First stop

YES! We are on our way! And now we made the first stop. After 110 kilometres we need to rest for the night. If we go 110 kilometres everyday it will take us a few weeks to get to Valencia. The reason for the short first trip is that we spend the night in house of Thorine's parents. Tomorrow we get up early to catch the ferry to Denmark. My mother-in-law is preparing our breakfast as I write this. Very nice!

Music for Spain

So we are almost done with our packing. Or we hope we are. In just a few hours we will leave and our first stop is Thorines parents in Mariestad.

It is difficult for me to pack things like songbooks and CD's. It is heavy and needs a lot of space, so I would prefer to leave it in Sweden. But on the other hand I go to Spain for the music, so it is not smart to not bring any music with me from Sweden. I will pack as much as possible, and hope it's enough.

The Semla

This time of the year everybody in Sweden eats "semla", which is what Aina is holding in her hands. So that's the last we get from Sweden before changing our routines to tapas, tortillas and paella.

Friends

Tomorrow we start driving. We know we will meet some friends along the way, and maybe even more than we know now? Our journey goes through Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, France and finally Spain. Hit us up via Facebook or my website http://www.joakimarenius.com/ if you think you live along the road, and want to invite us for a cup of coffee. :)

Spanish gospel choirs

I don't know how many gospel choirs there are in Spain. What I do know that there are some VERY good choirs, and that I am going to meet some of them in the next months. I also know that the spanish choirs I have met are very devoted to the fellowship, the message of the music and to spread the gospel with gospel music. In some spanish cities there are also choirs that are not based in a church, but in a school or other kind of community. Maybe I will meet some of them too, but I don't know yet. It is exciting to think about all the things that can happen!

Are we on time?

A lot of friends ask us if we are ready to go to Spain now. Is everything packed? Has everything worked out? Is everything in order? I guess it is hard to answer those questions before wednesday, when we actually start rolling. But what we know now is that we will leave our home in Sweden on wednesday, no matter what, and trust that our God helps us with the things that should have been taken care of by then. My experience is that it is good to trust God like that, but if He lets us down this time I will report about it! :)

Joakim, Thorine, Stella y Aina

The Celinder family

Right now Thorine is showing our house to the Celinder family, who will live in our house while we are in Spain. Our house is beautiful in spring, so we think they will have a good time here.

Hoy escribo en inglés

Creo que voy a escribir aqui en inglés, por que es mas facil para mi. Pero despues de algos semanas espero que escribo en español.

Road map

Here is a link to how we go from Örebro to Valencia. We start wednesday February 29th (on the day my brother turns 40)!

http://g.co/maps/ap5sn

Getting ready to leave

Today is February 25th and we spend the whole day packing for three months in Spain. While we are away another family will live in our house in Sweden, so we have to make the house nice for them too.

We are a little nervous about the timeframe, because we still have some other things to finish before we head for Spain. Thorine has some reports to finish at her job, and Joakim are working on three different CD projects right now.

Hopefully we will write something in this diary everyday. To begin with we are travelling over 3000 kilometres by car. There will probably be some stories to tell from that trip.