News for prayer for Week of September 5, 2022
Headline News:
This section is a little longer than usual as I thought it was important to highlight additional items.
On Tuesday September 6 2022 Spain celebrated the 500th anniversary of the return of Juan Sebastián “Elcano’s” completion for circumnavigation of the world. The crew started out as ~250 and included Magellan. He was one of 18 that arrived back to Spain. He was a native of Getaria which is located in the Basque region of Spain.
Russia has officially turned off both NordStream1 and NordStream2. This is resulting in quite the energy crisis in Europe as those pipes provided a majority of the fuel for European countries. Spain was not very dependent though given the connected nature of the EU energy prices here are increasing. The Spanish/Basque government has been working to increase capacity at the different Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) facilities to provide additional supplies for Europe, in the hopes to help offset some of the demand from Russia.
While some Ukrainian refugees have returned home, a large number are still in Basque Country. With school about to restart the Basque education system has received a total of ~770 requests to be enrolled in the Basque education system in the upcoming year.
A data poll for Spain showing the number of Catholic weddings, baptism and communions from 2009 and 2019 was published. Over that time period it’s been a drop in all of those areas. Catholic weddings have seen a 24% drop, baptism have decreased by 17% of births and communions have dropped the smallest at 8%.
Economy:
Basque people were shown to dedicate/pay the largest amount of money to buying food in all of Spain. The region currently has an average of 20% higher spending than the median average of Spain. Fortunately minimum wage in this area was also about 17% higher than the rest of Spain. They are also seeing people transition away from going to several of the local shops and instead heading to the larger supermarkets that have it all.
A highlight for the region of Gipuzkoa is that of the 88 total municipalities, 35 of them are debt free. They point to legislation for municipalities to control debts. The legislation was passed during the 2008 financial crises and they are seeing some positive results from the measure being in place.
The IBEX35 ended last week on a downward trend closing at 7932.20, a 1.63% decrease over the previous week.
Political:
The budget negotiations for the Basque government is planned to start in October. The primary focus will be economic activity/employment, and investments to ensure the future of the society and social services. They believe that the budget will be higher than the previous year given the increase in salaries and changes in energy costs, though nothing is for sure until the negotiations are complete.
International:
Here are a few of the international headlines: United States involvement with Taiwan, passing of former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev and the Chileans vote for a new constitution.
Sports:
Real Sociedad has had 3 matches since the last edition. The result of those matches was 1 loss, 1 win and 1 draw. This has them currently in 9th place overall in LaLiga. Last season they qualified for the Europa League competition, which starts the group stage Thursday, September 8 against Manchester United.
Gipuzkoa Basket will kick off the season on October 7 against Ourense.
Prayer Points and verse for the week:
Prayers points:
- Reduction of gas from Russia
- Decrease in Catholic weddings, baptisms and communions
- Budget negotiations
The verse for the week:
Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.
Philippians 4:9 NLT