How do we pronounce that word? Apparently try Mar (easy bit) and then add the name of a current famous Liverpool player. Spent last night in Balestrate: here is our van parked and we stayed around the corner:
Nothing too hostile but an interesting place. The ‘host’ for our B&B was a throw back from the 60s (hippy era) and we entered our room to him and his ‘friends’ in a very heated discussion(!!!???) that indicated a certain amount of alcohol and whatever else had been present in the previous hours! The street I photograph is typical of many historic towns in Italy and also Spain. A very intense evening for us with not a lot of sleep involved but prayer and processing. We left Balestrate this morning but with our host opening his arms and ‘Sicily welcomes you’. We take that.
A colleague who has helped us a lot – Michael Schiffmann – had contacted us about a month ago with ‘the South-West holds the keys and you need to go there early on to discover revelation for the island. There is no South West as the island is a triangle. That showed that MS was not looking at a map or doing some google research (all valid) but giving what he had received. So we have been holding and seeking to process that and the South West (without there being a south west) puts us on the coast from Agrigento up. We settled on Marsala as the starting point and have secured for our next 6 days an apartment here. It will give us time to settle (been on the road for 11 days). Marsala was where Garibaldi began his campaign that ended in Italy being united. He landed in Marsala, from there conquered the island and then worked north on the mainland, thus before long ended the ‘two Sicilies kingdom’ as the border (the one we prayed on a few days ago) went and Italy soon united to become what we have today. A place of entry to that movement that interestingly had at its heart politicians, journalists, economists and ‘states-people’.
We know this is the next place for us – unfinished business for sure in Balestrate – but here we will sow something into the ground . Interestingly there is a ‘new gate’ into the city – probably where Garibaldi entered. (Map below… Marsala off to the left, Balestrate is just to the west of Palermo.
Sad to leave the high mountains (and Etna) behind but this is now the right place.
Very dramatic title… and not as significant as similar statements from John the Baptiser and on the lips of Jesus, but somewhat significant for us. Well we were so sure we would be going on Friday, so maybe this is the first plan of ours not to be exactly as we envisioned it? (Cut us some slack even Paul twice tried to move in a direction and the Holy Spirit had to resist him… oh and least he had a dream of a ‘man’ in Macedonia so followed the dream and met a… woman.)
We were not ready on Friday but today has arrived. And I also had ordered a package on Oct. 15th that I was unaware was sourced in China. It was due Friday, but they could not deliver it on Friday. Apparently a traffic issue; digging a little deeper the ‘last mile’ of the company is delivered by electric scooters – I think the traffic issue was the battery needed recharging. Anyway after multiple contacts with the company it arrived yesterday.
Anyway we are now an hour or so away from going ‘por la mañana’. That last phrase is definite – ‘in the morning’, but we (in good Spanish custom) when asked about when we are going could always reply (until today) with ‘mañana’. We think that might mean ‘tomorrow’, and it kinda does but also means ‘not today’. In English we have all kinds of ways to express uncertainty, but the (joke) in Spanish is they have nothing as definite as those phrases, they do have that word ‘mañana’ but it is certainly not as definite as ‘maybe’, ‘one day sometime’ etc. Anyway ‘mañana por la mañana’ has come and we will be gone – as soon as cup of coffee is drunk, floors are washed.
Tonight France, Sunday Germany to be with Yannick and Jenny in Freiberg, then head south through Switzerland (I bought a year long permit yesterday to drive through Switzerland – runs out in January, so a little peeved that we will only use the permit for a few hours), to Italy… not sure how many stops en route (my schoolboy French, along with the word ‘le weekend’) and down to the ferry.
And then? Well we have nowhere scheduled, do not have a place to stay (come on AirBnB sort out your prices), and have no fixed plan. Old capital of Syracuse, cities of Messina, Catania and Palermo (where or nearby where we think we will settle) will certainly be visited… and definitely Agrigento: try this to get an idea of one of the 7 preserved temples there:
By Berthold Werner – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23442211n
An adventure for sure but like us all we take a small step / short drive to make a contribution to the recovery of the Pauline gospel…that good news that we can ‘see’ a new creation and be heralds of and witnesses to that future.
