We’re settling in well here in Seville. I can’t believe how much I worried about where we would live. The house is so beautiful! When the landlords proudly showed it to us, we noticed a little tile on the wall by the door with “Sara” in blue letters. “See, Sara, this house has your name on it. God saved it just for us.”
This is the SOUTH! And like in the states, it’s warm and welcoming. The doorbell rang on Daniel’s birthday. It was Mari from across the street bringing him a cake. Pray as we make friends with our neighbors and look for ways to share Jesus.
Plunging into a new world is a continual intake of new information: the smell of citrus, new phone number, how to walk to the grocery store, the unmarked trash bin is actually for biodegradable things, and we do pay for a 3 y.o. on the subway. Sometimes, checking off a phrase on the “to do” list is like walking through a maze without a map. You find that “Finalizing a visa” means three road trips to Madrid (7 hours each way), visits to a lawyer and multiples lines in government offices. “Enrolling a child in school,” means submitting applications, a complicated point system, four months of waiting, and a lottery of last names. Then there’s driving school and language school.
Yet even in the settling we watch God connect us with people along the way:
- Merche, my hairdresser who loves the Lord, but her son is angry with Him
- Antonio, our realtor, who used to go to church but describes himself as “cold” now
- Alberto who heard Brian speaking English to the kids and asked if he could practice. They meet weekly now.
- Manuela, the street sweeper who gave me a Christmas cactus and greets me every day.
People need Jesus. Even in this dust-still-settling, pictures-not-all-on-the-walls state, He brings people into our lives that need Him. And the joy of sharing has our name on it. I don’t see the tile with blue letters, but I see my name written. Here is an opportunity. I hear Him knocking on the door of a heart like He did on my own when I was three. He knocked. I opened. He lives in me still.
And the deepest desire of my heart is that He would live not only in me and in you, but in Daniela and Manuela and Mari and Antonio. May each of us discover one day a house He’s prepared with our name on it beyond anything we can imagine. Maybe we’ll be neighbors there.