An Unexpected Turn…

Wow, it sure has been a journey.  We knew from the time God called us to the mission field that it would be a journey of hills and valleys.  One thing is for sure!  There has never been a dull moment in the journey of the White Family!  From the abrupt end of our adventures shared here in 2015, I guess it's probably pretty obvious that something happened.  Our adventures didn't end, they just took an unexpected turn.  

In November of 2015, one of our boys experienced a trauma so impacting that it propelled us to leave Spain and move back home to the States in order to allow him to heal.  It has been such a long, different type of journey since then!  But thank the Lord, He never leaves us to walk those roads alone.  Though it was unexpected and so very hard to leave Spain, we know we made the right decision.  We struggled for a while as to what was best and our mission agency was so supportive, letting us know that they would relocate us anywhere else in the world, if needed.  In the end, the Lord made it clear we needed to go home in order to give our son the best chance of healing.

Before we even knew we would need to leave Spain, the Lord provided a job for Wes back home in the States, right near my parents.  This church had asked Wes several times to come back and be their missions pastor.  We had said no many times, shaking our heads at their persistence.  At the time of the trauma, Wes was in the middle of helping them write a job description for the person they should hire.  Little did we know, he was writing his own job description.  We said our goodbyes at the end of March 2016, arriving home with my parents in the States on April 1, 2016.  

The journey since then has been up and down.  The Lord has shown up in miraculous ways to provide for us as we sold everything once again and moved back across the ocean, essentially starting over once again.  It has taken years, but our son is well on his way to healing.  Wes was a missions pastor for many years; but more recently, the Lord has called us to plant a church!  So here we are... now doing missions at home!  

The kids have all graduated from high school. Weston has graduated from college and gotten married to the most amazing girl named Andri!  Nathan will be graduating college in May; Jonathan is doing part time ministry and full time construction, which he is so good at!  Carolina has flown through high school and college and is in her last full year.  She will graduate college next October at 17 years old and then go on and get her masters.  Oh the adventures!

Due to the trauma that occurred in the family, I didn't think I would ever see the day when we would all be back in Spain once more.  Wes and I have had the privilege of going back and working with Fina and Fernando on a mission trip, bringing a kid or two with us each time.  But this summer, we will ALL be heading back to Valencia to help Fina and Fernando and the church in Picassent once more.  It has been so amazing to see how the Lord worked all the details, each one falling into place individually.  Our church plant here in Virginia is doing a week mission trip to Valencia.  All the kids, including Andri, will join us for that.  Every one of the kids (on their own, almost independent of each other!) has made plans to stay after the mission trip is over, serving just a little longer with our friends in Spain.  So amazing!  What a blessing to see the Lord bring this full circle, planting seeds in the hearts of our children to serve those in Spain.  We are so blessed and are looking forward to whatever is next in the White Family Journey.

Quick gettaway to the Mountains...

Stopping for 'bocadillos' (sub-type sandwiches) on the way!

Life has been so busy at the start of this fall, but we made a point of getting away one day that we had free.  The kids had a day off one Monday, and the weather had been so beautiful, so we decided to escape to the mountains for the day.

It's so tiny in this pic, but at the very top of that peak is a white cross.

It was a holiday, so the area was extremely crowded with people.  In this natural park, there are several areas for picnicking and even making paella, but those spots were so full of people.  Our goal was to get away, so we traipsed up into the mountain side with our bagged lunch and found a little ravine that was just off the trail.  There's not a whole lot of grassy spots here in Spain... rocks seems to be the norm. :)  So, we found a big rock to spread out our meal, and everyone found a little "seat" nearby!

After eating, Carolina decided her "seat" needed to become a "stage."  :)

We ate our bocadillos and then the boys wanted to explore.  Carolina decided she wanted to stay and build a city with rocks.  So the boys took off and Carolina and I began to build!

Once the boys returned, they helped build, too!  Daddy was the best at getting the big rocks all stacked up on top of each other.

Once we finished our city of rocks, we decided to go check out the rest of the natural park.

There is a monastery in the Sierra Calderona National Park

We tried several times to get a family pic, but man is it hard! :)  These were our best two... wrinkled noses and lots of squinting. :) ... but we sure had fun together!