Euro 2008

If you didn't already know, Spain is playing Germany this afternoon in the championship game of the Eur0 2008 Soccer Tournament! 

Go here for updates on the game: http://en.euro2008.uefa.com/

A somewhat different update...

Yes! The first part of my visa application came in the mail Monday! Lord willing, I will go to Houston asap! Please pray that all of my support comes in at the same time my visa is granted. The Lord's timing is perfect. He is willing and able to do it, but even if He doesn't grant the visa soon, His ways are good.


"And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit."
2 Corinthians 3:18

I have been learning much about what it means to be conformed to the image of Christ and dying to myself. There have been several disappointments this month that are out of my control. Have you ever felt like this? Hasn't everyone? These let downs have led me to a "hard but good" place where I have found all, not just some, of my joy in the strength of the Lord. Every time I have sought Him in the midst of discouragement these past few weeks, His lovingkindness has met me. His strength is stronger than my weakness, and even more, the Lord loves to use broken weak people (Ps. 34:18, Ps. 51:17, 1 Cor. 1:27).

"But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves...always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh."
2 Corinthians 4:7-11

I recently listened to a sermon that made the point that people in the 1st century hid their valuables in different kinds of bronze, gold, or silver vessels (2 Cor. 4:7-11). Nothing extremely special about that; however, robbers and thieves would break in and take the expensive and ornately crafted vessels so people began to hide their treasures in earthen/clay vessels so that the thieves would overlook them. So you have this valuable treasure in a weak, common, vessel. The interesting thing is that in order for an owner to access the treasure, you must break the vessel.

"And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong."
2 Corinthians 12:9-10

Things to praise and pray for:

Praise Him for the safe arrival of the visa documents!

Praise Him for providing housing for the month of June! I am house sitting for 2 couples and I have also enjoyed staying with my parents in between.

Please pray for the Sojourn girls retreat this weekend. I am helping lead a girls summer bible study and our group has a retreat this weekend. We will be processing many of the spiritual truths that we have been learning over the past 5 weeks and seeing how we can apply them to our lives and not just know them in our heads. Please pray for a restful time, that is full of challenge, application, and growth.

Please pray for all of my monthly support to come in at the same time as my visa. This is HUGE! Would you join me in faithfully praying for this?


Please let me know how I can be praying for you! I would love to hear what God is doing in you and through you! Thank you for your e-mails, sacrifices, notes of encouragement, and most of all, your prayers!

Immigration in Spain

When I was in Spain, last January, there was a lot of talk about the problem of illegal immigrants. I heard the situation compared to that of the United States and Mexico. Like I said, I was visiting in January which is about the middle of the olive harvest. Many of the illegal immigrants in Spain come for the seasonal labor.

Here are some things I noticed from my short time there:

• Many immigrants make money, and send it home to their families in North Africa/South America.
  
• Some citizens/nationals are becoming wary (distrusting) of immigrants. Sometimes immigrants are blamed for misdemeanor crimes.
  
• Since Spain is a welfare state and medical care is free...immigrants, or other people that are in the country temporarily, could take advantage of the system and receive the benefits without paying into it.
  

Here is an interesting article that I found on the International Herald Tribune about the situation...

Spain, like U.S., grapples with immigration


This article is written by Jason Deparle and the original article can be found here.

MADRID: With the United States riven by calls to legalize millions of illegal immigrants, Americans might consider the possible effects by looking at southern Europe, where illegal immigration abounds and so have forgiveness plans.

In the last two decades, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece have run at least 15 legalization programs, including a Spanish effort three years ago that was among the Continent's largest. With little domestic opposition, Spain legalized nearly 600,000 of the African, Latin American and eastern European workers who helped power its economy and brought this once insular land the strengths and strains of diversity.

Immigrants say their prized work cards have brought higher wages, peace of mind and reunions of separated families. But critics say legalizations have attracted more illegal migrants — with spillover risks to nearby countries — and warn that an economic slowdown now puts Spain and its foreigners at odds.

Among the beneficiaries of the legalization policy are Ignacio Cantos and Sandra Delgado, a husband and wife from Ecuador who left four children and an economic crisis in search of Spanish jobs. Legalization has raised their pay and ended their fear of the police, who once jailed Cantos for lacking work papers.

It has also ended their separation from their youngest child, Allan, a gap-toothed 8-year-old sent with his siblings to live with their grandparents when he was 3. Since arriving in Madrid in March, he has been twirling his mother's earrings and stroking her hair as if worried that she is a mirage.

"I would never leave my children a second time," said Delgado, 38, a nanny who has been raising others' children while aching for her own. "I'm sorry I did it."

Though both husband and wife favor legalization, they differ on the critics' main complaint — that "regularizations" attract more illegal migrants.

"I don't think so," said Cantos, 43, a truck driver who argued that migrants moved out of desperation, not legal expectations. "I didn't even know what a regularization was."

But Delgado said repeated amnesties could act as a magnet. "People are thinking they'll be able to get their papers almost immediately," she said.

The United States has an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, a record number. Its last mass amnesty program, which began in 1987, legalized 2.7 million. President George W. Bush proposed an immigration plan that would give some workers a path to legalization. But it died last year under assault from people who said it would lead to more illegal immigration.

Europe has held at least 20 legalizations in the past 25 years, giving residency papers to about four million people. Italy and Spain account for about two-thirds of the total, to the consternation of northern Europeans who see the south as the Continent's weak back door. With free movement across much of Europe, legalized immigrants can easily head north, alarming those worried about job competition, welfare costs, cultural clashes or terrorist threats.

Southern Europe's tolerance for illegal immigration has several explanations. Its aging populations and booming economies created a need for foreign workers. Its proximity to northern Africa and eastern Europe places it close to countries that supply them. And its economies have traditionally depended more on off-the-books workers.

