symphony

(I didn't take these pictures but I got them in an email and thought they were worth sharing, well the last one was when I was at the beach here)

I have this theory, well it’s more like Isaiah’s and David’s theory… but stilll I think about it a lot. I think the universe is playing a great symphony of praise to God. I think all of creation is moving and dancing and singing about how wonderful and beautiful God is. I think the trees, the waves, the mountains, the clouds, the stars, the forest, the fields and the beaches are telling us about their Maker.

They have no words. But that is ok… being a communications major I can tell you that communication is 90% noverbal and only 10% verbal ☺. His creation doesn’t use confining words, it uses beats, rhythms, winds, rolling hills, shifting colors in the clouds during sunsets, crashing waves, snow capped mountains, thunder, waterfalls, and lightly falling snow to express the unfathomable: the King, the God of the universe.

Sometimes when I look at nature, I think how its’ very nature gives glory to God, it seems like it is praising God and reflecting God just by simply BEING… being what is was created to be. An olive tree, for example, doesn’t get jealous of the fig trees and try to grow figs (by the way I love olives and figs, but not together, and they are abundant here in spain). It just exsits, it grows olives and sits there all pretty and content with the other olive trees just producing olives (and olive oil of course) ☺. Just being. An ocean doesn’t try to be a waterfall, a red flower doesn’t try to be a yellow flower, it just depends on God to give it what it needs and grows. It in its being it speaks about God.

A while ago I was sitting on the beach infront of the Mediterranean Ocean. The waves looked like they were enjoying being waves. They looked like they were talking about how cool God is. I believed them. SO I started to do what they were doing… praising God, and believing that maybe I, just as I am, just being with out words or acts, enjoying being who I am, where I am could reflect God and give glory to Him, just like the nature does… as it plays its’ great symphony of praise.

“the heavens declare the glory of God,
the skies proclaim the work of his hands
day after day they pour forth speech…
their voice goes out into all the eath
their words to the ends of the world.” ~ psalm 19
“the mountains and hills will burst into song before you
and all the trees of the fields will clap their hands.” ~ Isaiah 55

romeria de loja

And this would be another cultural experience I am adding to my collection :) My friend invited me to her hometown, Loja to go to the "romeria" I didn't really know what to expect, except to bring a white top, jeans, and tennis shoes. I was thinking, "what kind of event do Spaniards go to in tennis shoes?? haha" but she told we were going to go to the campo, like fields and we'd get dirty.

So I get there and we meet up with her friends (who've I've met a few times that I have been to Loja) and they are making a float. So we spent a few hours decorating it and preparing the food and drinks. The next morning everyone in the town who had made a float lined them up in a street and we followed each other out to the campos outside of town. There we all set up tables and chairs and umbrellas and basically hung out in the field with our cool floats all day. It's a cute tradition.

Well my friends found the news people and told them there was a girl from Memphis with them and they needed to come interview me. I tried to get out of it because talking in Spanish on TV seemed really intimidating, but i mean when people are chanting your name to do something, it's kind of hard to resist... So that would be my 4th time on the Spanish news in this past year and 2 months, except this time I was interviewed... They just asked me the basic questions: What would a girl from Memphis (pronounced memfees in the Spanish accent) be doing at the romeria in Loja, what I thought of it, if I'm having fun, what I am doing in Spain, if I liked Loja etc...

The only reason people here say I am from Memphis is because when they ask me where I am from I either say, "I don't know..." or "I am from many places." Then I list all the places I think I am from, Kansas, Charlotte, Boone, and Memphis. They usually only recognize Boone. haha no just kidding, they usually only recognize Memphis because of the Spanish basketball player guy, Pau Gasol, who used to play for the Memphis grizzlies. I didn't know who he was until I got here or even that Memphis had a basketball team named the grizzlies... haha i learned that here in Spain!

just doing my major!

In college I majored in communications. I loved my major, I loved going to class because you couldn’t get in trouble for talking in class, because talking was the very thing we were studying and majoring in! Hahaha

One time my teacher of Com Theory told us to get in groups and come up with our own definition of communications. This was how we defined it: Communications is the act of living because we are never not communicating. Like we are always sending messages even when we’re not talking through our non verbals. (For example, even when you’re sleeping, you are communicating… you’re saying you’re tired… I know, it’s deep.) So I decided that if that is the definition of communications well, then all my classmates and I were actually majoring in life!

