mexican food, puppies, and the global church

Last night was a beautiful night spent at the home of a wonderful Christian missionary family. My friends were almost at the point of tears from the moment we walked in at the smell of real, home-cooked Mexican food, and the sight of a little puppy. (I could care less about the dog, but am growing fonder of Mexican food when it isn't spicy...needless to say, I was not getting teary eyed)

But the conversation and discussion of the three hours spent around the dinner table made us all walk away from that night with an awe of what God is doing in Spain through the mission field and what God is doing through the Veritas Study Abroad groupies (6 girls from various religious backgrounds and ages).

This particular family used to live in Germany for 11 years before they moved to Spain 7 years ago. In Germany, their newly planted churches grew exponentially with crazy stories of God working in ways of Pauline-like conversions (for example, David, the husband, told us a story of a "vampire" coming to church and eventually getting saved. This particular man is now a missionary to the vampire community in Germany and witnesses faithfully to those in the graveyards every Saturday despite previous physical persecution from them. wow.). But in Spain, they have had a slower paced mission field as seven years after they started here, they are beginning to baptize more and more people and see them love God and develop a relationship with Him. It has been difficult in Spain because most people are Catholic and do not want anything to do with any other religions so they do not listen.

Yet, with this tension between Catholics and Christianity, there has been some discussion and dialogue amongst the Veritas girls as 2 girls in our group are Catholic Christians and have been questioning the perspective of other Christians that we have met here who talk about the difficulty of having the majority religion here Catholicism..

So we are all thankful of the perspective of this family. David went on to describe his ministry at the University of Sevilla along side a Catholic priest who is the only Catholic contact here who is willing to work with David in outreach and evangelism. David said that the many Catholics in Spain can easily get caught up in tradition and not focus on a personal relationship with Jesus. He acknowledged that the Catholic Churches are different here than in the U.S., as in the U.S. there are more genuine Catholic Christians who know and love Jesus whereas here, the Catholic population is mostly older folks whose hearts are not into the mass tend to drag their kids along when they do not want to go/do not know what it is all about. David also talked about the unity of the churches here. There are several Christian denominations here in Sevilla but they are all so small that the churches have to come together for evangelism, outreach programs and events, and bible studies/work days. He contrasted that with the divisions and distinctions within the churches/denominations in the U.S. It is encouraging to see the unity of the body of Christ in action here as churches come together over the common goal to reach as many people as they can for Christ.

David described their forms of outreach as well which are not deceitful at all. They host English clubs, date nights that help married couples focus on their relationship, conversation tables over food, movie nights, etc. where the goal is to get the people to see that Christians are normal people since many times, Spaniards are warned about Christians trying to "steal their children" and associate other negative ideas with Christians. They don't even talk about the Bible or Christianity at these events; they form relationships and invite them to church, leaving that window open for those conversations, but it is relational evangelism which is awesome.

In the end, the night was full of encouragement for successful Christian ministry in Spain, a bit of vision and reconciliation amongst our group of Veritas girls, and empowerment in the rest of our time here and in the mysterious ways that God works. I am so thankful that I am able to get these firsthand stories and experiences to see what life is like as a missionary in Spain.

Hopefully I explained that okay. It was crystal clear last night but there are lots of words and I feel like it was all over the place.

Gracias.