Update from Barcelona

Group 5 (Chris, Robby, Bethany, Daphne, and Hannah)

¡Hola de España!

On Tues­day after­noon, we spent some time up on a moun­tain.  We saw a spec­tac­u­lar view of the entire city of Barcelona!  It was a great oppor­tu­nity to expe­ri­ence God’s cre­ation and to see his majesty.  The sight was breath­tak­ing and all of us were encouraged.

We shared the gospel with peo­ple in a park later that night.  Bethany and Han­nah had the oppor­tu­nity to talk with Juli­ette.  She had a reli­gious back­ground and a very soft heart.  After talk­ing for about an hour, Juli­ette accepted Christ as her sav­ior. Bethany and Han­nah had the chance to talk with about what the Chris­t­ian life looks like.  She was very excited about it and keen to meet other Chris­tians at the ser­vice that we are hav­ing at the hos­tel on Wednes­day night.

The five of us went to Pas­sage de San Juan and spent some time there talk­ing with peo­ple.  Bethany and Han­nah were able to share with two teenage girls who were sit­ting on a bench.  They too accepted Christ, and there was a vis­i­ble change in their atti­tude towards Han­nah and Bethany after­wards.  They might be able to come to the ser­vice and have the oppor­tu­nity to expe­ri­ence some fellowship.

Prayer requests: 

• Pray for the ser­vice on Wednes­day night
• Pray that we would use the rest of time here productively
• Pray that we would stay encour­aged and focused on God
• Pray for a safe trip home

Building Each Other Up

Tues­day, March 17, 2009
J.C., Kim, Leah, Kodee, and Joshua

Each morn­ing after every­one has eaten break­fast and had their devo­tion­als, we gather together for encour­age­ment and wor­ship. We’ll sing our songs and pray then the floor will open for any­one to share sto­ries or exhortations.

It seems that every­day there have been mul­ti­ple accounts of some­one pray­ing to receive Christ; each sal­va­tion exceeds our hopes and pro­claims the glory of the Lord. These sto­ries lift us up and give us strength, because the real­ity is, this is all very hard.

We are in the trenches fight­ing for the hearts of the peo­ple we meet here every­day. For every encour­ag­ing story, we each have 10 rea­sons to get dis­cour­aged. The fight is not iso­lated to our con­ver­sa­tions but includes the bat­tles that each of us endure through for our own hearts’ to remain in the Spirit.

As a body, our weak­est point is dis­cour­age­ment. Every morn­ing, we gather to strengthen each other in the Lord and clothe our broth­ers and sis­ters in the armor of God.

How­ever, the real­ity in all this is prob­a­bly the great­est encour­age­ment we cling to. God is work­ing mirac­u­lously. More than 10 peo­ple (closer to 15 or 16 by now) have prayed for sal­va­tion. There has not been a sin­gle theft or sig­nif­i­cant injury. Most of the peo­ple we’ve met have been very recep­tive and engag­ing. We are grow­ing in the Lord, being obe­di­ent to His com­mands, and bring­ing glory to His name. God is with us and we are mov­ing moun­tains here in Barcelona.

Tonight is our church ser­vice here in the hos­tel. Please pray that God would bring many peo­ple into our midst. We have had many com­mit to com­ing, but we can’t be sure they will actu­ally show up.

Our time here is com­ing quickly to a close and we are all feel­ing a sense of urgency. Pray for sal­va­tions. Pray for changed lives, and pray that we would leave with a body of believ­ers who will com­mit to one another and grow together!

Psalm 57:7–11 (NLT)

“My heart is con­fi­dent in You, O God; my heart is con­fi­dent. No won­der I can sing Your praises! Wake up, my heart! Wake up, O lyre and harp! I will wake the dawn with my song. I will thank You, Lord, among all the peo­ple. I will sing Your praises among the nations. For Your unfail­ing love is as high as the heav­ens. Your unfail­ing love is as high as the heav­ens. Your faith­ful­ness reaches to the clouds.

