International Outreach is a Registered Charity. Charity no. 1138123
At the beginning of September 2009 I believe God visited me at my desk and showed me that it was time to return to Barcelona. For several minutes I wept and asked God for guidance. I had no idea what to do. An hour later it was clear to me. I very forcibly felt that we should hold Gospel concerts for the preaching of the Gospel in the city.
On Saturday, March 18th 2010, Jim Oakley and I flew into Barcelona. I wept as we began our descent. It seemed as though we were being gently lowered into our destiny. I felt a little sentimental. I wanted to tell my friend Syro that we had begun to fulfill our promise to Esperanza Garcia. "Regreseremos" we repeated to her that last day in the bull ring and here we were 30yrs later, keeping our word. As we walked out into the night air to take a taxi I thought of Caleb long ago, standing before Joshua and saying, "Give me this mountain" and I repeated his words to our Saviour, "Lord give me this mountain."
Barcelona is a wonderful city, bursting with amazing architecture and art and multitudes of people. It was astonishing to see hundreds of thousands of people, suitably clad against the cool night air, out walking in the city at 10'clock at night. The most amazing thing for me though, was the overwhelming feeling that the place belongs to God. It is not the Barcelona of thirty years ago. We left there in 1980 just one week after two dozen of us stood together in the bull ring and prayed the prayer which He gave to us! This was the first time we have returned, and what a difference! I can almost see the flag of The Dove of Peace still fluttering quietly above this metropolis of nearly five million people. In the spiritual, it belongs to Him! The heaviness and oppression that were there thirty years ago are no longer there. I remember Barcelona as a dark, heavy city and its people sullen and unfriendly. Not anymore! Jim will agree with me, that the people everywhere went out of their way to be friendly and helpful, offering the greetings of the day as we passed them in the street. On Friday we met a couple who spent seven years as missionaries in Seville, Spain. They said how dark and oppressive it is there, but how different it feels in Barcelona.
Nearly five million people make up this huge city. There are many young people. At any given time there are 200,000 students in Barcelona, 20,000 of them are foreign. No less than 250 different languages are spoken. They are, in fact, only three nations away from having a full complement of every nation represented in the United Nations, living in Barcelona.
Barcelona is the capital of Cataluna. The people do not regard themselves as Spanish and do not take kindly to being called Spanish. The first language is Catalan and it is the only language used for teaching in the schools.
Jim and I had one of the most wonderful weeks of our lives as we watched God move. He gave us direction and so obviously was with us in everything that we did. We met some ministers who were obviously cautious to the point of suspicion, but the moment we began to express our burden for the city they visibly changed and became warm and supportive. We left some of these places bursting with emotion at the miraculous changes that we saw and the love and unity that we felt.
On Tuesday evening we attended a Charismatic prayer group, numbering just over thirty. We immediately felt at home with beautiful worship and gentle singing in the Spirit.
Palau Sant Jordi, Barcelona
We were so kindly welcomed and allowed to share our vision. We left feeling elated with genuine Christian fellowship.
On Wednesday we went to see Guillem Correa, General Secretary of the Evangelical Council of Catalunia. He shared with us his own vision for Barcelona, treated us like brothers and said, "If you have been praying for my city for thirty years, welcome, welcome." He is in touch with several hundred churches in Catalunia and offered to send them an invitation to come together to listen to our burden and plans for the future. He embraced us warmly when we left.
On Thursday afternoon we went to see Julio Perez, the pastor of one of the largest churches in Barcelona. He responded to our message, offered to help us and thanked us for caring for Barcelona. He warmly embraced us as we left, as did his secretary, Silvia, whose eyes were shining with joy as she listened to the story of God's dealings with us regarding Barcelona.
We did try to find Esperanza Garcia, but succeeded only in finding the tiny flat where she used to live. A neighbour remembered her, but said that she had left about nine years before and she had no idea where she lived, or if she was still alive. As we walked away I sadly accepted that Esperanza was probably long gone from this earth and would never know this side of eternity that we had returned to Barcelona. I just prayed that 2012 would see fruit borne to her account.
Before we left for Barcelona the Lord gave Christine Jeffs the timing for our outreach. The date was June 2012. After my experience in September 2009 I began to look for concert venues and found several that would accommodate two to four thousand people. In January 2010 I felt troubled. If the Lord had said that He would bring them out of their flats like ants to find Jesus, that was surely a lot more than a few thousand. I began to look for larger venues and came across the Palau Sant Jordi, with a capacity of 18000. It felt right!