We have found that Oliva is a refreshing, re-orienting place for many. These days we don’t have so many guests – there was a time when for a few years we had people with us between 100-130 days / nights of the year. A season that was. It was interesting finding this place for as I indicated in the previous post we were living in Cadiz when Gayle had that dream of ‘C/ Azahar’. We took ourselves off to Valencia just after Christmas of 2013 and started to drive from 100kms north of Valencia. 2 days in that direction but nothing resonated; 2 days south 100kms of Valencia and finally came to Oliva. We were ready to go home as we had found nothing that resonated. Anything ‘prophetic’ has to ultimately be witnessed to internally. And nothing witnessed. We stopped for a final cup of coffee before planning that our journey was fruitless when we suddenly realised that this was the place as we stepped out of the car at a cafe.
5:55 so read the clock the next morning as I woke. It might have been 7:05 and hopefully not 6:16(there is an alternative MS reading of 616 to the 666 reading!!)… can be coincidence but I was convinced it was not simply a time on the clock. I began to pray… ‘5’ generally the number representing grace, 3 times over. Then this came to me – we will make an offer on 3 properties and it will be a grace package with each one costing more than the one before. ‘Grace package’ is often taken to mean ‘cost less’, but I realised that grace is the emptier we are (our pockets) the more they can be filled. Long story but that is exactly what happened with the final offer being refused with a ‘don’t even talk to me’ coming back from the owner. A phone call out of the blue some weeks later – there is an angel you need to connect with to release you from Cadiz and open the door for you to go. Next morning off we went… and within 30 minutes of the connection the phone rang, and it was the agent in Oliva – ‘I don’t know what has happened but the owner who said not even to talk to him has just called me to say that I am to tell you that you can have the apartment at the price you offered’.
Where did we move – to Calle Isla de Sicilia – Sicily Island street. We have never dug deep into the significance but have wondered why ‘Sicily’ street. From a street to an island – this is the plan.
Last night while seeking to get some keys to the island I read: Sicily’s geographical position makes it a central point in the Mediterranean, connecting it to the Arabic world, North Africa, and Europe.
At times I probably read too much into what others might term coincidences, but the above quote seems alive. Geography has always been important for us – with over 1200 references to land in Scripture maybe this is not surprising. I kinda think there is treasure hidden in the land there that might just make a contribution to the coming age.
October 6th… plan November 1,2,3 (?) having loaded up the van drive north into France, take a slight detour, then south, south, south to further south than the north of Africa, cross some water and enter the land of Sicily. Our plans are moving and we think we will probably be there for around 6 months.
Although most of the readers of this blog will be aware of our plans I thought I will simply try and give over a few posts some background and any insight that come this way as we plan.
The wonderful aspect about life is it is very personal and from a faith perspective there are as many paths as there individuals as far as following Christ. So these posts are simply personal perspectives.
Where to start? We are in Oliva, an hour south of Valencia and came here as a result of two dreams Gayle had. At the time we were living in Cadiz, south-west Spain and had no sight on this area at all. In one dream Gayle was showing someone where we lived saying, we no longer live in San Isidro (our address in Cadiz) and then she opened her computer and typed in ‘Azahar’ – not knowing that it was a Spanish word (orange blossom). In the morning she typed out what she remembered and lo and behold it was a genuine Spanish word.
Here are two images from google maps – we live right in between these two signs – one is 800 metres in one direction and the second 800 metres in the other direction.
Second from bottom: ‘Azahar’ – pointing in the direction of our apartmentBottom on sign: ‘Azahar’ – pointing back toward out apartment
So to Oliva we came in March, 2014. Being somewhat nomadic it is quite a surprise we are still based here in 2025. 2017 we also managed to obtain an apartment in Madrid, having prayed for some time that ‘you have given us the lower springs, now also give us the upper springs’. We much later discovered that here at sea level (‘lower’) that the water table is high as a result of underground springs flowing from the centre of Spain to the sea; Madrid seems to be from old Arabic meaning ‘place of many springs’ and is the highest capital city in Europe. I don’t write the above to point anywhere other than God is remarkable and that is the way we have been led / others will have a different story.
We have had many wonderful days in Madrid – what a city. There we have joined protests on the street, but particularly focused on praying for the government and for the judiciary. When looking for an apartment there we were always short of finance and into that mix a German prophet (Michael Schiffmann) said to us that ‘the place you are looking for is bigger than you think’. Well, if short by x amount we thought we will look for something bigger. If we are short we are short! Nothing connected.