No country has run more legalization programs than Spain, which has carried out six since 1985. As recently as a decade ago, immigrants made up less than 2 percent of the population. Now they are more than 10 percent. About 40 percent come from eastern and northern Europe; 38 percent come from Latin America; and 20 percent from Africa.

Despite the rapid change, until recently there was little political conflict, with legalizations occurring under both conservative and socialist governments. Spain even offers immigrants free health insurance, whether they are legal or not.

"The attitude toward unauthorized migrants is much more relaxed than in the United States," said Joaquín Arango, a sociologist at Complutense University in Madrid.

The acceptance has been attributed to newfound prosperity, the need for workers, the progressive culture of post-Franco Spain and the shared language with Latin Americans, which spares Spain a major source of tension in the United States.

But with the economy slowing, attitudes appear to be changing. The unemployment rate among foreigners is now 14.7 percent, compared with 8.7 percent among Spaniards. Nearly 40 percent of the recent jump in unemployment has occurred among the foreign-born.

"People are starting to say: 'We don't need immigrants. They should return to their country,' " said Sebastián Salinas, a lawyer with the immigrant rights group Acobe.

Spanish Protests

Last weekend, John and Jan (team leaders in Úbeda) asked that I would be praying specifically for the country as there are many problems resulting from the rising cost of diesel.

Beginning Sunday the 8th of June, there will be no more petroleum delivered to gas stations. In addition to this, the fishing industry stopped about 2 weeks ago - on strike. This is a huge deal since the country is a peninsula and fishing is a huge part of the economy and the workforce. The missionaries are anticipating that other deliveries, such as groceries, will come to a halt. Regarding a strike on transportation, farmers and taxi drivers have said they will follow the truckers lead.

I found this article on the International Herald tribune. Please read, or at least scan over it : )



Spanish Truckers Block Border with France to Demand Fuel Relief
Madrid: Gasoline at $4 a gallon? If that was America's nightmare over the weekend as fuel prices reached a record national average, pity poor Europe, where the price of oil and taxes levied at the pump combine to push prices to about double the U.S. level.


In the latest show of distress, Spanish truckers Monday began a blockade of their country's border with France, lining up their rigs and slowing them to a crawl to protest the cost of fuel. The strike blocked the highway in both directions in southwestern France. The protest turned ugly when would-be strike-breakers in Spain found their windshields and headlights smashed and their tires slashed.


But the Spanish drivers were not the only ones feeling the pinch. French drivers slowed traffic near Bordeaux to demand lower fuel prices, offering a foretaste of a planned national strike by truckers next Monday. Portuguese drivers blocked roads, and in Belgium thousands of labor union members demonstrated in Liège to protest the rising cost of living as a result of fuel costs.


Fuel prices have been far higher in Europe than in the United States for many years, largely as a result of fuel taxes imposed after the oil shock in the 1980s. Taxes account for at least half the price motorists pay, and sometimes more than 70 percent.


But the sustained surge in oil prices has left many Europeans bewildered by the relentless increase in the cost of gasoline and diesel bills. Depending on where and how fuel is bought, the price of diesel - widely used in private cars as well as by truckers, fishermen and farmers - can reach the equivalent of almost $9 per gallon.


Multimedia Video: Fuel protests spread across Spain » View Related Articles Gasoline prices take bigger bite in rural U.S. Pressure from oil prices spreads Today in Europe Spanish truckers block border with France to demand fuel relief A low-key visit to Germany by Bush Germany and France compromise on car emissions Throughout Spain, approximately 70,000 truckers joined the strike Monday, according to Desirée Paseiro, a representative of a truckers' association that is threatening to paralyze the country unless the government introduces measures to lower their fuel bills.


On Monday morning, groups of slow-moving truckers blocked the major highways around Madrid in a so-called snail protest that snarled traffic. Some food distributors fear their trucks will not be allowed to roll.


"We are the ones who move the merchandise that this country needs to function," Julio Villascusa, a truckers' representative, told the Cadena Ser radio station on the eve of the strike. "If we don't have the money to keep buying fuel to offer this public service, well, then this country comes to a halt."


Spanish truckers say the price of diesel fuel - which varies among European countries - is now €1.30 per liter, roughly $7.73 per U.S. gallon, compared to €0.95 per liter a year ago. At that price, they argue, it costs them far more to buy fuel than they earn from trucking contracts.


The rising European anger may well be matched by the price of oil, said Jeffrey Currie, global head of commodities research at the investment bank Goldman Sachs. At an oil and gas conference in Malaysia on Monday, he suggested that oil prices were likely to hit $150 a barrel this summer, surpassing the record of $139.12 set last Friday, Reuters reported.


"I would suggest that the likelihood of that happening sooner has increased tremendously - sometime in the summer," Currie was quoted as saying. "Demand for oil is weak, but supplies are even weaker."

Dale Fuchs reported from Madrid and Alan Cowell from Paris.

Link to this article from the International Herald Tribune.

Visa Application Part I

Praise God! The one true God who is seldom early but never late!

Thank you for your prayers! I found out Sunday morning that my Visa documents are ready to be mailed to me from Spain! I will hopefully receive them within the next few days and travel to the Spanish Embassy in Houston by the end of the week (Friday).

So...what does this mean? Basically, 1/2 of my visa application is completed in Spain by the church and the missionaries (Part 1). The other 1/2 is completed here by me (Part 2). I will take the entire application (Part 1 & 2) and my passport to the embassy and submit them as my final step in the visa application process. It will (hopefully) take about 6 weeks for the embassy to notify me that I have been granted a Religious Worker Visa.

Please praise Him for His faithfulness and His timing!

Please pray specifically for expedient and safe travel of the application papers.

Thank you for all of your love and support!