Elsie's Notes from New England - THEMission edition

I learned today that you don't actually need a foreign language to encounter a cultural gap. There is a sweet older woman at church who is from England. She and her husband are here in Granada doing missionary work. She has tried, but really has not been able to learn much Spanish. Her husband is from Argentina, and speaks both English and Spanish fluently. She has been very happy to have me (another English-speaker) around lately, and we've become fast friends. Her husband's mother has dementia, and they have repeatedly had to return to England to help with her living arrangements. Her condition is deteriorating, so they are now cutting their time here short and returning to England permanently before the end of March. Today my new friend and I were discussing her moving arrangements, and she caught me completely off guard with a casual comment that had me laughing well into Sunday School. I knew just what she meant when she talked about the 'removers'...

I love living here in Spain. It’s beautiful. It’s historic. The people are friendly and warm. The lifestyle is laid back. There are interesting things to do and unusual things to see every day. The shopping is great fun. The food is delicious. In so many ways, this is a marvelous vacation. Sometimes, however, it is exhausting. It’s not just the fact that we walk everywhere we go – sometimes five or eight miles in a day. It’s not just that we live on the side of a mountain (well, just a really steep hill, but it feels like a mountain some days). Sometimes, simply living here wears me out. It has to do with having to speak a foreign language every day. I guess I don’t really have to speak Spanish all the time, but I try to. Partly that’s because John is a hard guy when it comes to things like living the language – he does it, and he encourages the students to do it; that’s how you learn to speak a foreign language well – by doing it every day, all the time, even when it’...