!
Becca