A year ago when I came to Spain I remember thinking how ironic it was that I came to a place where I could least likely use my major, the very thing I had been studying for for the past 4 years: communicating… because I couldn’t speak or understand the language.

So here I’ve been for over a year learning a completely new means of communications, communicating in another language. But in my process of learning Spanish I have learned something else more important: that communicating really is the act of living. Our lives, our actions, our non verbals, our behavior, our love for people is what communicates much more powerfully and honestly than our verbal words. You can listen and speak on much deeper levels through facial expressions, tone of voice, actions, body language, touch, and time spent together.

The place I have learned this is with my Spanish friends. From the day I met them (when I couldn’t understand a word they said) til now (when we can laugh and joke and understand eachother) there has been a constant, unchanging message that I have understood on the deeper, noverbal level: love.

I believe God communicates on that level and uses us to communicate his love to eachother in and through our lives and our actions. So if life is my major… well I am definitely a freshman… and probably be one forever because I fail so often to live and communicate like that… even so, I still love it because there is grace and forgiveness when we don’t… and maybe receiving it makes us more prone to live lives that speak love.

a year in another world

A year away from home. A whole year has gone by. So I have realized some of the ways I have changed and have become a part of this culture or that this culture has become a part of me:

I consider 1:00pm to be morning time still and 8:00pm is still the afternoon.

Shaking hands is sooo akward when meeting someone, we gotta kiss on both cheeks!

I like to eat any part of the pig, I never thought much about ham until I got here and became surrounded by people who love to eat ham, pork, (other cuts I don't know the names in english...). I even ate pig skin at a bbq the other day. You can't really even find turkey very easily here.

A "normal" size coffee would be about 1/3 of a tall at starbucks.

If I go home at 5:00 in the morning; that is getting in early.

I am shocked if I don't get free food with a drink I order. (When Katie Smith and I went to Sevilla we went out for tapas and I found out that they charged us for the tapa and the drink! I was kind of mad, I found out that only in Granada the tapa is free.)

I think I forgot how to drive a car. I walk everywhere and a 20 minute walk is normal for most places I go.

The guys in the pointy kkk looking hats (photo above) are perfectly normal to see walking thru the streets in the processions of holy week, its also normal to see them drinking and smoking in the bars later.

I find myself clapping with my hands positioned like in the photo above. Clapping is an artform here, not just a way to express approval.

Olives and olive oil are its own food group now... for real I saw a spanish version of the food pyramid.

I wear pointy boots...

Most of my thought reactions to something are in slang spanish. Like "venga ya tia"

I get dressed up to go to the grocery store.

3:00 is lunch time and it's by far the biggest meal!

I think I have like 5 maria's in my phone.

When people ask where I am from I tell them "Granada! :)" just to see if they'll believe me... they don't believe me.... i guess I still have an American accent... or maybe its the whole blond thing... I don't know, but somehow over this year, this place has become home to me in so many ways. There are many things about the culture that if I would've known before I might not have come, but now those are the things I treasure.

beloved

Beloved, one who is loved, loved one…

I made chocolate chip cookies and brought them to my Spanish friends on Valentines day (not on purpose or for it necessarily) but just to give something out of love randomly. We were all talking about Valentines day. They said, “Molly who are you in love with?” Then they answered their own question, “You are in love with life…” then pointing to the cookies, “and we are your beloveds.” I just smiled, “yes, you are my beloveds.”

There was such a sense of completeness and joy when I heard them say, when I heard them believe that I love them, because I do… soooo much! I did an act of love and when they knew by my action that they were loved, it came full circle… or something, some sense of completeness, you know!? And all I could think about was God, and how it must bring him even so much more joy and delight when I believe he loves me.

I was riding with them all in a car the other day. One of them was talking about how she doesn't like it when her boyfriend is drunk. I didn’t really enter the conversation too much, I was overwhelmed with one thought: “Man, I love you guys!!!” My thought was so loud in my head that I’m surprised they couldn’t hear it. If they would have stopped their conversation and said “Molly, what do you think?” I would have said, “que os quiero.” But that wouldn’t have been sufficient, because what I was thinking was “man! I love you guys.” That is my language, I guess I feel in English. To me it contains more of my feeling and true meaning in my own language. But to communicate it effectively I would’ve said it in Spanish. Actually now that I think about it maybe I would have said it in both languages to get the meaning AND the feeling across. (Because you know, I am a communications major)