“Be exalted, O God, above the high­est heav­ens. May Your glory shine over all the earth.

Continuing to Meet People; Attended Christian Service at University

Most of us shared with stu­dents at the uni­ver­sity today. A bois­ter­ous group was cel­e­brat­ing Saint Patrick’s Day with beer right in front of the stu­dent union. At one point they recre­ated the Tom Cruise scene from Top Gun, singing “You’ve lost that lov­ing feel­ing…” Although this was dis­tract­ing, Jenny and Robin met two recep­tive girls whom they will meet for lunch tomor­row. PRAY for that. PRAY for Kara, who was excited by the gospel mes­sage and said she would talk to God later on. There was also a woman who claimed she hadn’t sinned. An athe­ist made an appoint­ment with Schreiner and Andorf for an extended dis­cus­sion. He never showed up.

God was faith­ful as we clung to his promises. We were able to tell a woman who said she was homo­sex­ual that God judges her the same as every­one else but offers the same oppor­tu­nity of for­give­ness. Leigha and I were able to com­pas­sion­ately con­nect with three skep­ti­cal stu­dents who shot a vol­ley of tough ques­tions at us. Chris, the recep­tive boy Robin and I had met yes­ter­day, came to din­ner with us. We caught a glimpse of some of the sub­groups of lonely kids when we met him. His goth friends were hang­ing out in the town cen­ter. Some cocky guys approached and started threat­en­ing but left because there was so many of us. They’re called “Chavs”, and Chris said they’re a Euro­pean ver­sion (or attempt at) “gangstas.”

Sarah is a stu­dent who had been shared with by our group. We met a friend of hers at the Chris­t­ian union and were able to con­nect again. Tonight some of the girls hung out with her. She had read the tract and shared it with another non-Christian friend. She wants to hang out again tomor­row on her birth­day. PRAY she accepts Christ’s gift.

Tonight we all vis­ited the Chris­t­ian cam­pus ser­vice. It was an encour­age­ment to be around a body who is fol­low­ing God on the other side of the ocean. This pro­vides a good con­tact for new believ­ers we meet and sup­port for our efforts. One guy, Steve, wants to go shar­ing with us tomor­row. It was some­what funny that the topic of tonight was sex and rela­tion­ships. We dis­cov­ered what “snog­ging” meant and that Bruce is the only one of our group who is allowed. Over­all, we were thank­ful for the fel­low­ship and oth­ers who are fol­low­ing Christ.

From Ply­mouth,
Paul for Schreiner, Jenny, Robin, Kalee, Leigha, Emily, and Jon

St. Patrick’s Day in Cork, Ireland

St. Patty’s Day!

Day 5 in Cork, Ire­land labor­ing for the LORD on Patty’s day. The plans for today included wear­ing green, going to the parade, pass­ing out 5,000 tracts, and wit­ness­ing in the hos­tel. Lets see what tran­spired today…

8:00 AM to 10:00 AM

Break­fast, Quiet Times, etc

10:AM Group Devotional.

11:00 AM

Depart from the Kin­lay cas­tle. Please pray for the work­ers here. We have got­ten the chance to share with a cou­ple of them. Please also be pray­ing for our Thurs­day night spaghetti din­ner we will be serv­ing the hos­tel. Pray that God uses that as a wit­ness to the work­ers here and to advance his kingdom.

11:05 AM

Every­one looks right and left as we cross the street. War­rants mentioning.

11:15 AM

We order sand­wiches at the Cen­tra and head for the park. The other day we bought mus­tard at Cen­tra and it took 4 Chris­tians to open it. This beats the 3 Chris­tians it takes to open the door to the guys room.

11:30 AM

We arrive at the park. Nate’s group was hand­ing out tracts and got the change to share with two 16 year old girls. They seemed to be very inter­ested in the mes­sage of Jesus Christ. Please pray specif­i­cally that they would be saved and that they would fol­low up and email us.

Noon

Armed with the 5,000 tracts, we hit the streets and begin to hand out tracts.

