Testimony from visit to Spain
Sunday, 20th November, 2005
On the way from the airport to my daughter's house, driving through the mountains between Almeria and Berja, I was wondering how I would manage to stay focussed on God and not drift away during the week I was staying with her. No one in the family is a Christian except me, and talk of God and Christianity does not go down very well, especially with Jan who is at a convent run school! When we arrived at the house, I went out the back to look at the garden and found that the mountains which normally preside over the landscape, were almost invisible because of heavy cloud. That night there was a tremendous storm, with thunder and lightning, torrential rain - which turned the road in front of the house into a river, as well as coming through the ceiling of the kitchen from the roof terrace, where the gutter could not cope with the volume of water - and hailstones. I thought little of it at the time and by the next day, the sun was out and it was much warmer, so Juliet and I drove up into the hills to the village of Ugijar, where we strolled around and ended up having drinks and tapas outside a local bar, just enjoying the sunshine and the views. On the way back to the car, we passed a narrow street at the end of which was a view up a huge snow covered mountain, standing against a brilliant blue sky; I looked at it for some time, but still the penny did not drop.
That afternoon, when my grandson came in from school (rather than get started on his homework!) he asked if I wanted to log in to the Vineyard Website - I had mentioned this to him previously so it wasn't actually his idea -and he found the Chat Room page for me. I sent a message, wondering if there would be a response and to my amazement, by the time I went to bed, there were three replies. The next day, I sent a further message and there were more answers! This was wonderful and I was getting more a-mails than I normally get phone calls at home. Each day, I was able to keep in touch with my church family and receive greetings, love and blessings via the net, right up until I sent my last communication from the Spanish outpost of San Roche on Saturday, just prior to leaving for home. I still hadn't twigged what was going on!
This morning, Sunday, one of the worship songs was "I lift my eyes up to the mountains, where does my help come from; my help comes from you Maker of Heaven, Creator of the earth ... " and I suddenly found myself in tears as I realised that God HAD answered my prayer for help to keep in touch with Him! I had been looking up at the mountains and not seeing Who was there, and then He used my own grandson and the very technology that I am so up-tight about, to connect me to my church family back home and to remind me that He was there, on the mountains and I was in touch all the time because the whole place where my daughter and son-in-law live, is surrounded by the Sierra Nevadas. Talk about short-sighted!
Jan W. |