We then spent sometime praying over the area we felt where we should land (we had been visiting Madrid for some 9 years by this stage) and one day we were there with Roger and Sue Mitchell. Roger announced that we are just about to come to a marker, a sanctuary (might be good or bad). We rounded a corner and there was San Lorenzo church – we walked in and the first thing on the wall was his date of matyrdom: 10th August 258 at the instruction of the Emperor. My DOB! We like San Lorenzo, and had painted on our last van ‘furgo de San Lorenzo’ – other than I put ‘el furgo’ when it should have been la furgo (furgo short for furgoneta, feminine; the abbreviation threw me!).
[San Lorenzo did not appease the emperor, and his preaching rather annoyed him Eventually the emperor summoned him and gave him a date on which he was to bring the riches of the church with him. He duly did this bringing the disenfranchised, the blind, beggars, widows et al. He announced that this was where the riches of God was manifest. Surprisingly this did not connect with the emperor who ordered him to be burnt at the stake!.]
Then one day we walked into, shall we say, a little challenged apartment in Madrid that no-one seemed to want to buy, and as we walked in we both saw something… we can get the entire government and judiciary in here. The problem was not the size of apartment; the problem was our thinking -‘ bigger than you think‘.
I go back to Madrid next week with one last act before leaving for Sicily. I want to walk the circumference of the city to make sure the government and judiciary do not escape!!! (Like I can really do that… ah well at least I can sow in that direction.) Madrid has been our place for Spain… some while back Gayle asked me about any desire I might have to accompany her on a far eastern trip – the question was helpful for it made me realise my focus is Europe; the old ‘lady’ will and must receive new life. So after walking and then making our way to Sicily? No idea.
Currently clueless of Oliva, soon to be clueless in Sicily.
I will follow up with a little more of this journey of ours with the hope that it will do more than inform but encourage anyone who reads with respect to their unique adventure in life.
Gayle and I are deeply privileged, we have a roof over our head, food on the table, health to explore… and… and… I write that because we are set on an adventure and are beginning to plan. In November we plan to jump in our van and drive to a place where we have no connections and have never visited but plan to spend some months (six?) there. I hope this post will fill in some of the background without being (too) boring in the process!
Cutting to the chase we are looking at arriving in Sicily early November.
We came to Spain with the overall invite to play some small part in uncovering the Pauline Gospel – neither of us are smart enough to know what that might be but hope as we play our small part something will be uncovered. The Pauline Gospel is of course deeply political, as the vision is of a new creation becoming visible (and I do think that at least merits a tattoo so wonder what that should look like, I digress!). The vision was so enthralling that even certain geezers who would not benefit from the fulfilment were significantly on board (look up Asiarchs).
In May this year we were invited to Malta and loved spending time with Adrian and Pauline Hawkes who had invited us there. We read Acts 28 numerous times as obviously Paul had been shipwrecked there and a little encounter with a snake, as well as significant healings – all on his way to Rome, where he of course had nothing to give account for, but a certain Caesar most certainly did (Caesar is ‘lord’… Paul did not think so!). Amazingly we read that on his way to Rome he moved from Malta (in an interesting boat, which is the same boat the ekklesia of today has to travel in) to Sicily (Syracuse).
Coincidentally we live in Oliva on ‘Calle Isla de Sicilia’ (Sicily Street – not sesame street!). We have often wondered if it meant anything.
In April – big month as Gayle increased her number of years on the planet, thus narrowing the gap between us – we were involved in rolling up an ancient map where Spain and Portugal were the head and within hours there was a total blackout across the Iberian peninsula. On that map we note that Sicily was the orb in the hand of the Queen of Europe – the orb, the symbol of the globe – with the cross over the top indicating subject to Christendom. So that has bugged us since that time.
Anyway in our small minds it has led us to focus on Sicily for a few months and give rise to the conviction that we need to get on our skateboards and get over there. It is unlikely we can do much if we do not stay for a number of months.
Much more to say – some of which might be made up in our heads (how can something so small make up so much?). And I guess as it develops over the next 7 weeks and then unfolds I will write it up here on this site. At a practical level our apartment in Oliva will be empty and if you – or a connection – might think they could use our apartment here that could help us somewhat with regard to rent we will pay in Sicily.
