Who are we?

Chris & Hilde Mathieson have long experience of work among the Spanish evangelical churches.

Chris first visited Spain in 1962, as a child. Hilde's first visit was also as a tourist as a young nurse. Chris got to know the evangelical churches while a student back in 1975, while Hilde made her first visit to the Spanish churches not long after, spending a summer helping out at a Torchbearers camp. Chris worked in Spain as a language teacher from 1978 and in '82 went full time as an itinerant evangelist with Open Air Campaigners, with responsibility for Spain. Hilde arrived in Madrid in '86, sent out by the German Missionary Fellowship (DMG) and it was not long before they got to know each other, marrying in '89. Until 2001 they remained based in Madrid and in that year moved for a short placement in Extremadura. Their ministries have included evangelism, church planting, "Evangelical Religious Education" in public (state) schools and disability ministry. From '94 to 2003 they were seconded to OM, but continued also to minister with and through numerous local churches, networks and organisations, such as the Madrid City Mission, Mefi-boset (disability ministry) and the Spanish Evangelists' Conference.

Currently they are living in Mallorca. Chris works on this and other web pages, among other ministries. As of summer, 2009, these include (for Chris) a leadership role within OAC Europe, leading an English speaking home group and supporting leaderhip of a Spanish speaking group, both related to our local church. Hilde supports the local ministry and is also working towards supporting MásQueSalud, a local NGO with a caring pro-life project. In addition, they support various other local church outreach projects.

Click here for a more precise picture of their recent activity.

For a look into Chris's hairy background look at the family history on the clan website: click here!

Our purpose

PrayforSpain aims to raise prayer support and awareness of the ministry of the evangelical churches in Spain. As "evangelical churches" we share the fairly broad understanding of the concept and include the vast majority of those churches recognised by the Spanish Federation of Evangelical Churches (FEREDE). As we receive prayer and news reports from them, or permissions to link to their pages, we try to keep you informed so that you can get to know them better.
In addition to information about the evangelical churches, we bring you more general information about Spain, background, culture and current affairs, so that you can get an all-round picture of the context within which the churches are working.
It will be evident as you surf this site that there is more general information than information about the churches. This is due to the ease with which one sort of information is to be found, whereas the churches generally have more pressing concerns than posting news to web sites - or answering emails! We hope that as we develop, this gap will be bridged.

Changes, Autumn 2009

From September, 2009 we will be working towards relaunching this site. The pages you currently find will gradually revert to archive status, as the new pages are produced. Using the all-new X-Cathedra CMS, we will be able to incorporate blogs and -potentially- many new developments in Internet technology. We hope this will enhance your Pray4Spain experience. If you are currently living in Spain and involved in the evangelical world in any way, do get in touch if you would like to get more involved in the project.

Caution!

The news held or linked to on this site cannot be guaranteed to be accurate or the latest, but we try. Likewise, the opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Spanish evangelical movement (whatever that is), but may represent those of the author.

Sorry if you don't like the appearance! We are using the Carrelet on-line web design system, which allows much freedom to an Internet ignoramus to just place text as it is written (typos and all), with all the advantages and inconveniences that this causes.

Thank you for praying!