And all I could think about was God, how he is always walking around with me and how even when my mind and thoughts are on a completely other subject, He is there thinking, “Man! I love you!!” Except in his language. And if I stop and listen I can hear his thought. If I would stop and say, “God, what do you think?” I would hear, “that I love you” and knowing that is not enough to get the meaning and feeling across he did something else. Because he can say “I love you” in English to me all day long, but he has a language in which his word fufills the true meaning. His Word. His son. His life. His death. His passion. His Word which became flesh. His love expressed in Christ. His greatest act of love. And in that we get to hear the meaning AND the feeling of His love… Then pointing to the cross we’d say, “and we are your beloveds.” He would just smile, “yes, you are my beloveds.”

cordoba

In my whole life I have never had a day even close to being similar to my day yesterday. Our school went on a day trip to Cordoba. (The bottom picture is just of my class, others classes were there too.) At my school there are a lot of students from North Africa. I was the only American on this trip. I have never felt the weight of my own American-ness like I did yesterday. I will try to explain some of my experience.

America and Iraq: I knew about half of the people on the trip, the rest were people from other classes. I ended up meeting another student from Iraq. As soon as he told me he was from Iraq and I told him I was from American a weird kind of like “what do I say now?” akwardness came between us. He said, “umm I am sorry…” I said, “yeah me too…” As if we were each our own country, that is a heavy weight. Anyways I sat next to him on the bus and asked him lots of questions about Iraq and how he feels and the people there and how it is now. It was interesting, hard, weird, and just a feeling of how broken our world is.

A mosque and a church: There used to be this massive mosque in Cordoba which is now being remodled into a massive Catholic church. Even though its being remodled its open for turists. So our group of like 20 Muslims and one Christian (me) go explore this like half old mosque, half new church. Once again I felt a weight, a weight of the history between the Christians and Muslims in the re-conquest in Spain. While we were walking around in there I asked one of my friends how she is feeling right now. She felt angry. She said, “a mosque is a place for prayer and a place of respect, a mosque has it’s respect, this is not respect.”

A group of girls: Later we got some free time to go walk around and do whatever. I met a group of girls from another class at my school who I really enjoyed, so we went and sat in a plaza together. They offered me chocolate and juice that they had brought. In contrast to weight I had felt, there came a lightness in just sitting in a plaza with girls… talking, eating, laughing and taking pictures together. We are all foriengers, we are all learning Spanish, and we are all missing our countries and families. And with these new friends, despite all our differences, I really feel like there was unity. It was good, really good.

bullfighters and underware models

Two weekends ago I went to Morocco. We went to a city called Tanger, it is on the coast! It was cool we got to see this cave by the ocean and the place that looks out is in the shape of Africa. I also got to stand at the place where the Atlantic and Meditteranean Oceans mix. I wanted to call my mom and tell her I was looking out over 2 oceans at one time, but I didn’t have my phone or service.

Sunday morning we went to a Catholic church (while we were in Morocco). We went with a group of Menonites that we met at our hotel. The singing and music at the church was done by black Africans from Nigeria (I think), so it was really cool African beats and styles but done in Spanish, in a Muslim country! It was quite a mixture of Spaniards, Menonites, Africans, us and nuns who are followers of Mother Teresa.

We took a ferry back to Spain. I had some really good moments listening to music and sitting in the sun on top of the ferry. I was remembering about a year ago when I was anticipating coming to Spain and now, well… its been almost a year. And God has amazed me and thrilled me with the path he’s lead me on starting with that very scary and “uncertain” step on to the plane to Spain last March.

On our way home we ended up getting in a car accident. A car rearended the car behind us and then they hit us. I am so thankful to say no one was hurt. But the guys that hit us are bullfighters! Hahahahaha! They gave us posters of themselves all decked out in their bullfighting outfits.

I went to the beach the other day, it was gorgeous and the beach was so empty! So I sat by my self to read and just be and pray. But then this Spanish underware model guy named Jose Maria (Joseph Mary) came up to me and sat there and talked to me for a while. He said he was Catholic, but didn’t know really what Catholics believe. It was cool I got to share the gospel with him. He said he’d never read the bible, I told him he should… especially since he is named after both Jesus’ parents ☺

I am also still enjoying like every step of walking, its so nice to be able to walk! And today I went on my first run back after waiting for more than a month! I put my chariots of fire sound track on and took those first steps, man it was soooooooooooooo (insert some sound I would make because there are no words to describe it) !!!!!