Well, thought I would do a quick update blog even though, shock horror, it hasn't been a full month yet since the last. If you're still reading this and interested in my blog, thanks! :-) and I hope you're all doing well!
Things haven't been quite so crazy this month, just almost the slog of the usual week and starting to find a more general routine. Work has picked up even more, praise God! I was working Monday through to Thursday but have picked up some more private lessons which are on Fridays so finally I'm working a Monday-Friday job!! :-) does an hour on Friday constitute as a full working day?? Well, I count it as since it's been such a long time since I had a full week! So anways, work is going well. I'm still meeting up with people once or twice a week so thankfully friendships are slowly but surely building up. Our weekly church meetings are going very well too. We recently had Mike and Jess Shore over from Portugal for 10 days and they were a real blessing to us and shared so much of their wisdom and insight into church planting in the Iberian peninsula -- Mike and Jess Shore planted their church near 30 years ago!! So they came with a LOT of wisdom and experience :-) it was great.
Apart from that, not too much has been going on this month. Oh yeah, one of my housemates moved out. Thankfully, I understood (just about) that it was nothing to do with me moving in! :-) he just wanted his own place after sharing for the past 18 years...but that was a bit sad as I'd got on really well with him. But he now wants English lessons from me sometime next year so I may still see a lot of him! But for now, we're down to the 3 of us which is actually quite nice, there's more space! But hopefully someone new will be moving in in the new year.

Oh and I'm not sure I've mentioned him before but there's been this English guy called Tom living in Madrid (studying) for 3 months. He was with us right from the beginning but this morning he returned home. It's been fun hanging out with him recently -- I've done a few day trips with him, visiting a monastary in the mountains called El Escorial and going to the King's palace in Aranjuez. It's been great having him here so was a little sad to see him leave but who knows, he may be back someday -- hope you're reading this Tom! :-)
But no time to be too sad about it, coz in a few hours time I'll be heading off to the airport too to spend Christmas with my family and friends! Very much looking forward to saying hi again! Yet in a bizarre way, actually a bit sad to be leaving here. I guess coz it would be interesting to see what Christmas itself is like here. I hope they're not all like this guy who thinks you should dress up as tree...he doesn't even look Christmassy for goodness sake!

But then I'm back in Madrid for Reyes (King's Day) on the 6th of January so can't wait for that too!
Anyways, so hopefully I'll see some of you when I return later today! And for those I won't see, merry Christmas and a happy new year! :-)

Hey everyone! I'm so very sorry it's taken me so long to update the blog! It's meant to be a monthly thing at least but I realized the other day it's been way beyond a month since my first! Anyways, I'll give you a lowdown on what's been going on over here! This is a picture of me with one of my housemates Jose, very cool guy! He's the one from Andalucia who I don't really understand lol, but it's getting better! :-)

Ok, well I'm now very much settled in my flat which is cool. The guys I live with are brilliant and I have a real laugh with them, or maybe they're still laughing at me...we still, sorry I still misunderstand what they say at times which leads to very confusing and embarrassing moments -- mainly for me. Oh well, it's very humbling so must be good for me :-)

