“What would you say you do here?”
“I deal with the interns so the missionaries don’t have to?”
But seriously, what am I, Ryan, doing in Spain and what are
the interns (American students) doing here as well? It's been a month, time for some results, some "productivity." So what are we doing?
We are learning Spanish so we can talk to natives and have
credibility to do so. This is slow because as it turns out, no one becomes fluent in a month. No one.
We are meeting 20-30 year olds and trying to form relationships with them to connect them to the missionaries who live here. This demographic of
Spain, while experiencing unprecedented unemployment (over 50%), is also almost completely absent from the church. The parents of the people we meet are the first generation
after the fascist dictator Franco took power and they want nothing to do with the
church (Catholic) because of its relationship with Franco. As a result, they did not “raise” their
children up in the church. What
this means is that there is a whole generation who doesn’t think about God
the way Westerners might and who see the church, if anything, as dangerous and completely
irrelevant. How do you change
that? It seems impossible.
We are learning that two months is a literal “drop in the
bucket” of the time needed here to make a dramatic impact (of course, God can do
anything at anytime.) In fact, missionaries
here see their work as the first of three generations needed to produce a real change in Church growth. In
other words, the missionaries here (40-50’s) don’t plan on seeing the fruits of
their labors. How would you like
to commit your life to something you knew you would never see come to
fruition?
At the same time, we are seeing the Church at work through
Anglican eyes. God is present and
is ruling. The Anglican church
that our missionaries have partnered here with have seen conversations, offer
Bible studies, and offer the preached word and sacraments via Sunday services. They are reaching and serving the poor
and marginalized of Madrid and while the pace of “progress” is slow compared to
what we might be used to in the States, God is giving them just enough to keep
going.
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| Food distribution at the Anglican church here that partners with the MTW team, our team members have been organizing and distributing with the church. |
Above is a picture of what happens at the church every
Saturday. In Madrid, markets are
regulated by the Government, especially farming, to control the price of
goods. If there is a “bumper”
crop/product the government limits how much of that crop or product can flow into the
markets so as not to fluctuate price.
The left-overs are sent to a state run “food drive” that gets
distributed out to participating organizations and churches for the poor. In this picture, volunteers and
students are organizing the food just delivered for Saturday’s drive. Around 6p, the outside street will fill
with 100s of people who depend on this for their family's survival. This is just one of the ways the church, in Spain, is redeeming its dark history.
In the meantime, I am walking with our students (interns) through this life changing experience. I get to struggle with them as they witness failure and the feeling of helplessness in a foreign country. I get to help them process through culture shock (Where's my Target, and Mama?). I get to ask them questions about ministry and see them come to understand God and their need for Jesus in new and fresh ways. I get to meet with them one-on-one and as a team. I get to teach them the Bible for their own spiritual diet while here. I get to live life with them in Spain and remind them that God is at work.
Everyone always asks, "Why go on a trip like this?" Some think, "I'd love to be serving the Lord in a foreign country all summer." Others say, "Well, sounds like a vacation to me." What no one tells you, though, is that you're raising money to go somewhere to be ignored, lost, depressed, to feel hopeless at times, and useless with every breath. What a vacation. But you're also raising money to see something special and true-God's faithfulness to his people, to his Church. That's what we're doing.
