Thank You

For those of you who have been praying for Ben and I, thank you. If there is one thing this experience of getting here to Madrid and getting settled in has taught me, it is that God answers prayers. He may not do it in my timing but he is faithful to take care of His children and provide for them and His answers usually far surpass my expectations/requests.

As most of you know, Ben and I had no clue what he would do in Madrid. Once I started school Ben posted online for being an English tutor and he was quickly hired by an agency. For about 2 months now he has steadily had 6-7 classes a week. Recently, we have been getting a little worried about his visa. His travel visa is up December 5th. He tried appyling for the auxiliar program, (a language assistant) a month ago in the hopes he could get a more steady job and that the program could help him with the visa but they said he would have to go back to San Francisco to get the correct visa and they could not help him.

Meanwhile, we hadn´t heard back from Fernando, the man who helped me get my visa and who said he would be working on Ben´s so I decided to email him. He told me he was still working on it and he would get back to me later. Four weeks go by and Fernando emails me to say he is still working on it but wants Ben´s phone number so that he can give it to the Consejeria de Educacion because they might have a job for him and it will make it easier for him to get his visa if Ben can get hired for this job. So then we started praying about this job. A few days go by and we hadn´t heard from anyone when Ben gets a call at 10pm on Friday. Which is odd because I am pretty sure I am the only one who has his phone number. Ben answers and it is Fernando checking in to see if we have heard from someone yet. When he found out we hadn´t he said he would look into it Monday for us.

Ben got a phone call on Tuesday to come in for an interview. He was hired on the spot and he was able to pick a primary school in Alcorcón which is only a 5 minute walk from my school! Just yesterday Ben recieved his letter of acceptance to the program. We are still waiting to hear back about when the visa will be ready. We have been praying that he won´t have to go back to San Fransico but it doesn´t look good. However, we are trusting that God will work this out too. We are just happy that he will be able to live here legally and work!

My school is the purple bubble and Ben's is the "A". We would walk most of the same route from the metro before splitting off to our schools.

And just a few other updates. I got my NIE card the other day which is an identiy card and proves that I am a legal residence so that was exciting! We will be celebrating Thanksgiving on Thursday with our small group and again on Saturday with some friends from my program. So that is a bonus to being out of the States during an American holiday. We get to celebrate it twice!

And another one of Ben´s "moments". (This is the benefit to me writing these blogs. I get to tell on him on all the funny stuff he does!)

My phone that I have here was made for old people. There is a huge button on the back that they can push if they need help and it sends out a text that says "Please help me!" to your emergency contacts. I didn´t have anything to do at school one day during I break so I put Ben and our Bible study leaders in as emergecny contacts. I thought I had disabled the button so I never worried about pressing it. Ben was messing with my phone and all of a sudden an obnoxious noise was coming from the phone and "SOS" was flashing across the screen. I am telling him to make the noise stop when we hear that Ben gets a text that says "Please help me!" I glare at him and then all of a sudden I get a text from our Bible study leader asking "Who is this?" And then I realized it sent texts to the emergency contacts. Thankfully one of them was for a home number so they didn´t get a text. I then had to explain who I was and why she got and SOS text. I told Ben he wasn´t allowed to play with my phone anymore!