visits from the U.S of A!

Just 10 minutes ago, we were sitting in our living room with our friend Trevor, from home!  It's so much fun to see a familiar face... he's here for some work with DuPont, and we had the privilege to eat dinner with him, and spend some time just catching up and talking.

I don't think I had any idea how much I actually missed home, but having someone from our church family really reminded me of the community back in DE.  

Everyone always asks us about the differences here between churches, and in one word I would say "community".  Evangelical churches in Spain are almost 'underground'.  There are no big buildings to call church, here when we refer to our church, I feel more as though we are referring to the group of people we meet with every Sunday... I think it's just starting to click that this is actually the purpose of church.  It's not about the sanctuary or the Sunday school classrooms.  Not to say that that doesn't help.. it's nice to have a place to refer too, but I think too often I associated church with the building on 273 in Newark and not with wonderful people I worshipped with every Sunday.  I'm thankful for this opportunity to learn such a thing!

But I was also lucky enough to have the same kind of "family" back home.  I wonder how many people go to church week after week and never take the initiative to get involved.  We live in an egocentric society and always want things to be done for us... and although I wholeheartedly agree that we should be inviting to visitors and others, I also think we need to take it upon ourselves to get involved and to meet people.  A wise man once told me that we are responsible for our own isolation.  It's so easy to feel like "you're left out"... go find somewhere that you fit, it might not happen on the first try, but do it until it works!  Go to every Sunday School class, every bible study, get out there.  It can change your life to have a group of people who care about you as much as they do themselves.  

And on that note, spending the evening with Trevor was awesome!  I'm so glad we got to catch up and talk about life, etc.  And he brought me a present from home!  (Thank you Klumbachs!) 

Everything else is going well.. we're still moving into our place, it's hard to get everything done when you've got puppies and errands and cleaning!  But we're almost done, I promise to put pictures up soon!