3 shoots, 3 weeks

March has been hectic. What do you say if the entire month is a lion? There is a chance it will go out in a lamb like manner. The first 11 days of the month we had house guests. They were nice and are likely coming back soon as coworkers. It just changes the rythem of your days and your habits.

While they were here we had a video shoot. This was the one indoor shoot. I arranged for the location (our church), and the 10 actors, well, volunteers, and a bunch of other details. One of my big jobs is to sort of run interferance between the techincal crew and the director/producer as well as to channel his energies where they need to be focused at a given moment. I also watch the video carefully as it records trying to catch mistakes, errors, or mismatches between shots. This has been harder for me than it used to be and I'm not sure why. Dar had to do basically three sets for these scenes plus a fourth sudden blue screen set up outside.


Last Saturday we had the second shoot. I had scouted a location, 2 hours away. The director had never had time to see it and was going strictly on my pictures. I had coordinated with two men to use them and their horses for this scene. I was filled with nerves taking our small convoy across the highway to the countryside. The shoot turned out well, but it was hard getting everything set up for the crew with the director not having seen things before. It was a bigger challenge than some of our shoots are at the set up point. We got the shots needed though. Dar was in costume and on horseback. His horse liked girls better than boys, so at one point I was sweet talking Morro, the horse, down the road to where we needed him to be.


One more shoot this Saturday. I've been working very hard for a couple weeks to come up with 20 fit, male volunteers to be Herodian soldiers. With about 36 hours to go I've got 17 and about 8 more possibles hanging out there still. Not to mention all the details of getting them rides and coordinated with costumes and make up. The makeup person fell and was injured after the first shoot, so we've also had to operate short handed. It's amazing what gets done when it has to and how God manages to help us through the chaos. Dar was busy doing a gold finish on 20 sets of grieves (Herodian chin guards) today, and shields the last couple weeks, besides the special effects graphics for completed segments.

I'm exhausted and ready for this third shoot to be past. We have about a five week break then two shoots in a week, large ones. Then all the scenes for this series of video will be in the can as they say. After that it's just post production. I'll be ready for a slower pace next week that's for sure.

Signs of Spring

Spring is popping up here - and it's just February 28. I have lived many, many years in a climate that has a much longer winter and this is a really wild sensation.

I still have all my sweaters out. Our winter was so mild there are two heavy ones I never wore. I think the winter here has the potential to be colder than it happened to be this year, but it ends much earlier that's for certain.

We get most of our rain through the winter, so the usually brown hills around us are greening up. The pansies in our yard never died during the winter so they are popping up with flowers. The early blooming trees are sprouting white and pink petals. It's hard to believe it's so early.

I feel a little guilty about enjoying this since everyone has had such a hard winter. I have to remind myself to get out and enjoy it now because it will get really, really hot later.

Another sign of spring is strawberries. My favorite fruit. Last year I missed them because I thought it was some weird hot house aberration last year when they came in February. I'm learning that things disappear after they go out of season, so you have to enjoy them while they last.

Not sure if this will show up very well, but tonight we had a brief shower and a very strong rainbow with the beginning of a double. The end of the rainbow was out in the wild lands behind our house. First on a power line poll which is kind of funny because that is a pot of gold for someone. Then the end of the rainbow moved to the rabbit warren we can see, hmmm.

The long weekend

We went to go skiing about an hour away from home. When we got to the hotel we found out the snow was gone. So we went site seeing instead.


Kerry and our car by a Roman church, waaaaay out in the country.


A medieval town, Sepulveda where we ate lunch at Casa Paulino.


Yes, that's an egg in my soup. Along with chunks of bread and meat somewhere between bacon and ham. Tasty actually, especially on a cold day.



Madriguera, a red village. Nearby are also black villages. The earth was drastically red and so were the buildings. It was a surreal place. It felt like another time and place in the world.


This must the home of the people who like animals in Madriguera. Cats were everywhere around this place.


Ayllon, another medieval town with a Roman church further to the north. Sunday, no one around and only the restaurant/bars were open.

We raced from Ayllon down to an appointment to go through a cave. It was a guided tour, in Spanish, and pretty interesting. Some of the formations were multi colored, red, black and white due to minerals in the ground water. We went from there to a gas station to buy a bottle of water. Then our car wouldn't start. This is when we made friends with the gas station attendent, the tow truck driver, and a taxi driver. Because I left the keys to the hotel in the now towed away car, we had to sit for two hours in a bar and wait for the hotel owner to come back. We were the only guests so he'd locked up and gone to visit his dad in the hospital. We were tired to put it lightly.

