This summer has also been a summer of goodbyes for us. In the pictures to the right, you can see Sue with Sara Lindemann, a university student from Australia. Sue and Sara became great friends during the school year, and we were sad to see her go. We do, however, have an open invitation to visit her in Australia!!


You can also see a picture of Gary McGregor, who used to work with Campus Crurade here in Spain, and has since come back several times to work here with the youth. Plese pray for Gary as he attempts to secure his visa to come back and continue working with the youth of the city.

We also had to say good bye to two families who are very good friends of ours, the Fryes and the Tabiendos (in the picture to the left). The Fryes have been in Zaragoza for over 30 years, and the Tabiendos for a year longer than we have. That leaves us as the missionaries in Zaragoza with the most "seniority."

In July, we had another one of our all day excursions to the towns. Here is an impressive sight in the town of Lanaja. The building is an old wheat silo built to store and ration the wheat harvest. You can see more than a dozen stork nests, there are almost as many more on the other side. These nests can measure up to NINE FEET diameter and weigh several tons.

Spain is one of the world leaders in alternative energy. Here you see a field that used to grow crops now being used to "harvest" sunlight and turn it into energy. The governement subsidizes both solar and wind generated energy, and they are being a significant source of income for many of the outlying towns.

I have told you in the past that many of the towns are decreasing in population as the people move to the cities and larger villages. However, many of them do not forget their roots. They take the money they earn in the city, and use it to fix up houses in the towns, to be used as a vacation property, like the magnificent bulding to the left.

The province of Zaragoza is very dry, and the countryside very barren. Teruel, the province to the south, is mostly mountainous, with many springs and rivers and much more rain. You will find many of the houses in the villages there with wonderful flower gardens growing out front.

In the 1980s, a plague swept through the region, killing most of the elm trees in the area. In this particular town, the people have left the trunk standing of the last elm tree that grew here

In the month of June, our son Jon came to visit us along with his girlfriend, Stephanie Wicks. While he was here, we tried to do some of the things that Jon misses doing since he went back to the States. One of the things we did was drive up to the French border. You can see a picture on the right of the Pyrenees Mountians.

In the town of CanFranc, there is an abandoned train station where rail pasengers used to transfer from French trains to Spanish ones. In the pictures above, Ben is playing with an old crane used to move cargo on and off the cars, while Jon, Ben and Steph try to switch the tracks. Obviously, none of this machinery functions.

There are lots of abandoned train cars as well, which the three of them loved exploring, looking for old documents which are scattered throughout the grounds. It is reported that during the Second World War, Spain shipped hundreds of tons of material used for armored vehicles in exchange for gold through this very station. The gold has never been found.