SEND Women’s retreat in Spain

I was very privileged to turn 32 in Spain this year. I attended the SEND women’s conference in Madrid, Spain March 22-26. Wow! It was incredible. I have never felt so spoiled in my life. The retreat is held for all SEND women in Europe once every 3 years. It was the perfect balance of teaching, sight seeing, shopping and getting to experience the culture of Spain. We stayed in a quaint hotel next to the university in Alcala (picture at left,) a suburb about 30 mins outside of Madrid. I was especially grateful for the beauty of Spain in contrast to the drab of Sofia. I have always loved and appreciated great architecture and culture and more so since coming to Sofia.

The theme of the retreat was “Transition,” it was as if it was chosen just for me. We had a wonderful speaker, Louise Wempel, who has been a SEND missionary for many years. She gave a wonderful illustration of an egg, carrots and coffee beans. In the illustration each is boiled. After the pressure of the “transition,” each is compared, the carrots turn to mush, the egg gets hard on the inside but the coffee beans, instead of changing, they change the water and make it better and we were left with the question of which we will allow Christ to create in us.

I could gush on and on about Spain. It included breakfast in bed one day, seeing the sights, gift baskets, great teaching and meeting/catching up with other women in other areas of the world. I spent my 32^nd birthday at a bull fight! I don’t think I’ll ever attend another as it was a bit gory, but makes for a good story. Another interesting tidbit, Alcala is also the home of 90+ stork pairs so we saw many of the birds flying around the city and building their very large nests.

It was a great experience and I learned a lot. It was especially a treat to come home to “my boys” with Drew carrying flowers and jumping up and down to see me.

Much love- Lisa