Monday we took a taxi back home, yes an hour long taxi ride. That's what the insurance company said to do and they will pay us back. I sure hope so as it was over 100E. The car is at a garage in Madrid now, after a lovely language snafu on my part. A blow to my confidence language-wise. Now we are waiting to hear what's wrong and hoping it is covered by the warrantee.

Not dull, you can say that.

Blogger Aggravated

I've been trying to post comments on all your blogs the last few weeks. I'm so frustrated. Blogger kept pestering me to join the great new google version, so I finally did. I deeply regret it. Now I can't seem to get a comment up. Okay I'm exaggerating a little, but I just lost my comment to Golden's latest blog because I suddenly was swooped away to the google page which then brought me to my own post/internal blog workings. So what happened to my comment?! Also the word verification wasn't working one week. I kept seeing the letters, then entering them. Then a new screen would come up and say I didn't enter them and to do it again. But then there would be no image of the letters, just a ? box. I'm so frustrated, but want you all to know I am trying to keep up on your lives. Obviously, if one of you computer gurus know the answer I'd be glad to be educated!

Tolerance and free will

I watched a fairly disturbing video revealing activities in mosques in Great Britain. Link to it here. The video was done by an undercover reporter, so the "preachers," that is imams were saying things to what they believed were just their own people. Some of the things they said are troubling, but I knew much of it was occurring anyway. It's just that seeing it live in a "religious" setting made it more real.

So disturbing thing number one is just their harsh view of democracy, women, and freedoms that we take for granted. But we sort of knew that too. I think a big difference here is we believe in tolerance even if we don't believe something is right or good for a person. We don't abhor the person but perhaps the act they do. At least ideally we tolerate.

Disturbing thing number two is that I know some of the harsh things get said because they think it is a private group. I sort of wondered if it isn't like we don't say everyone is going to miss the rapture who does X sin in front of a mixed group of people, or that we believe X is a sin, unless we think we were among friends. I've heard preachers say sort of politically incorrect things and then say, oh I'm not suppose to say that and everyone laughs. In this respect, I found the their meetings similar to ours. I found that odd to see something I recognize in a way. Though I have to follow this closely and quickly with the fact that we don't believe that people who do these sins should be tortured or brutally murdered.

One imam spoke out against homosexuality and one against watching western television. Oddly, those are issues I've heard brought up in the church too. But the difference here is we, meaning my friends who read this blog, my church, and for the most part the denomination I participate in, we believe in a free will that God respects. If God is willing to let a person choose whatever destructive lifestyle choices, I am not meant to dictate better ones to them under punishment of death. I'm also not meant to dictate what your belief in God will look like. Here we are drastically different. I think free will may be the biggest distinction we can make in our philosophical structures. Obviously, our theological structures are on different planets they are so different. We are to express the truth of God, the love of Christ and then ultimately each individual decides.

Another disturbing fact I observed was that when the news program asked people for a response to their under cover report, they simply said no it's not true. That's not the way it is at all. I'm amazed in this day of video and literature and the internet, that any group can just blatantly deny things that can be proven fact so easily. It's as though you can just spout off the politically correct jargon in a press release and that negates all the actual teachings or actions of any group.

I’m not sure where all this knowledge is taking me. How will God use this in me? I do know today I'm especially thankful for free will and what that means to our beliefs.

Holidays 2006

After an extended absence from the keyboard...The trip to KC for the holidays was great. We were at a phase of life here in Espana that it was nice to be home without making us sick at the idea of coming back. I totally didn't expect the sensation that home is in Spain right now. It's comfortable and that's a very pleasant sensation that I think has taken a lot of work to get to that point.

So enjoyed getting to hang out with you bloggers and blurkers at different times. Thanks to Golden for throwing a girls night opportunity at her house. I needed that. I'm positive I talked entirely too much! Thanks for including us in the Love's Command party. It was wonderful to feel at ease and just have fun. I miss that here. Special kudos go out to Dash and Dirt for the use of their coche. My first thought was that is so nice, but I'd feel bad to use it. Then our transport option broke down and I saw it as a God thing. It took a lot of pressure off the too-ing and fro-ing that we needed to do. Thanks to Vernal, Forrest and Doc for a great night out for Mexican...even if we couldn't find anywhere open for late night stuff, that's funny knowing the way it is here. I always feel like a party pooper when I go home before midnight. LL & co, as well as our families fed us good ole KC barbeque. Makes me salivate thinking of it. yum. We missed BB and family but wish them well in their new endeavors.

In interesting news for those that don't know, my brother got engaged while we were home. Congrats to him. The newsworthy thing is that the big day is looking like the coming New Year's Eve, so we will likely be home for Christmas again. So put us on the calendar for more fun later in 2007!