12:30 PM to 3 PM

Hand­ing out tracts, shar­ing, and watch­ing the parade. For some of us, this was dif­fi­cult because we wanted to share more than we were able too. One verse I claimed was 1 Cor 15:58 which says that our work in the LORD is never in vain. Please be pray­ing for the peo­ple that were shared with. Laura and I got to share with sev­eral young peo­ple. Please be pray­ing that they would seek the truth as they under­stood the gospel but did not believe it to be absolute truth.

3:15 PM

While we are pass­ing out tracts we meet 2 born again Chris­tians!! One of them became a Chris­t­ian just one year ago. Pray for their growth and that God would give them the desire to reach oth­ers with the gospel.

3:30 PM

After hand­ing out nearly all of out tracts, we head back to the Kin­ley Castle.

5:15 PM

Right as we head out for din­ner, the sep­tic tank breaks at the Kin­ley castle.

5:16 PM

We are now run­ning away from the Kin­ley Cas­tle. I never knew some of the sis­ters could run so fast.

7:30 to 10:00 PM

All of us played cards in the hos­tel with the 2 guys from Munich, Ger­many. Sev­eral peo­ple have already got­ten the chance to share with them. Both of them have expressed com­ing to the on cam­pus ser­vice that we are going to tomor­row night. Please be in prayer for them. Pray specif­i­cally for Chris­t­ian that God would reveal him­self to him and that Chris­t­ian and his friend Ismael would come to the wor­ship ser­vice tomor­row night.

Prayer items:

• Chris­t­ian and Ismael—for their sal­va­tion and that they would come to the worship
• Kevin and Shane—two cam­pus leader—pray that we would be able to encour­age them to reach peo­ple with the gospel on their campus
• The work­ers in our hostel
• That God would do big things through our Thurs­day Night Dinner
• That our love for one another would increase more and more
• For our wor­ship team per­form­ing on cam­pus tomor­row. Pray that it would attract peo­ple to the gospel of Christ
• For the gospel to go out on the UCC and CIT cam­puses tomor­row. And that many stu­dents would fol­low up and attend the wor­ship service.
• Pray that we would receive fol­low up emails from peo­ple that we shared with

God Bless,
Brian

Meeting New People; People from Last Year

Group 5 (Chris, Robby, Han­nah, Bethany, and Daphne)

The past two days were an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence for our group!  God has blessed us and we have seen Him work­ing a lot.  We have had many oppor­tun­ties to share the gospel.  Our con­ver­sa­tions have been going very well and have helped peo­ple see a dif­fer­ent view of God.

God has also been using the faith­ful­ness of teams that were used in the past.  Some of our group mem­bers met Alex last year, and we have had the oppor­tu­nity to meet up with him again this year.  God has been doing many great things in his heart.  Just in the past cou­ple of days, he has spent a lot of time think­ing about God and the rel­e­vance of it all.  On Mon­day night, we were able to recon­nect with a guy who met some peo­ple from our group last year. He intro­duced us to two of his friends.  After hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with us, one of them (Pamela) accepted Christ as her sav­ior and her friend def­i­nitely had a lot to think about.  We hope to hang out with Pamela later this week.

Cole, Kim and Bethany also had the oppor­tu­nity to share the gospel with Jas­mina, a girl who is stay­ing in our hos­tel.  The con­ver­sa­tion went well, and some of us have been devel­oped a friend­ship with her.  Pray that we would have another chance to talk with her to find out what she believes about God after hear­ing the gospel.

Although most of the peo­ple from Madrid have left, we have been blessed to have two of them remain with us.  Our con­ver­sa­tions with them are very encour­ag­ing.  It has been amaz­ing to be united with like-minded believ­ers even though we are from dif­fer­ent coun­tries with dif­fer­ent cul­tures.  God has blessed this trip just by the peo­ple from Madrid being here with us.

There have been oppor­tu­ni­ties to fol­low up with peo­ple who we talked with, both peo­ple who accepted Christ and peo­ple who were inter­ested in the gospel.  We will be meet­ing up with sev­eral of them over the next few days and hope to develop rela­tion­ships and build them up in their faith.

