Thursday's at the convent - On Thursday afternoons another girl from the program and I make the 1/2 hour walk to a convent where we "teach" english to some of the kids there. We're there for 2 hours each time and help 2-3 students. Sometimes they have exercises from their classes that they need help with, but these usually don't take up the whole time. Sometimes we'll play a little game with them or work on some random vocab or english pronunciation, depending on their level of english. Part of our goal with this is to just show the kids love, whether or not we help a lot with their english. God's given me the patience to work with these kids as a lot of them come from pretty rough backgrounds. They are all precious in their own way though.
Tuesday lunches at the University - I haven't been able to go to this one in a few weeks now, but the idea is to either bring a lunch or buy a lunch there, pair up with another student from our program, and go meet university students to build relationships which could lead to sharing the gospel.
At the school - The professors are not Christians, but we can freely talk about our faith in class, and often Christianity gets brought up during class time.
Worship experiences:
Wednesday night Encuentro - Every Wednesday night we meet together as students and other friends to worship. There's usually a speaker who shares a short message with us and we sing quite a few songs and pray. This is such a refreshing time of the week for me :) especially because it follows my Prayer Group time. My prayer group consists of 4 other girls (students from the program) and I. We meet each Wednesday at a cafe, share what's going on in our lives, read a devotional or passage from the Bible and discuss it, share prayer requests and, of course, pray. :)
Saturday Night Youth Group - My roommate found a Baptist church online this summer that we've been attending, and they have a youth group that meets on Saturday nights. This is similar to Encuentro, but it is all in Spanish whereas Encuentro is in both English and Spanish. This has helped us to form friendships with some of the young people here.
Sunday morning Sunday school and service - Sunday school meets first, and then everyone gathers together and we have the service. Both of these are great times of worship as well, although the pastor who leads the youth stuff is easier to understand than the pastor who usually preaches at the service. I have loved learning more Spanish songs though and worshipping with my brothers and sisters in Christ here in Spain.
Personal devotions - I've been reading through a few chapters of the Bible. Also, earlier this semester I read Don't Waste your Life by John Piper, and another book that I borrowed from the school. A couple days ago I began rereading God Wants to Save the Christians by Rob Bell. All have been interesting reads.
Traveling Encounters - When my parents and I were in Paris, we met a family the first mornings at the metro/RER train station. They're Americans living and working in Germany for a few years. We were on the same train, and getting off at the same stop (about 1/2 hour or 45 minutes from where we got on...) so we talked to them for a while. As my dad was talking about our family, it came up that a lot of us are interested in missions. Turns out, this family was Christian as well! We had a nice talk with them for that ride! I also met a bunch of other Americans, one of them was a student from the "other Northwestern."
We stayed at a bed and breakfast next to my mom's cousin in the Netherlands. The couple that runs it is a very nice elderly Christian couple. The guy use to do a lot of mission stuff so we heard good stories about that!
No comments:
Post a Comment