Small Steps. Big Faith.

Penny Saunders is a long-term staff woman from Canada who joined Agape Spain during the pandemic, first part-time and later full-time as assistant to our national director in our national office in Valencia. Although Penny has been on staff many years, we decided to go use the New Staff Training material to help her improve her language skills. She and I have been meeting every week to practice speaking on a different topic, using and developing her Spanish vocabulary.  It has taken a while for Penny to feel comfortable in our ministry here in Spain....but over time we have seen her open up and also develop her capacity as a leader.  While she has served faithfully in this role, the large part of her ministry experience has been working as a teacher in Christian schools in Russia, Moldova and Madrid, Spain. Her dream is now to start a new Christian school in Valencia. It is in this context that teachers can teach students a Christian worldview as well as present the gospel wit...

This spring has brought numerous opportunities to interact with our new staff. On this occasion, Donna Cannella (pictured front row, 2nd from right) and I invited 5 new staff, 2 interns and their trainers from a variety of Agape ministries to join us near Barcelona to cast vision for them about the value and purpose of ministry training. In our organization, Ágape prioritizes faith, growth and lasting fruit. The " Capacitación de nuevos coordinadores " (CNC) (or "New Staff Training" (NST)) exists to create a space to develop life change and ministry effectiveness. Our aim is to equip our staff not only in skills (hands), but also with knowledge (head) and attitude (heart).  At the CNC Orientation, we begin this 2-year training process by tackling together the first 3 of 39 topics. Another important component to the training includes an intentional relationship between the trainer (the director or some other senior staff) and trainee (new staff member). During the CN...

pictured above: front row - Donna, Jill, Lucía, Liz back row - Andrés, Dani, Jemima, Mateo, Laura, Israel, María, Penny 12 of us descended on Barcelona, gathering in a rented Air B-n-B apartment. It almost felt a little bit like the 12 disciples in the Upper Room. Many had come from very busy ministry schedules. Some flew in from other countries. Others were flying out to other countries after we finished.  These staff represent a variety of ministries:  GAiN , Athletes in Action , Operations and Human Resources , Family Life This group of new staff were wrapping up their two-year training period as New Staff with Ágape. Just as in the orientation, we looked together at 3 more of the 39 topics. We took time to be with the Lord. We reflected on what it means to be a servant leader, the role of coaching others and how to put to evangelize with our actions. Pictured below: María, Lucía and Laura spend time with the Lord before our first session. Pictured below: Andrés and Liz tak...

On Monday I drove to Martorell (about 30 minutes from home) to pick up Ana Cecilia Manco Pérez, or "Ceci" to stay in our home for a few days. Ceci grew up in Peru and currently has Argentinian nationality. Ceci had applied as a new staff member to work with Agape here in Spain, but was still waiting for the final word from our leadership on her acceptance. Ceci is a professor, an author and recent graduate of  a Masters program in Madrid in AudioVisual Communications. While she has many gifts to offer, she has one major handicap: she is unknown to the world of Agape and Agape is new to her as well. In December, during her interview, the advice she received was that it would be important for her to learn more about the various ministries of Agape . As a result, I offered our home near Barcelona as a place to stay so that she could visit the staff and ministries in Barcelona. On Wednesday, she was able to attend the weekly "co-working" gathering in the heart...

"José became a Christian at the Student Retreat!!!!" "Ruben and Loida are discipling several teenagers from their church." "Next weekend, we will host a cross-cultural training for a student mission trip to Argentina."      These are all statements that I have in the last week from staff who are working on the front lines. Full-time staff on the field are a crucial part to taking the gospel to every corner of Spain and the world!     Behind each full-time staff member on the field, there is also a special team, known here as the CAPACITY team, who works KEEP these staff on the front lines of ministry by depositing paychecks for them, creating and maintaining email and website platforms for them, providing training with ministry and leadership skills for them, etc.      In February 2017, the CAPACITY team (a virtual team of 11 staff living in 7 different cities) gathered in Valencia for 3 days for our own...

