Don & Nancy's Story

We chose Spain because one of our pastors, Phil Strout who now pastors the Vineyard in Lewiston, Maine had for years worked in Chile and developed the heart and vision to see Spain reached for the gospel. When he returned to the States to pastor, he convinced a few other pastors from our area to travel with him to Spain to explore targeting that nation as the nation we would all focus on together. Our Senior Pastor, Don Andreson went on that trip.

While there he became convinced that this was where we should become involved. That was in Feb. of 1992. At that time there was nothing the Vineyard was doing in Spain. In fact most missions organizations were pulling out of Spain due to its being such a difficult, nonfruitful field. Spain, which is traditionally Catholic, has a .02% population of evangelical Christians. Within the Catholic Church 30% of those who at one time were baptized -no longer claim any link to the church and another 50% are inactive. It is a Christian waste land. The majority of the smaller towns have no evangelical church or witness.

Since our involvement, seven Vineyard churches have been birthed. Each is in a different stage of development. Our goal in going to Spain was to see a Spanish Vineyard church planting movement. It hasn’t been without plenty of challenges and many disappointments, but it is happening. It’s been exciting for us to be part of that process. It has been amazing to see that as we are part of God’s change agent in Spain, Spain has become part of God’s change agent in us.

Since 1993, we have had 75+ individuals from our church travel to Spain to minister. Many have returned on several occasions. Many of these individuals could not have made the trip had it not been because we have adopted the same policy for our church that the Vineyard Movement has - doing together what we can’t do by ourselves. We have seen thousand and thousands of dollars raised to help people from our church become ministers in Spain. Many in our church are Associate Members of I.A.M. who give on a regular basis to help the work in Spain grow. We support one full time missionary, and contribute to the needs of several of the churches in Spain. We regularly pray for Spain. Our children are involved in Spain. When we do a trip all of us support those who travel with prayer.

We expect to see everyone in our church participate on some level in oversees missions. Whether going, giving, praying or hosting. Together we can impact the world for Jesus. Together we can also see Spain impacted for Jesus. Our hope is to one day soon see the Vineyard in Spain grow to such an extent that we can focus on another country. To see them forming their own missions partnership targeting other countries will be the icing on the cake!