Too much thinking for one blog

How much of this was meant to be
How much the work of the Devil
How far can one man's eyes really see
In these days of toil and trouble
How much of this is failing flesh
How much a course of retribution
My, my, how loudly we plead our innocence
Long after we made our contribution

Okay, Dar just posted these lyrics from Bill Mallonee. Thanks to Forrest for introducing us to the Vigilantes of Love.

Here are my thoughts on this portion of the song. It goes along with a long, long running discussion (in my mind) about God. I don't really know if you'd call it attributes or how big is God or issues with Sovereignty or what. This song and a couple other phrases I've heard all are part of the challenge in my head to understand God. The interesting thing is that even though I cannot resolve all these thoughts or my "position" on them, they seem to keep drawing me further into God, rather than pushing me away.

How much of this was meant to be...
This makes me think of Calvinism and pre-destination. This is what if I you take it literally enough and far enough, I refer to as the micromanagement version of God. This has it's comforts that I really like. Every tiny teeny thing is powered/caused by God. Here my issues also begin...does that mean I blame him (inadvertently by assigning him this power) for really horrible evil things that occur?

How much the work of the devil...
This is where Armenianism begins to influence my idea of God, (is that right Taz? Or am I mixing it up?) This is where you do assign things to the warfare that occurs because of where we are. Then I can assign the evil things that occur to the result of the war zone and not blame God for them. This idea comforts me. Here I begin again... if you take the idea too far does that mean if something does occur that I wasn't praying enough or fill in the blank enough to make the warfare not go against me or someone else?

How much of this is failing flesh...
I think failing flesh gets mixed into the warfare thing too. Isn't some of all the things that happen the result of my own choices or the fight of the "natural man"? Is that just free will, natural order, human nature run amok? Or was every move I made pre-destined? Can I just blame some of it on the world as a deteriorating system?

Frowning providence...
I was at Anne Hathaway's house (Shakespeare's mother) near Stratford-upon-Avon, U.K. There was an old needlepoint from their day on the wall. It has the alphabet and then a prayer stitched in the cloth. Somewhere in the prayer was a phrase about accepting things from a frowning providence with grace. It's interesting that there have been long periods of time that adhere to the first version of God so much that they see him as a frowning providence that causes awful things to happen, the comforting idea is that you can accept it as from him. It's hard for me to assign that depth of severity to God.

Retribution...
What about the God of the old testament who was punishing the Israelites for sin and following other Gods? We don't talk about retribution much now, except when some kooky religious figure from television gets after some activist group or says something freaky about a natural disaster.

Suffering...
I get an email devotional. Lately it has featured sayings of Francis Fenelon, a disenfranchised priest or teacher of the 17th century, he said, "I am awed by the good that comes from suffering. I agonize and cry when the cross is working within me. But afterwards I look back and see what God has accomplished in me. Then I'm ashamed that I bore it so poorly." He is not the first nor the last theologian to emphasize the good that comes from suffering. I agree that there is great value to be had when you have to go through "the valley of the shadow of death." I balance this idea and all of these ideas really with Romans 8:28.

I know that ultimately who God is does not change according to whichever idea is strongest in my mind or heart or which one I may chose to discard or believe. The way I balance these ideas in my head is with that same verse. God works all things for good to those who are called according to his purpose. So if he manages every minute detail, it is for my ultimate good as his child. If the warfare version is true, there is nothing he cannot change into good in some way in my life. The suffering whether it comes from ill intention or good intention always produces value within me -- IF I allow God to do a work within me through it. If I choose bitterness, then I have made the choice not to take value from the suffering.

Have I blown your mind? I do this to myself all the time over and over. Ultimately at the end of my mental gymnastics there's God and whatever is "true" about him, I know he is faithful.

Thankful days

Thanksgiving was a big potluck affair with about 40 or so missionaries and their families. It was held at the international school lunchroom. Some people went to a lot of effort to decorate the tables in Thanksgiving festiveness. The food was traditional thanksgiving and very tasty. Much of it is hard to find here. Hard to find: sweet potatoes, whole turkey, crunchy onions for the top of green bean casserole. Non existent: cranberries, canned pumpkin, marshmellows. So a lot of imported food got eaten!

The most homesick I have ever felt was my first Thanksgiving away...in Belgium when I was 25 years old. That was a hard one. I'm glad I tried to get excited about what IS happening here rather than simply longing for what I cannot have.

Friday we had a All Spain meeting. A bit like a church board meeting but some details actually affect us personally. It was our first and interesting though lengthy. The group seems pretty amenable to one another and kept things positive. I felt good to be a part of it.