Over the last 2 years Agape has seen an encouraging rise in the number of new staff joining our ministry. I was in Málaga this month (Oct 8-10) to assist in our ministry support development training for new staff in Spain. In was a very encouraging time to get to know these young staff and to hear their stories, to remind them of God's faithfulness in raising up our ministry support team and to encourage them in all that God has called them to do. One of the staff I met is Pablo Gómez, or Pablín as he is often called. He has been volunteering for several years with Agape, but the end of 2012, he made the most important decision of his life, to not only dedicate part of his time serving God but rather to work full-time to build bridges in order to help change lives by introducing people to Jesus. Below he shares a bit of his story.... "My name is Pablo J. Gómez, but everyone calls me Pablín. It's a name that I identify with because, although I am tall, I recognize...

grow·ing pains   (gr ng)  plural noun 1.  Pains in the limbs and joints of children or adolescents, often attributed to rapid growth but arising from various unrelated causes. 2.  Emotional difficulties that occur during adolescence. 3.  Problems that arise in the initiation or enlargement of an enterprise. Recently several supporters have asked the question about my role in ministry here in Spain. The truth is that it has been slowly evolving for the last 5-6 years. At times it has been difficult to define and even more difficult to pinpoint and share what God has been doing all around me.  I'd like to try now to illustrate what I understand God to be doing in Agape Spain during a season of incredible growth for this ministry. I'd like to do in through a Bible story and some organizational numbers. There is a story from Exodus 18 that illustrates the strain of growing pains and that "a-ha" moment in Moses' life where he realizes that...

When I first arrived in Spain, more than ten years ago, Tere Alvarez was just leaving for a year-long STINT in the U.S. At that time Agape Spain did not have an official Human Resources Department. By faith Tere set out to learn all she could to establish this crucial area for our National Office to ensure that our Spanish staff and interns would have the necessary processes and infrastructure so that they could get on with the job of taking the gospel to the nations. This month, Tere announced the decision to move on to pursue new directions in ministry and missions. Because she carried SO MANY responsibilities, as of now, there is no ONE person who could fill her shoes. However, the national direction has challenged me to take on several of her responsibilities, including payroll, hiring contracts, tracking incoming staff support and reimbursements, in addition to already coordinating the visa process for our international staff. With much trepidation, I have answered the call...

The behind-the-scenes work for ministry can sometimes seem unglamorous and uneventful, but I know that helping international staff to come to Spain is an important way to help open doors for the gospel in this country. Due to the trend of increased immigration to Spain, the visa application system in Spain is heavily overloaded and the process seems to be taking longer and longer each year. About 4 years ago, I stepped up to help Agape Spain better facilitate the visa application process for its international staff. Up to now, the process has usually taken about 3-4 months per family; and my experience has been mostly working with Americans who come to labor with university students or athletes. In this most recent case, for Jamal and Mariah (names changed for security reasons), their journey began  10 months ago when Allen, from a partner ministry, emailed me to say that this family, who represent 3 different Middle Eastern countries between them, wanted to come labor with ...

One day last week I was working "on location" on a mountain top. Yes...a literal mountain top. (Sometimes I just marvel at the opportunities I have and often wonder, "How in the world would I put what I do on a resumé?") At the end of May staff leaders from all over the world will come to Spain, actually to Montserrat (about 6 miles from my little pueblo), to an event hosted by Campus Crusade for Christ, Internationl. They are coming to discuss reaching the large cities around the globe with the gospel. "Global Cities Summit" (or something along those lines) is the title of the gathering. Their planning team, based in Orlando needed help with some preparation on the Spain side and somehow this job ended up on my desk. I've helped to facilitate letters of invitation and permission for visas for specific people coming from India and from Ghana. I don´t really mind. Events like these help keep alive my vision for reaching the world. They also help me...

Recently the Agape accountant in the National Office, Mari Carmen, called to ask me a favor. "Everyone in the office will be out of town next week at a conference except for me. Since your work is portable, is there any chance you could come to the office, work from here, answer the phone when it rings and keep me company?" After several weeks of being holed up in my home office consumed by tiny details for our conference the invitation was quite inviting. So, I caught the train early each morning to Barcelona and then caught it back in the evenings. It was actually a needed lift to my "people person" spirit to be in the midst of a flurry of activity. Family Life, Student Venture, Campus Ministry, Jesus film, International Ministry....it all runs through the National Office. Since I'd spent significant time in 2006 in the office I was generally familiar with the protocol, etc. It's a balancing act sometimes to focus on one's own work (in this case the...