Work-wise is going pretty well now, thank you God! With private lessons, I managed to get one family with 3 kids who want 3 hours at a time (1 hour for each) twice a week! So that's 6 hours every week I'm there which is brilliant for private work, especially from just one family! The only pain is they live in the south of the city and I'm in the north-west so it takes me an hour to get there and an hour to get back every time but it's worth it for the 3 hours. So I do that every Tuesday and Thursday evening from 5.30-8.30pm. Then a funny story was that I got out the metro a month ago and this woman who must've heard me say something in english randomly approached me and asked me if I lived around the area (I was standing outside my flat at the time) and if I wanted a job! She runs this centre called the George Washington School of English (very American!) and she was desperate for more teachers and was willing to take me even with my complete lack of experience! Oh yeah, sorry I forgot to say that I've been to a few interviews for working in schools but they all say my lack of experience doesn't help so didn't get any of those jobs so someone saying to me experience didn't matter was great! Anyways, it's only part-time but it's more work! Every Monday and Wednesday I teach conversation English to 2 women at the centre from 9.30-10.30, then I go to a school and "teach" English (play games) with 4 year olds from 4.00-5.00pm, then I go to a family's house and teach two 10 year old twins conversation English for an hour then their younger 5 year old sister I have for half an hour from 6.00-7.30pm. It's a bit all over the place and sometimes difficult remembering what I have each day but I'm beginning to learn it! It's only 13 hours of work a week (still not working on Fridays) which isn't a huge amount but so much better than before -- no work at all!! So I'm extremely grateful for it and actually really enjoying it too!
Friends-wise I have met a few people now through this inter-cambio thing where you meet someone for an hour or 2 and speak half the time in Spanish and half the time in English. I regularly meet 3 of them every week and have a couple more sporadically. I wouldn't call them friends as of yet, still early days, but who knows :-) they're brilliant people and I love meeting up with them! To be honest, I would say it's actually the thing I love doing the most here. So I hope some real deep friendships can be formed this way.
In regards to church it's been a good month! We are now meeting weekly as a group, every Saturday night. We have a time of worship and a talk - going through the book of Nehemiah very slowly lol, but that's coz there's SO much in there for us to take hold of! Then we pray and then all eat together. It's really nice and feels very communal and also now that we're all getting stuck into life here and having our own lives more, it's great to catch up and see what's going on, encourage one another and grow together! Kevin has just come back from a week away in Mexico which I will hear about tomorrow but by all accounts went extremely well! It's great too coz he went to Guadalajara where most of you may remember I went to 6 years ago and lived for just under a year? So Kevin met a lot of my old friends which is brilliant yet weird at the same time...so he went to the Newfrontier led camp called Fiesta and made some good contacts over there! Reason being is that since they're a Newfrontier church in a Spanish environment, they can help us out as well as maybe send some people over?! Who knows, but it's great! Also, for the next 10 days a couple called Mike and Jess Shore are over here with us. They're a couple who started a church a very long time ago in northern Portugal and have seen it grow amazingly! I met them earlier this year when I went out to Portugal for the weekend. So they're here with us to encourage us, see how it's going and more importantly see how we're doing as they know exactly what we're going through and will experience. So it's also a great opportunity for me to grill them about anything and everything. So this weekend we're having meetings together Saturday and Sunday morning then mid-week next week as well as private time with them sometime during the week which I'm very much looking forward to then more meeting next weekend. So prayer for this time would be very much appreciated!
Sorry, this is turning into a pretty big essay! But before I finish, as jealous as I was about Kevin going off to Mexico - I've ALWAYS wanted to go back there -- I did have a pretty good time while he was gone, hee hee! My housemate Jose came back for lunch on Tuesday and asked me if I was free that night. He had been given 2 free tickets to see Real Madrid playing in the Champions League that night and did I wanna go?! Well, naturally I thought about this for a loooong time...not. So amazingly I got to go to my very first Spanish footy match and not just any match but at the Bernabeu for free! And our seats were pretty awesome and so was the game! They won 6-2 so was all good :-) the funny thing was in typical Spanish fashion we arrived 15 minutes late and had already missed 3 goals lol. But at least there were plenty more that night! Here are some of the pics I got:

So was a pretty cool night! Anyways, I'm sure that'll do for now! As a church plant, I think things are going very well. We're all getting stuck into the culture, language, friendships and work. It's very very trying at times and you feel like you're going backwards occasionally when you thought you were going forwards! But it's all a learning curve and we know whose in control :-) thankfully not us! Anyways, prayer for us would be awesome. I need more work as what I have is great but it's not enough to live on. Prayer for friendships would be cool too, that maybe the connections I've made can grow into something more. And more importantly, please pray for a great response from Kevin's trip to Mexico, either in regards to people showing an interest in moving here or that they'll just support us in any way they can!
Oh and lastly, sorry!!! I'm actually coming back for Christmas so I'll be around from the 20th of December! I know it's family time, hence why I'm coming back, but it would be great to see you and if you do want to grab me while I'm back just let me know :-) as always, I love hearing from you so stay in touch!

3 weeks in!

Hola a todos!! Hey guys, sorry it's taken me such a long time to finally start writing a blog. Well you'll be pleased to know that I am actually still alive, well I hope you are anyways! Although with the heat here still, sometimes I wonder how I am...
Well, I made it here 3 weeks ago last night. It was a very funny feeling at first, leaving behind many good friends yet excited too at the prospect of what was ahead. Scary as well as it was and still is so unknown. Kevin Bartlett picked me up from the airport and I was able to stay with him and the rest of his family (his wife Ness and 3 kids Megan, Will and Jonny) until I found my own flat to share. They were very gracious to me and have helped me to settle in better.
The first few days were a bit of a culture shock, learning that I knew nothing lol. The language was quite a barrier and the different way of life took a lot of time to get used to! However, the people here are immensely friendly and try to help you with everything! As a man who likes routine, it was difficult to suddenly not have one and not to have everything sorted when I wanted it :-) so for me, finding my own place to live, finding a job, getting friends, knowing the language perfectly, finding a football team and gym, getting a bank account, etc were quite high and still are high on the list. However, I've had to learn to do things the Spanish way which is ridiculously slower and I've realized that these things will not happen as quickly as I'd like but I've gotta keep trying and hoping and they'll all work out at some time :-)
So although I've been here for over 3 weeks now, sometimes not a lot has actually been going on!! Very strange. I did meet up with a mutual friend and some of her friends the first Friday night I was here which was great as it made me feel settled that much quicker. I found a flat and moved in as of Tuesday night which was brilliant! Photos of the flat are below:

 It's a very cool flat, a real God-send! I live with 3 other guys who are all Spanish -- Alejandro, Jonatan and Jose. Alejandro and Jonatan have been living together for like 2 years and Jose only moved in last month so it's a really nice atmosphere and they're really friendly. Jose is about my age and the other 2 are in their early 30s. It's brilliant as it's now forcing me to speak Spanish all the time every day to them. That may sound funny but it's amazing how you can actually get away with not speaking much Spanish here so I'm really happy to be with them so I can carry on getting better! Although Jose is from Alicante and I still can't understand a word he says but he seems to be happy with the answers I give him :-)
In regards to work, it's a little difficult here but not too bad I think. I had a job interview with this company that teaches business English where Kevin was wanting to work however they were very unimpressed with my grammar (ha ha!) and, eventually, told Kevin to tell me that they had enough teachers and didn't need me. was a bit disappointing but to be honest I didn't really like them so am actually glad. Sadly, though, they told Kevin that their contract with this company fell through so he wasn't needed either. So he's still looking for work just as I am. I advertised myself to teach English privately and have had a ridiculous amount of feedback -- it seems like every single family in Madrid wants their kids to be bilingual! So that's really good and I'm hoping to turn some of them into regular lessons as of next week. Apart from that, there are a few numbers floating around to contact who are looking to enploy people to teach English so I'll see how that goes but would be great if you could pray for this please! I haven't worked now since the end of July and am actually missing it!! Plus it will help me to get into more of a routine which will help but most importantly I need the money!!!
Oh yeah and church-wise, I've been visiting a few these past weeks, another one this Sunday called Amistad lead by a woman!!!! Shock horror. Doubt I will end up going to that one but it's good to see what's going on in regards to the state of the church and try and make some contacts perhaps. There is a church I went to last week called Betel which I really liked so I may end up getting plugged into that for a while at least and get to know people there. Just in case I'm confusing any of you, we are out here to start a church ourselves, but right now is all about getting to know people and building up friendships. Over here at the moment are only the Bartletts, another family called the Whiteheads (Al and Sal and their kids Ellie and Jo) and myself. It's still too early for us as a group to be starting a church essentially although we are meeting together weekly now but our idea is to get stuck into a church nearby, doesn't have to be the same one, and be a part of them for a while. Then when we start increasing in friendships and maybe others being called out here, we'll start meeting together properly. There is another family called the Capes from Yeovil who are trying to get out here too so prayers for them would be appreciated as they really would like to be here now but at the moment coz of trying to sell the house and other stuff doesn't look like they'll make it here until the new year...
On that note, Nigel Capes came over last Monday as he had a job interview on the Tuesday. After that, he didn't really have much else planned so I got to hang out with him and do a bit of the touristy stuff with him which was cool as I haven't really done that yet! He walked my legs off but it was great fun to be able to hang out with such a quality guy and made me realize just how essential he is to this and that he and his family really need to get out here as quick as they can. Anyways, I acted as his semi-interpreter for the few days we hung out. I say semi as my Spanish isn't brilliant when it comes to food especially so had no idea what half the stuff was on the menus lol. We ended up ordering a starter that looked like this:

Ha ha! It was brilliant! They were little squids cooked with their own ink! Looks absolutely vile but actually tasted way better thankfully! At least we now know what that is in Spanish!! So yeah, that was the beginning of last week and then my friend Kim came over on Thursday and stayed all the way until last Monday night! It was so much fun having her here as I could show her everything that I'd been trying to explain before and got to show her the sights too. Kim came with me to meet my new potential flatmates that Thursday night so pretty much gave me the thumbs up to move here! She also came to only our second ever church plant meeting on the Friday which was great. We went to a beautiful park called Retiro on the Saturday which has a lake (picture at the top) so went boating and then typically Spanish evening by eating out at like half 10 followed by drinks in a plaza watching the world go by. And then the other 2 days was spent seeing the sights. It was so good having her over and seeing a friendly face again. At first I wasn't too sure if it was too soon to see anyone from home, and it was difficult to say goodbye again on Monday but I think now it was really good as I was able to share a lot with her which is what I needed considering I don't know a huge amount of people here still and now I feel more ready, what with the move, to really start digging into life here -- making friends, finding a job, etc. But at the same time, I would love people to come over and visit if they want to!! Madrid is a beautiful city which has to be visited, I would love you guys to see what's going on behind the scenes at a brand new church plant and I also would just love to see you again too :-)
Well, that will probably have to do for now! I'm sorry it has taken me so long to start this blog but I will try to keep it updated as much as I can. Oh yeah and if anyone is ever interested, my address here is: Plaza de Pena Horcajo 11, Bloque B 3B, Madrid, 28035. Oh and I bought a Spanish phone so if you want that too it's +34622835809. Also, please feel free to skype me anytime you want! Until I have a proper routine I'm normally about whenever :-) take care all of you! Love you all and miss you!