Things I'm thankful for at this season:
That we are more stable in life than a year ago.
That I didn't suffer from homesickness this holiday.
That I have ways, like this, that are affordable to keep up with friends.
That we got a dog this year.
That we have a really nice home here and our comfortable things around us.
That I can make myself understood here and generally I can understand the answers. This makes life so much less scary.
That we have a Spanish "church home" and a US one too.
That I have people in my life who sincerely care about me.
That our budget has held up and we're making it despite the dollar.
That we're coming home for Christmas.

I could go on....Give me one thing you're thankful for in comments!

Socialized Healthcare

I know I shouldn't get political, but I'm having personal experiences with socialized healthcare and hearing stories from people who are trapped in the system. This week Kerry has been sick, sort of a flu combined with something like strep throat. We went to the socialized healthcare clinic down the street.

It was a little disturbing how much like a cattle call it was. No one organized it you just had to look at the list and see who was before you - by asking the waiting room of people. Then you just walked into the doctor's room when the person before you left. No nurses, no blood pressure check. Very perfunctory. I had to ask the doctor to look at Dar's throat a second time because I had seen an infected spot myself. She looked again then said, oh yeah, I guess there’s a small spot.

Then she couldn’t figure out how to give us a prescription since we are not in the computers for social health. We did finally get a prescription and some antibiotics and he is on the mend. I think whenever possible we will go to the private health care clinic. It’s weird here, anyone who can afford to have private insurance does and goes to different clinics.

My Spanish tutor has something wrong with her vocal chords and has to go to physical therapy or occupational therapy. She said if she wasn’t a teacher she would have to wait several years for an opening at therapy. Really crazy.

Another story I heard was our Spanish School Teacher had a son who needed an operation on his little boy bits. Something commonly done before 3 years in the US. The waiting list took him until he was 6 years old to get it done.

So if this is what happens with small stuff I'm scared about the big stuff. But it was good to know we can run down to the clinic for small stuff though. It’s handy since it is so close. Most of our friends here in corporate type jobs have private insurance so they can have control over their health care. The idea that everything is taken care of is very noble and a nice idea. What I'm seeing is that it doesn't actually work. Then you have to pay twice. Once in taxes and once in private insurance.

Personality tests

We went to a retreat this weekend and we took a personality test that we'd taken maybe 12 or more years ago. It was interesting to see my weaker personality traits had changed. I'd evened out in some areas, but my strongest area remained the same. This was the lion, beaver, golden retriever, and otter test. Some of you may have taken it. In this test I am a lion, a leader type person who likes to get things done and sometimes bowls people over in that process. Animal test

A few months ago Dar came on a site that did a Myers Briggs personality type which is more analytical and in fact when I tried to find the link we used today, I ran across things like you should only take this with a professional...couldn't find our original site. But this gives you personality types like ESFJ, or INFJ. Much more technical than the cute animal one. When Dar had me take this one I was a bit hurt by the results. I was ESFJ: extroverted (surprise!), sensing, feeling, judging. Dar is INFJ Introverted, intuitive, feeling, judging. Dar is in a category that is only 1.8 percent of people, so there were some really cool famous people in his category. Mine had Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh and William J Clinton (among others). Myers Briggs test

Mine sounded silly and shallow to me at that point and there were many "recommended" jobs that I've been trying to get away from my whole life. But today I reread a file I kept of my personality type and there were some better things I could see. Some artisan qualities sounded more pleasant than my first pass at the test, also I noticed that among the jobs I abhor there were things like police detective and wilderness adventure leader. Most of the people with my personality type are actors and sports players which I found disappointing. So a little space has given me some perspective.

The thing is I noticed that the two tests yielded pretty different results. I should have more otter qualities according to the analysis of how much I want other people to be comfortable and have fun (caregiver qualities in the ESFJ), but the otter category in the first test came in tied with beaver (busy perfectionist, I'm that too.) I think the two tests conflict with one another some, but in some ways I can agree with both. Maybe I'm multiple personality.

So are personality tests like a horoscope? Do I take one and it influences who I am? But the test I took 12 years apart came out the same which I found interesting. The session at the retreat talked about moving toward balance of all areas. I can see that I go too far with trying to get everyone else taken care of and not taking care of me. But being overly caring and concerned, isn't an all bad trait. I can see that I am very task/completion oriented and while this has its flaws I'm good at getting things done. I definitely take the tests too personally and feel insulted by some aspect.

So here's a new one I found that you can take online. I'm scared to do it. What else will I find out?! The new categories are: Captain, Social Coordinator, Steward, and Navigator. It sounds like a cruise.
Ahoy!