Last Day of Outreach!

View out our window in France

Today is our last day of outreach. Our team has spent a week in Barcelona, Spain and almost a week in Champagne, France since we last posted. It has actually surprised me that everywhere we have gone for the past seven weeks, though we have not been in any one location for much more than a week, we feel we have been able to make some sort of impact.

Arc de Triomf in Barcelona

In Barcelona, we stayed at a YWAM base that is also a center for English and Spanish language learning and a church. I was very interested to hear from the base directors there that they consider Spain to be more or less an unreached nation. Spain is considered a Catholic country, but our hosts said that only about 8% of children are actually being baptized into the Catholic church at this time. The quoted the percentage of evangelical Christians at about 0.5%. During our time in Barcelona, we were able to help with English language classes (to build relationships in the community), host a Thankgiving dinner for about 40 members of the church and community, develop and perform a drama for the community youth night, and pray for the red light district, city, and nation. It was neat for me to see some of the people I spoke with at an English class come to the Thanksgiving dinner. Our hosts were really excited because so many of the people that came to the dinner and youth night were not from the church, and many of those people ended up coming to the church service on Sunday :)

Spain is big on their cured ham.

In France, we are staying in a very tiny community at another YWAM base. Some of the guys have been doing demolition work to prepare a building for a construction project. The team has also been interceding and cleaning!

La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

I also never wrote about Bochum, Germany, where we went before Northern Ireland. Our group worked with a small church there and did a lot of street ministry. Part of this ministry involved performing dramas that represent the gospel and the love of God. We also hosted a free supper for the church. That was a lovely night where our team served a multi-course meal to church-goers and their invited friends. One of the guests mentioned that it would have cost about 50 euros (about $75) a person if they went out to a restaurant for a similar meal. I think we spent about 70 euros total on the food to feed over 30 people, so that was pretty good :)

It's been quite an outreach. We've been very blessed everywhere we've gone. We thought we'd be sleeping on church floors for most of the seven weeks, but Mike and I have only had to use our sleeping mats one night. In Germany, people took us into their homes. In Northern Ireland, a woman lent us her air mattress.

Our sleeping arrangements in N. Ireland

These last couple of weeks have been a bit rougher as our finances have run out. We've been eating lots of rice and beans. Thankfully, one of our leaders is very creative in the kitchen, so the food has still been much better than you might expect. Even in the midst of the financial situation, we've been blessed by the base in Barcelona who paid for us to eat at the Thanksgiving dinner. And here in France, the base blessed us with a three course supper last night and various individuals have donated food including pork chops for everyone! I'm still a bit shocked when I realize that all of us have managed to tromp all over Europe for seven weeks for about $40,000, including all travel costs to, from, and within Europe; food, and lodging.

We'll be home soon! Please pray that our final legs of travel go smoothly. Thank you for all of your support!! We could not have done it without you!