(a recent prayer letter received from Joshua & Brenda Lei Casey, Spain)

Roughly 15 months ago God birthed within us a vision to carry out an English Kids Faith Camp right here in Arroyomolinos, and just recently that vision came to fruition! In preparation for this week of sharing God’s love with the littlest ones in our community, we began praying and working towards 3 specific goals:

—That Jesus’ love would be made manifest to the kids who came
—That through this camp we’d be able to build more adult relationships here
—That the advertisement of this camp would somehow bring to surface already professing Christians within our city

Here’s a random free Spanish lesson for ya: y más allá  = and even more/beyond

Ya’ll, God has answered our prayer with a “YES Y MÁS ALLÁ!”

Throughout the week of the camp, with the help of a truly phenomenal team from San Diego, we hosted 3 main events: a prayer and praise night at a scenic overlook of our city, a midweek Bible study, and the kids camp itself (which functioned more like a VBS day camp). 

Apart from our family and the visiting team itself, we had THREE Christian families show up to the prayer and praise night. The purpose of this night was to cry out to God on behalf of our city, that we would see His bride represented here to faithfully display His love amongst our 35k inhabitants. We’ve heard people from the States pray over our city before, but we’ve never heard Spaniards do it, and let me tell you—it was a BEAUTIFUL experience to see so many people desire His kingdom represented right here in our little corner of the Earth.

Our home was packed out with lots of people, lots of food, and lots of music for the midweek Bible study. More importantly, an impactful lesson was taught (in Spanish) by one of the visiting team members. Our oldest daughter translated the lesson to English for those on the team that didn’t speak Spanish, and it was a joy to watch her blossom in this new way. Since then we have hosted a weekly Bible study in our home and are looking forward to seeing folks from our community join us!

Now, moving on to the most obvious event, the kids camp (VBS) itself. To say that we were faced with extreme opposition to this would be an understatement. We feel as though we’ve been jumping hurdles to see this thing happen for well over a year now, and at times we felt as though we ourselves no longer had the strength or willpower to jump those hurdles. BUT GOD (some of our favorite words!) picked us up piggyback style and jumped some of those hurdles when we were too weak to do it ourselves. This was 100% HIS idea from the very beginning, and there are countless ways we’ve seen HIM be the One bringing this into fruition! Even the curriculum plan itself was something we saw the Lord lead on. Being that we minister in a highly post-Christian society, the lessons revolved around helping these kids answer 5 big questions.

1) Is God real?—YES!
2) Is the Bible reliable?—YES!
3) Does God really love me?—YES!
4) Did Jesus really come back to life?—YES!
5) Can I choose to follow Jesus?—YES!

These big questions and their corresponding answers were woven into nearly every aspect of the day’s activities. A puppet provided each day’s lesson kickoff, which was then followed up by a tidbit of truth during craft time, and of course the crafts themselves reminded the kids of what they had been taught as well. A full blown sit down lesson in Spanish was given as well, just to make sure communication was hitting at 100%. Later on in the day, we also had an apologetic based lesson backing up all the things they had previously heard with scientific and historical evidence found in ‘the real world’.  Even more, all the songs and memory verses we worked on each day were reminders of these precious truths as well. We wanted these truths DEEP in there, and throughout the week we saw evidences of just how mighty God’s Word is.

On the first day there was one highly intelligent, albeit quite persnickety, little boy who at only 6 years old began the morning by loudly shouting over and over again, “NO! GOD ISN’T REAL!” (Just pause there for a second and ask yourself if you’ve ever met a 6 year old that doesn’t believe God is real and actually proclaims those thoughts out loud. This is the environment we live in, and this is the environment our girls are being raised in.) That afternoon during parent pickup, I connected with this little boy and asked him what he had learned that day. With great awe in his voice he said, “I learned that God IS REAL!!! He’s beyond time, space, and matter, and He CREATED me!” Oh, what joy, unspeakable joy!

By the end of the week a little girl and her mother were IN TEARS as they were leaving the camp. The little girl was devastated that the week was over, and the mother couldn’t comprehend how it was possible for us and the camp workers (the missions team) to genuinely be THAT kind, THAT loving, and THAT friendly. It seemed to her as if WE ACTUALLY CARED FOR HER CHILDREN, and this was something that truly baffled her. When her and husband came to pick their kids up on the last day they had an opportunity to watch them sing and dance to some of the songs they had been taught throughout the week. Midway through, the parents pulled their phone out to record a video, but, to our surprise, they filmed US, the adults in the back of the room, as we cued the next moves for the kids and sang along with them. She later told us that she’s never seen anything like the love that our team so obviously overflows with, and that alone caused her to have questions!  

I explained to her how God’s love has so radically changed us that it overflows from within us and onto other people. We CAN’T HELP but share it with others. This prompted her to tell me a bit more of her history with religions, and she stretched her arms out explaining that for her entire life (over 40 years now), each and every encounter she has had with anything that claims God, faith, or religion has caused her to walk further and further from any sort of belief in God at all!  She motioned with her hands how she’s always been heading the opposite direction of God, because the religious hurt has just been so deep. Then she paused and rotated her hand back inward towards the other hand, closing the gap between them, and said, “I’m going to turn around today. I’m going to start walking back towards faith in God. This is the first encounter I’ve had with God that hasn’t pushed me further away. Thank you.”  And *cue the tears*.

So, in summary, the beckoning love of God was on full display that week of camp, and it was beautiful. One gal loved it so much so that she proactively grabbed a whole stack of fliers to pass out to her entire neighborhood. She proclaimed, “I want everyone to know what you guys teach!” Relationships with adults were not only made (several follow up coffee meetings and play dates are already in the works), but the adults themselves felt ministered to just as much as the kiddos! And ya’ll, the advertisement of this camp led us to MULTIPLE phone calls of people just saying, “I heard about this camp….are you guys believers? Evangelical believers? And you want to start a church here?! We’ve been praying for this for years!” Some of those interactions led to those Christian families who showed up at either the midweek Bible study or the prayer/praise night.

 For these reasons and many more we can confidently say that God has answered, “YES y MÁS ALLÁ!” to our heart cry! Thank you, LORD!

God hit a home run when He sent this team to Arroyomolinos. Praise the Lord for people who are walking alongside us, in the face of much opposition, in order to see this city reached! We’re also incredibly grateful to all who financially gave above and beyond to make this week a reality. It wasn’t cheap, but GOD provided through your generosity! We had multiple churches give us their VBS collection amounts, several one time donations, and we even had a gem of a friend take it upon herself to fully prep all the crafts for our week all the way across the ocean! It was truly a team effort! On behalf of our own love for this city, we want to say, ‘Thank you,’ to you, and,  ‘THANK YOU,’ to God! He is SO GOOD!