The Mayer Family

3-26-07
Today has been a really good day for us. Starting tomorrow, we will finally have an apartment!

OK, first off, let me tell you about one of my hopes as we began to feel a call to come to Spain. I thought it would be really cool to be able to get an apartment where we would share a common courtyard area with the others from the apartments in the same building. What would even be cooler would be if they were all from the same family, and hopefully through time, establish a relationship with each of them and have opportunities to introduce Jesus to them. We’ve even talked about this, but as we have been apartment shopping, it seemed that this just isn’t possible after all…but hold on to that thought…

Next, we’ve had opportunities to make friends with several people since we’ve been here. Obviously, one is Jose. This morning, as we were talking, Jose mentioned about how amazing it was how we met back a couple of weeks ago. We both got tears in our eyes as we reminisced how Jesus brought our paths together. Jose has been such a blessing to us! Another set of relationships that are developing is with the Landazuri family. They are the ones who own and run the Pensión we have been staying at for the last 2 ½ weeks. Matilda is the mother/grandmother: a gentle and sweet lady who often looks very tired and worn out from her workload. Manolo, her son, is 39 years old, unmarried, and runs the little coffee/sandwich shop here. This morning when I asked him if he’s worked here all his life, he said more or less. I asked him if he enjoyed the work, to which he promptly and emphatically said “No”! I can tell that he hates it here and longs to get out. He’d love to be an architect, but is stuck here running the family business. Margarita is married and is the daughter of Matilda. She has a son, Miguel, who is five years old (same as Evan) and a daughter Elisa, who is two (same as Ellie). Seems a bit too good to be true, huh?!?
Omar is a 21 year-old Morrocan who is here in Granada studying to be an electrical engineer. He works at one of the shops close by. He told me yesterday that he is Muslim. Great kid! Then there is Angie. She works at an inmobiliaria (Real Estate agency…it took me like three days to finally say “inmobiliaria” correctly). She is from San Francisco originally but has lived here in Spain for the last six days. She hates her job and seems to really be searching.

OK, so why have I taken the time to tell you about all these people. Well, we’ve been really searching which apartment and area we should locate in. Where we live could really impact our relationships with other people and the kind of people we will meet. So, after looking at 10-12 apartments, we finally had narrowed it down to two. One was beautiful. Big! Spacious (four bedrooms)! New! Even a swimming pool we could use along with other renters in our complex. But it was 850 Euros ($1,000) a month to rent. But then the owner, because he knew Jose, said he’d drop the price to 650 Euros ($800) for us. OK…so there’s our answer to prayer, right? However, the location was crummy and quite frankly we just haven’t had a peace about it. So…Apartment #2: Not as nice, but OK. Three bedrooms. Weird layout. However, except for being on a busy road, the location was perfect! In fact, when I put on a map the home’s of the people mentioned above, plus our school where we will attend, this apartment is in the dead center of it all. Dead center! Plus we knew that Margarita’s family lived in this area (remember the children’s ages being the same!). So after thinking about it all weekend, we decided we would take apartment #2, choosing “location” over “big”.

Then this morning, Margarita said last night as she was taking a shower (isn’t it amazing how many epiphanies happen in the shower), it hit her that her neighbors, who live across the street from her, have an apartment that they rent out of their house…and that she hadn’t seen their renters recently. So she went over and asked them about their apartment, and sure enough. It was available.

So today, we went to see the apartment. It is just a couple blocks away from apartment # 2, you know, the perfect location apartment…except this is even better! It is at the end of a beautiful, peaceful, dead-end street. It is across the street from Margarita’s family (Evan is very excited to be able to play with Miguel!). It is in a home where the owner (the father and mother) live on one flat and their other children live in the other flats and we all share a common courtyard! The only downside is that it is extremely little. There are only two bedrooms (Evan and Ellie will have to share), and the kitchen and the dining room/living room is very small as well. In fact, I don’t think it is much bigger than our first apartment we lived in after we were married (At RMM—the little one—Vitali’s apartment). But it feels like such an answer to prayer!

This may be a bit of a stretch, but later, after we saw the apartment, I was having my devotions and read the story in I Samuel about how Samuel choose David to be the King. God told Samuel to go to Bethlehem and to choose one of Jesse’s sons. When they arrived, Samuel took one look at Eliab (David’s brother) and thought, “Here he is! God’s anointed!” But God told Samuel, “Looks aren’t everything. Don’t be impressed with his looks and stature. I’ve already eliminated him. God judges persons differently than humans do. Men and women look at the face. God looks into the heart.” So then, Samuel goes down the list, but none of David’s seven brothers are chosen. Samuel told Jesse that God didn’t choose any of these sons. Were there any others? Jesse’s reply: “Well, yes, there’s the runt, but he’s out tending the sheep. After David was presented to Samuel, God said to Samuel, “Up on your feet! Anoint him! This is the one!”

Now, I know this is quite a stretch, but I thought it was interesting to read this story after we chose this apartment. Yeah, some of the other places looked nicer, were bigger, etc. And yeah, we got the runt of the apartments; but yet, we have a peace about choosing this one and are excited to finally get out of our little room in the Pensión. Thank you so much for your prayers for us! We are extremely grateful!
—Kevin

The outside view of our new apartment

The living room

Evan & Ellie´s room

We will post more pictures once we get all moved in!