We moved apartments at the beginning of December, partly because (due to the economic situation here) our rent had got very expensive, but also because we’d found that local friends no longer visited us in our old apartment because it was too far away. This was something we wanted to change.
By God’s grace, we found a good apartment with much cheaper rent, however although it’s closer to our friends and where we want to be, it doesn’t feel that much closer to that area. According to Google maps the distance between the two houses is just 450m, about 5 minutes walk, however several local friends said that our old apartment was much further away (بعيد كتير!) and the new one is in a much better location. We decided to see what happened!
Within a month of us moving in, we have had a visit from some American friends and a couple of short ‘business’ visits from a local friend who we asked to paint our old apartment. We also hosted a blended Arabic / English Christmas with both local and non-local friends, all of which may have happened wherever we lived. However, good friends of ours also came to visit us twice in 8 days, the second time asking if they could visit as some of their extended family were visiting and they wanted to introduce us! Such an honour to not only that our friends wanted to honour us with visiting us, but also that they wanted to bring their, more conservative, extended family to honour us with a visit. How much of a validation from God that this is the place He has for us, even if we can’t quite understand how 5 minutes down the hill from our previous apartment changes so much for our friends!
First posted on middleeastnews.org.uk, a blog contributed to by westerners commentating on living life in the Middle East. Follow their blog for interesting stories, poetry, recipes and applied theology.
