El Primero Dia

Hola! Today was our first day sharing the Gospel with las personas in Espana. I first want to mention that I have only 3.5 years of high school Spanish under my belt which made me the second best Spanish speaker on our team...I never thought that I would have to serve as a translator for other people in my group. It is pretty crazy how well my Spanish is coming back to me the more I speak it.

We did not end up leaving our hostel until around 1pm today because we waited for Heather Guck to get here from Iraq. She got here safely, she was tired but she prayed a lot to God to help her get through the rest of the day. Unfortunately Cole, Trisha, Kendall, and Dayne missed their flight in Detroit and then had to catch another flight to Paris but then someones ticket didnt register and so they were delayed again. The crazy part was we were in the Metro ready to get on the last train to our hostel and we ran into them and got to ride to the hostel with them! Their bags did not make it though (and Randi and Beckys bags still have yet to arrive) so please keep all of them in your prayers and pray that their bags get here soon...we are running out of clothes! :)

OK so for Day One of sharing, we went to the Universitat de Barcelona and then we first went to eat at a restaurant that Heather and Jason like. It was really cool because the owner remembered them from the last three years they have come to Barcelona. Jason got to talk to him again and started sharing with them and he gave the owner (who was from Pakistan) and gave him a tract. The cool part is that because he is from Pakistan is referenced the recent Bollywood movie My Name is Khan (anyone who knows me would realize how exciting that is to me!). After lunch we split into two groups (Randi, Becky, Jason and Noodles, Me, Heather), Heather and I tagged teamed to talk to a lot of people. We ended up having some really good conversations. The first woman we approached did not have time to talk but she did take a tract. The second girl that was spoke to was Lara. Leading up to this trip I have been praying a lot about God helping me to show these people Christian love during the little amount of time we would be spending together and the down side to this is that the Lord really gave me a heart for this girl but I did not get any of her information past her first name. She has my information (Spain phone and facebook) so pray that we are able to connect again because this girl was so wonderful and because she did not know too much English all we could do was lead her through passages in the Bible. Pray that the Lord will really grow fruit from the seed that we planted...(haha she even told us that her grandmother lights a candle for her to come to know Christ).

The second good conversation we had was in English!! We ran into a woman from Israel who wanted to talk to us but said right away that she was not a Christian and really was not Jewish like her father. She understood a lot of what we were saying and she seemed to really take to heart our Truth so pray that God is really working in her life...she took quite a bit of information from us but she still seemed unsure of what she really deemed a truth. It really seemed like God led her too us because this is the last day she would be in Barcelona. AND it was great because she gave Heather all of her contact information and Heather, who told her that she wanted to go to Isreal soon, said that when Heather came she would take her to Jerusalem if she made it to Barcelona. This conversation was really good for me...really listening to Heather talk about her personal testimony with Christ really helped me just realize once again (to the point where I was crying) how amazing Christ is and how undeserving is gift is to us sinners.

Those were the two main converstaions we could fit in during the short amount of time we had today. Randi, Becky, Jason, and Noodles also had really good conversations today and Randi and Becky were able to find people that knew English to share with and they evened talked her this girl a lot about Creationism. Pray that some of these people come to the service we are holding on Tuesday. On our way back to the hostel we ran into Colins group at a grocery store on La Rambla...small world! Last really great story of the day. Jason and the rest of the groupo were on the Metro and a group of older people were sitting down and saw that he was holding tracts. They actually asked him to give them tracts (I just want to mention these were 4 random people who did not know each and were asking him for these tracts). He gave them each a tract and he started to speak to them in Spanish, he didnt get to in depth with them because our stop was coming up and we found out after we got off that each of them turned out to be Christian...some Evangelical. Best part of this story is that after we were off the train we looked back and one of the women was blowing besos (kisses) to Jason through the window and we would turn back to look at Jason who was pretending to catch them...it was soo funny!!!

That is the update for today...pray that God continues to work through us and keeps us safe for the next week. Love In Christ, Lisa