Something to Celebrate

I arrived in Madrid at the beginning of October. I had nowhere to live and I didn’t have job. I knew one person, Rosie, a girl I lived next door to in my first year in Fitz. I wanted to find out what God was doing in Madrid, and how I could serve His vision for this city.

It’s good, and it is hard, but I think that is how I know it is going well. Despite all my doubts, God provided. Rosie let me sleep on her floor while I found a place to live and a job, and by the end of the first week I had both. I live with three Spaniards out of the centre, and our estate has an outdoor swimming pool, although at the moment it is frozen over most mornings. I quit my job at Christmas, and having the boldness and the freedom to do that has showed me how much God is changing me here.

Now I am giving private English classes and translating Red Moon Rising, the story of 24-7, written by Pete Greig. I am playing five-a-side football and started a cell with Simon, a guy originally from Open Heaven Church in Loughborough. About seven of us meet in Kilometre Zero, the very centre of Madrid, the starting point of the main roads that go all over the country. The room has a balcony over looking the main square. It is a centre of street evangelism and it is where the 24-7 Madrid prayer rooms are held twice a year.

God is teaching me, and stretching me, and it feels relentless. Not many people know God here and of the people that do, few live out church in the way I am used to, in an environment in which I have learnt so much and in which I have grown. I have found it hard to make friends too, especially Spanish ones.

Living in this environment is frustrating, so much seems dry and godless, so few people seem to care. But it is exciting too, like I said, the learning feels it is relentless; what I learn, how I am challenged by God and the blessings I have seen.

On Sunday about 20 of us, some veterans in Spain, some perspective missionaries, met in a 400-year-old convent. We sang praises to God, prayed and read the Bible. It was simple, but refreshing, and made me realise how desperately Spain needs more of God, and people that know Him to live, serve and love there. It is something to celebrate to be a part of what is going on out here, and to see the potential of the God things that are being sown and what of God is about to burst out.