Thanksgiving

At the end of November the Americans have Thanksgiving Day and as there are a number of Americans on staff they decided to celebrate here at the Villa. Nearly 50 people sat down to eat a delicious turkey meal including quite a few guests and we had an excellent evening together.
It is a wonderful thing to stop and give thanks to God for all his goodness to us and to Rita and I He has been very good. We have two wonderful daughters, who have chosen excellent husbands, our first grandchild Eliana and a grandson on the way. We have our health and a sense of purpose in our ministry here. We are very thankful for all of you who show interest in us by reading our blog, for all who pray for us and for those who give to us to enable us to do what we do. We are very grateful to our Father God for all His love to us, seen in so many ways.

One of the thing we have been so thankful for is the way the Lord has been watching over Eliana the last two weeks. She was being very sick and not gaining weight which of course has been quite a concern. The doctors were unsure as to what the problem was and thought she might need an operation. After an overnight stay in hospital and to cut a long story short the problem seems to be she has an intolerance to dairy and soya products. The doctors wanted Sharon to feed her a dairy and soya free formula for two days just to see what would happen and in that time she gained nearly 5 oz, where before she had only been gaining half an ounce a day. We are very grateful the root cause seems to have been identified and now Eliana is doing well. Sharon wants to continue to breast feed her which means she has to have a dairy and soya free diet. Sorry Sharon no chocolate for you over Christmas.

We have also had a strong Dutch influence at the Villa during the SOFM with 5 students coming from there. For the Dutch December the 5th is a very important date as it is the day that Sinterklaas visits every home bringing gifts. One of the traditions is that each person gets a small present for someone and also writes a poem about that person. Sinterklaas then reads the poem and gives out the gift. Sinterklaas is very old and very wise and has a book were all the deeds of a person over the year are recorded and you only get a present if you have been good. Of course everyone gets a present. Well last night was Sinterklaas night and guess who was Sinterklaas. How I got the job I have no idea, only to say it was a huge amount of fun.



Two of our wonderful friends came and took us away for break last weekend in Granada. You can’t go to Granada without visiting the Alhambra and it truly is impressive. It was the last Moors stronghold in Spain before they were finally driven back to North Africa in 1492. These two pictures will give you some idea of what it is like.


Here is a picture of Rita packing on Thursday to head off to Liverpool to help her mum get ready for Christmas. I hear the last two days have been a whirl for her and last night was spent wrapping the presents, so when she arrives back in Spain later this evening it will be for a rest I think.

Well that is it for this blog suffice to say a very Happy Christmas to you all and a really blessed New Year.