Prayer Requests:

• that we would con­tinue to see the gospel going out
• that we would stay encour­aged in God
• that God would con­tinue to give us grace and strength
• that many peo­ple would attend the church ser­vice at the hos­tel on Wednes­day night

¡Hasta luego!

More Stories from Barcelona

God has been doing some crazy awe­some things so far in Barcelona. We all made it here safe—complete with all the lug­gage com­ing through as well!! Our hos­tel has been a per­fect loca­tion for out­reach. Each day new peo­ple come in from all over the world and give us the oppor­tu­nity to love them, share the gospel and let them see our love for each other. There have been fif­teen sal­va­tions so far—Praise The Lord!

For our group in par­tic­u­lar (the Power Rangers), God has been pro­vid­ing many English-speakers for us to share with. Jason is the only one who speaks fairly flu­ent Span­ish, so the rest of the group has been very thank­ful for oppor­tu­ni­ties to share with sev­eral English-speakers. We have been going to the same loca­tion to share everyday—the Uni­ver­sity of Barcelona. Peo­ple are will­ing to lis­ten to what we have to say.

Last night our group had a great oppor­tu­nity to share with mul­ti­ple peo­ple at one time. Shim­pei, Heather Guck and I (Sarah) were talk­ing to stu­dent from the Uni­ver­sity of Barcelona named Tomas and his friend Ines. Their back­ground was Catholic, but they were inter­ested in hear­ing what we believe. We asked Jason to come over after about 20 min­utes to help trans­late some things. We ended up all going with them to a cafe where they were meet­ing their friends to hang out. Jason pro­ceeded to share the gospel and sev­eral Bible verses with them, that con­tra­dicted some of their tra­di­tional Catholic beliefs. We were in the cafe with six of their friends and it was great to be able to build rela­tion­ships and share the gospel. We hope to be able to meet up with them again before we leave.

There were twelve peo­ple from our sis­ter church in Madrid that were here for two days to share with us and help trans­late. It was a bless­ing to meet them and get to labor along side them. Laura and Clarise are still with us for the rest of the week, and I know every­one on this trip con­sid­ers them a huge bless­ing to our time here in Barcelona.

We will update again soon, as much is hap­pen­ing.
Love from Barcelona!

–Sarah McClana­han, Jason Rude, Heather Guck, Heather Ter­hark, and Shim­pei (the Power Rangers)

Connecting with People in Plymouth

We have been greatly blessed on this trip so far with great weather, friendly peo­ple, and beau­ti­ful con­ver­sa­tions – God is good!

Our morn­ing started out well with some tasty coffee/tea and warm bagels at Roma Espresso. Around 10am we enjoyed wor­ship with the rest of the Eng­land Team at “The Hoe”, fol­lowed by an encour­ag­ing talk from Bruce Crane about the his­tory of the city. For lunch, we had a “lush” pic­nic com­prised of high-stacked sand­wiches, juicy clemen­tines, and deca­dent desserts. We then broke into pairs, and spent the remain­der of the after­noon talk­ing to peo­ple at the park.

Matt and Trisha approached four Chris­tians that we were able to recon­nect with in the evening for din­ner and bowl­ing. We had a great time. Please pray that God would really stir up their hearts, and they would grow in their rela­tion­ship with Christ.

Caleb and Jess had the oppor­tu­nity to recon­nect with some­one who was shared with yes­ter­day. Pray that he would call us at some point, and that he would have the oppor­tu­nity to hear more truth.

Josh and Katie talked with an athe­ist who had many ques­tions. They rec­om­mended that he read “More Than a Car­pen­ter” by Josh McDow­ell. Pray that his heart would be softened.

Adam and Steph got to talk to a few peo­ple who were not very recep­tive to the Gospel. Pray for more oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­nect with them. Also pray that their hearts would be softened.

