David Woods Summer Missions Trip to Vigo, Spain

I have been blessed with the opportunity to pursue a mission trip in Vigo, Spain this summer and need to raise a lump sum of $6,000 to cover expenses related to housing, local transportation, food, and health insurance. The trip will last from May 24 to July 31, and all of the money will come from the gifts of friends and family. I want to ask you to pray earnestly about helping me reach individuals in Spain. I am asking that God do a mighty work through me, and I am positioning myself in a place where I have seen him use me in the past, but I must start enlisting a team of people who will pray for and partner with me. 

Spain is a place where many people claim to know Christianity in a cultural sense, given its history under a Catholic-backed dictatorship into the late twentieth century. But Vigo is a city where less than 0.4% of people have a relationship with Jesus. I’ve been to this city before. I’ve prayed over its residents and started the work of living relationally with some of the locals that I met when I took a short-term mission trip earlier this spring. In reflecting on my experiences, I realized that what God had given me—my own secular upbringing and curiosity to know people deeply—and what he had been cultivating in me—a heart that breaks for people who do not know him and a desire to walk alongside those people—was pointing me towards being obedient to the call to serve in a secularized society and to do so without reservation. 

Once I land in Vigo, I will immediately start working with an organization called Raices Centro Cultural, which serves as a cultural exchange center that connects people from all walks of life—college students from the Universidad de Vigo, internationals from Latin America, Spaniards with children and families—with resources such that they may come to know Jesus, yes, but also with individuals, like myself, who can live relationally with them—sharing meals, learning culturally, and entering into their stories with the love of Christ.

If God places it on your heart, I would be deeply grateful for your financial partnership alongside your prayers. Any gift—of any size—moves me closer to being on the ground in Vigo this summer. I am happy to share more details about the trip or Raices if you would like to know more. 

As Paul writes in Romans 10: 14–15, How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent?

Sincerely,

David Woods