Visit to Calahonda Baptist Church

Sunday, June 4, 2017

Before we left home, we had noted that there was a Baptist church close to where we would be staying on the southern coast of Spain. It turned out that it was an English-speaking Baptist church appealing to the large number of English speakers in the area. We had intended to go to church last Sunday, but we were exhausted after the trip in from Amsterdam.

The church was actually on the road between the two places where we stayed, the Grangefield Oasis Club and the Crown Club Marbella. Brenda took this picture as we drove down that road, and it shows the setting up among the residences on the slope above the Mediterranean at Costa del Sol.

On Sunday we drove to the church from Club Marbella. It was an attractive and substantial building.

It was bordered on the downhill side by this collection of attached houses or condominiums, but on the uphill side and across the road there was an open field, presumably because of the "arroyo" or stream that ran down the hill.

The front of the church was attractive with welcome in three languages. There is a significant arabic population on this coast, and lots of British persons both for vacations and permanent dwelling.

The tall front of the church made an attractive worship setting. There was an excellent guitarist who also did some leadership of the vocals. We sang several hymns, about half of which were very familiar to me and the other half totally unknown.

The congregation stood to sing the hymns. Most of the congregation was British, but there was one other American who was there on a church-planting mission.

The pastor and his family were seated in front of us. He was from Bogota, Colombia. He had been pastor for six years, but this was his last Sunday as he was moving to Sarasota, Florida.

They had English tea and cookies after the service and we stood around and talked with the people of the church for quite a while. We were certainly impressed with the friendliness of the church and their apparent commitment to service to the community around them.

On Sunday afternoon we decided to do the short drive down to the shore just below the Sitio de Calahonda roundabout. We parked and did the short walk down a stream to the shore.

Chris and Brenda try out the water.

We wanted to at least be able to say that we sampled the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

For the most part, the shore was heavily developed and you couldn't freely walk along the shore.

This was the development in the opposite direction. When we had gone on the Cordoba trip and traveled down the beach, it appeared like Panama City's most intense development for about forty miles.

We were grateful for the stream that came down the mountain and provided this little opening on the beach were flowers and grasses could grow and we could have a little room to play around.