Matt and Caleb were able to recon­nect with some­one Matt and Jess shared with yes­ter­day. They were able to hang­out with him and a friend for two hours and carry a great con­ver­sa­tion with them. Pray that we would be able to con­tinue talk­ing to them through­out the week.

Later in the after­noon, Trisha and Katie had the oppor­tu­nity to meet two girls from the Uni­ver­sity. They were able to share the Gospel with them, and estab­lish a rela­tion­ship. Pray for doors to be opened with these rela­tion­ships. Steph and Jess were able to share with a group of 5 peo­ple, 3 of which were Irish. They talked for almost two hours, and were able to keep a good con­ver­sa­tion going with them. Pray that we would be able to eat din­ner with them this week and show them the love of Christ.

We ended the night vis­it­ing the Mayflower steps and shar­ing with four young high-schoolers before our ren­dezvous with the four Chris­tians Matt and Trisha had pre­vi­ously spo­ken with.

I hope all of you are encour­aged by what God has been doing through us. The Word is going out to the nations, peo­ple are intrigued by our pur­pose, and the natives are most def­i­nitely attracted to our love for one another.

Until next time!

The Oh! Niners…

Sunshine and Sonshine in Ireland!!

Praise the Lord for a fan­tas­tic day!!

The big focus of today was shar­ing the gospel at two col­leges in Cork, UCC (Uni­ver­sity Col­lege of Cork) and CIT (Cork Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy).  We split into teams, then into pairs and went around the cam­puses to ask peo­ple what they believed and to share the truth of Jesus Christ with them. We had been pray­ing for great weather, soft hearts, and active cam­puses with lots of stu­dents to talk to, and God answered all those prayers at both cam­puses!  Over a hun­dred peo­ple (con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mate) heard the full gospel, and many heard it will­ingly and promised to explore the mes­sage of the gospel more fully through the Bibles and tracks we handed out.  After a good con­ver­sa­tion, many of us would give out our emails, so we’re pray­ing to hear back with more ques­tions about what we believe.

The group that went to CIT was able to meet with the leader of the Chris­t­ian union at the campus. We’ll be lead­ing their wor­ship ser­vice there on Wednes­day and are excited for the rela­tion­ships that will be formed.

Tomor­row: St Patty’s Day and the big parade!! It’s been esti­mated that there will be 50,000 peo­ple in atten­tance here at Cork, and we have 5000 tracks to hand out!!  Here we go…

God con­tin­ues to work at our hos­tel. Many long con­ver­sa­tions have led to walls com­ing down and guests and hos­tel work­ers being real with us.  We con­tinue to surpise peo­ple with our love each other and our will­ing­ness to serve oth­ers with no strings attached.  A big din­ner for any­one who wants to come is in the works, so that will be one more way to love on those around us and open a door.

A few specifics for prayer:

Thank you for your faithfulness!

Good Weather and Stories from Plymouth

God strength­ened us today as many were tired—in part, because mul­ti­ple group mem­bers shared with Paul (one of the hos­tel staff) and another guest. We began the day again with wor­ship on the har­bor and Bruce encour­aged the troops with a his­tory lesson/message. Spir­its are high and unity has quickly devel­oped. God’s also given us unusu­ally warm and sunny weather. Some of us even have sunburns. 

Ran­dom sign of the trip so far: in the “toi­let”, a cord hung by a sign instruct­ing the user to “pull for assis­tance.” Hmmm…

God’s been answer­ing prayer for soft hearts. We vis­ited the uni­ver­sity cam­pus for the first time. A few of us met mem­bers of the Chris­t­ian union. Stu­dents were busy prepar­ing for finals before Easter break. Claire was con­victed after talk­ing to Jenny and Emily but had to run to class. Brian real­ized his need and was ready to pray although he couldn’t ver­bal­ize to Jon what he was accept­ing. Andorf and Schreiner built rela­tion­ships by play­ing bas­ket­ball with some mem­bers of the uni­ver­sity team.

