Prayer requests, Autumn 2007

Thank you for your interest in praying for Spain!

Summer outreaches

Despite our previous news to the contrary, Decision was finally able to arrange a new location for its summer outreach and held a most effective campaign in the town of Villarubia de los Ojos.

For some months Decision director José Pablo Sánchez, also director of TVE's evangelical programme, had been working on placing evangelistic ad. spots on local TV stations. They had found a station in Villarrubia willing to take the spots and with the help of students from the Sefovan bible school in Madrid, they had spend days doing surveys, reaching a total of 1000 people. 100 of these accepted a John's Gospel and a few made a profession of faith.

Then on 19th July the leaders went to Vilarrubia with the determination to see if they couldn't rent a hall for a month from mid-August and that very day found an empty store, which was available and the owner gave them the keys there and then. They also visited a family who had requested a Bible study and didn't want them to leave!

During the outreach itself 24 people joined the team, films were shown every day and Bible studies were led. between 6 and 10 attended each Bible Studay, 8 to 12 each film and in all 21 made professions of faith, including 5 Romanians. Now some 10 new believers, together with several other interested people, are regularly meeting with Ruperto and Esther Ortega from the Daimiel church 18 km (11 miles) away. The Valdepeñas church , somewhat further away is also supporting them.

In addition, Operation transit took place in a number of locations, reaching out to our neighbours as they travel across Spain heading to or from their holidays at 'home' in North Africa. A number of new locations were tried this year at roadside halts, rather than at the ports, which are increasingly closed to this kind of activity. Much literature and copies of the Jesus film were again distributed.

Also, this is a time of year when many local churches take on more open air outreach. Such is the case of the calle Murillo church in Palma de Mallorca, which holds open airs every Sunday evening during July to September in the Parque del Mar between the sea front and the spectacular Cathedral. Again they had an effective and useful summer outreach season.

Camps

Due to the heat, schools have been closed across Spain for 3 months. As a result, camps are a key summer activity for children and young people. Church and other christian camps are responsible for the conversion of many of the children of believers and their neighbours. Pray now as the Susnday school and other youth activities attempt to draw the youngsters into regular church activities and as pastors and church members build bridges to parents who are not yet believers.

New Season, new opportunities.

As we mention above, this is a time when churches get going again after the change in pace and of activities during the summer. Many are looking more to teaching activity than to evangelism, but pray that evangelistic outreach and follow-up through discipleship classes will remain central to the thinking of church pastors.

It has to be mentioned that, while in years gone by membership of churches tended to grow slowly, if at all, the advent of many immigrants has made visitors a constant part of the Sunday service experience. Many church members find it hard to welcome people who visit perhaps once or twice before moving on, which only makes it harder for some to stay! Coping with new arrivals from Latin America in particular can take all the energy of most pastoral teams. Thus reaching out to Spaniards is not high on the priority list for many church leaders. Yet if Spain is ever to be touched by the Gospel, Spaniards must find the Lord, too.

Evangelical Olympics

This event is now held in several cities, but began in Barcelona almost 25 years ago. This year's edition is 6th October. If other years are to go by, 7,000 children will take place. Each evangelical church is invited to send a team, but the children find neighbours who can run or jup and recruit them into the teams, so these teams represent a good cross section of the neighbourhoods of the city. Pray that again the fun may also bring people closer to the Gospel.

Evangelical Congress

6th to 9th December

This is the most significant of meetings of Spanish Protestants and this is the 7th congress. There have been 2 since the return to democracy in 1978.

Many thanks again for your commitment to pray for Spain. We would love to hear from you, so please if you are praying regularly for Spain let us know by sending us an email. If you have any queries or contributions, don't hesitate to get in touch!

Old Prayer bulletins

There is now a new Prayer News archive bringing together previous editions of this bulletin.

In addition, you can refer to the previous Arise archive with past numbers of the bulletin for your interest.

To access Arise: click here

If you want to read our newsletters in the original Spanish, you can read this one here. As for previous numbers, they are now available on the sister site

Spanish sister site now in English!

Our Spanish language sister site is now up and running in English! This is the official site of the Spanish Evangelists' Conference and shares the same webmaster and Carrelet web technology.