Robin and I ven­tured back to the town cen­tre for some much-needed Star­bucks and God led us to Jackie, an older woman who ini­tially said she was pagan then unfolded her rough life story. Because of an out-of-body expe­ri­ence and dis­il­lu­sion­ment with orga­nized reli­gion, she’s adopted a mix of com­fort­able ele­ments of many faiths includ­ing Chris­tian­ity. We gave her a much-needed lis­ten­ing ear and pro­gres­sively tried to share truth. PRAY she gets out of her con­fu­sion and seeks the real God.

Then we approached a lonely-looking 18-year-old dressed in Goth-style clothes. He responded gen­uinely to all we said. He said he wanted the gift of sal­va­tion for him­self. He didn’t want to pray with us but I assured him that telling God his desire and acknowl­edg­ing his need was all that was required. He gave us his num­ber and we gave him a New Tes­ta­ment and a tract. PRAY that we could meet with Chris again and that he would indeed accept Christ.

PRAY that God would pro­tect the seeds we’ve planted. Pray that Chris­tians in Ply­mouth would be stirred up. Pray that every­one would stay healthy and rested.

From Ply­mouth,
Paul for Schreiner, Jenny, Robin, Leigha, Kalee, Emily, and Jon

God’s Hand at Work in Barcelona

God made Spain like no other place on earth. In Barcelona, palm trees and pine trees grow on the same block, and the hills of the city speak won­ders of God’s majesty. The cre­ation here exudes God’s pres­ence, but unfor­tu­natey, the peo­ple here do not. Our mis­sion and prayer is that some­day, even in our life­time, the peo­ple of Barcelona would cry out to God for their salvation.

Prior to our arrival, God’s hand was clearly on us. All flights went well; they were all on time, and everyone’s lug­gage arrived at the same time. Praise the Lord!

Once we arrived in Spain and climbed the hills to our hos­tel, we ate din­ner together and dis­cussed our week. On sat­ur­day, each group went to a dif­fer­ent part of the city to share the Good News!

Our group in par­tic­u­lar, J.C., Kim, Leah, Joshua, and Kodee, went to the uni­ver­sity. Although there were few stu­dents out, we had many good con­ver­sa­tions and handed out many tracts. We were very blessed to have broth­ers and sis­ters from a Great Com­mis­sion church in Madrid come join us. Their pres­ence here was won­der­ful. Not only did they help us with out Span­ish, but they also were able to bet­ter com­mu­ni­cate the Gospel to more peo­ple than we could by our­selves. They were such an encour­age­ment to us even though they were here for just two days (Sat­ur­day and Sunday).

On Sun­day, we went back to the uni­ver­sity to share. Leah, Joshua, and Kodee had a really encour­ag­ing expe­ri­ence with two women who were Chris­tians and were a part of an even­gel­i­cal church here in Barcelona. They were very excited to meet us and even wanted pic­tures with us. At the end of our con­ver­sa­tion one said that we were all part of the same fam­ily. It is clear that God is indeed at work in Barcelona.

Sun­day night, we pre­pared a din­ner to reach out to some of the oth­ers stay­ing in out hos­tel and to hand out with the peo­ple we had met the pre­vi­ous days. Approx­i­mately 10 to 15 peo­ple came! Many good con­ver­sa­tions were held and sev­eral peo­ple came to know Christ as their per­sonal Sav­ior that night!

God really does work in amaz­ing ways. Shim­pei, a fel­low brother with us from Drake, speaks very lit­tle span­ish, but has been able to share the Gospel in Japan­ese every day that we have been here.

On Wednes­day, we will be host­ing a con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can church ser­vice at the hos­tel. Our pur­pose is to fol­low up with the peo­ple who have recently become Chris­tians and to expose the peo­ple we’ve met here in Barcelona to a dif­fer­ent type of wor­ship service.

You can be pray­ing that God will con­tinue to encour­age and strengthen us; that God will enable us to com­mu­ni­cate effec­tively; that we would be a cat­a­lyst for a church plant here in Barcelona, and that we would see fruit from the time we’ve spent here.