We visited the Palau San Jordi, an indoor Olympic stadium and asked if it was available in June 2012. The women were so kind to us. They told us that June is the best month for concerts in Barcelona. 2012 was available (but not 2011). Once more we marvelled at God's guidance. We provisionally booked six nights from the 25th to 30th June 2012.
Without exception, everyone we saw through the week said that evangelism through concerts was the way to win the people of Barcelona. We agreed to work with Senor Correa to arrange a meeting with as many pastors as wish to come, perhaps in June.
Jim Oakley, Stephen Jeffs and I returned to Barcelona on Thursday afternoon 27th May and, having checked into our hotel, went to view the Palau Sant Jordi. We were once again treated to a thorough guided tour of the stadium with all its annexing rooms and facilities and I believe that it lived up to Stephen's expectations. The manager and assistant manager were obviously very sceptical about our ability to fill the stadium for six nights, but they do not, of course, consider the power of the Holy Ghost.
On Friday afternoon we attended our meeting with the church leaders. There were 26 people present, not all of them pastors by any means, and we were well received. I was able to explain our vision for the people of Barcelona and our plans for the stadium. They asked some quite penetrating questions, but the major outcome was a pledge of total support from the two leading men in Barcelona, Pastors Correa and Perez. Julio Perez invited us to give an explanation of our vision in his Sunday morning service at Bethany Church and brother Correa invited us for a business lunch on Monday with himself, Brother Perez and another local pastor.
On Sunday morning we went on the underground to the veladrome where Bethany church holds its Sunday service. The service was due to begin at 11am. The venue seats about 500 people and the congregation eventually grew to about 400 people. Brother Perez was away at a branch church and the assistant pastor told me that after communion he would invite me forward to "give a greeting". I had actually prepared a short word from the words of Jesus, "The night comes when no man can work" which was a bit more than "giving a greeting". I had now no idea how to present the vision in just a few minutes. A local brother gave a word about the widow of Zarapheth, how God used her to provide for the needs of Elijah when she gave the little that she had to sustain him. Stephen turned to me and said, "This reminds me of our story about the woman in black". Of course it did! I decided that I would begin my "greetings" with the story of how God miraculously provided the money for us thirty years ago. I was particularly touched by the thought that, if thirty years ago God used a woman who he had told ten years before that to prepare for our need, it meant that God had been planning our 2012 outreach for 40 years. God is a most amazing strategist. He makes many plans and builds many roads and they all converge at the appointed time to fulfill His purpose.
So I began my discourse:-
"I would like to tell you a story. 40 years ago God spoke to a little woman in Barcelona, just like He spoke to the woman in the time of Elijah and told her that one day he was going to send His servants to Barcelona. He wanted her to pay the bill. So she lived carefully and each week put a little money in the bank. Then God told us to go to Barcelona and by the evening before our last day we had no money to pay the bill. That afternoon God spoke to the lady who had been saving for fifteen years and told her to give the money to the man in the black suit. Her name was Esperanza Garcia."
I noticed at this point that two women on the third row were quite excitedly talking to each other, to the point of causing a distraction. It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps they knew the whereabouts of my missing lady in black. I stopped and asked my interpreter to ask them if they knew Esperanza Garcia. I then noticed that one of the women was pointing to herself. She was shaking with emotion and tears were flowing down her face. My interpreter was saying, "It's her! It's her!" I said, "Does she know her?" She replied, "It IS her!" I said, "It's Esperanza Garcia?" She said, "Yes."
I moved into the isle and noticed as I did that people were weeping all over the congregation. Esperanza moved into the isle and we embraced and wept on each other's shoulders while the congregation applauded a scene that Hollywood could not have contrived. I returned to the podium while she hugged Jim and Stephen and then asked her publically if she remembered our promise to return. She said, "Yes". She remembered us saying to her "regreseramos." She told us later that she had never forgotten our promise and that she has always believed that we would return. You remember how Jim and I tried to find her when we went in March? We spoke to one of her old neighbours who had not seen her since she left nine years before, but she had no idea where she was. A number of days after we left the neighbour "bumped into" Esperanza and told her that two tall men had been looking for her. She immediately wondered if it was us. Perhaps this was the time! She said that for her it was like "The cloud the size of a man's hand" in the story of Elijah. i.e. The beginning of the fulfillment of the promised rain!
We were invited to her home for Sunday lunch and out of nowhere she produced the most amazing meal. She poured her love upon us, frequently weeping with a sense of her own unworthiness and the amazing wonder of His love. She is obviously a woman of keen spiritual discernment, outstanding faith and prophetic insight. Her obedience in the matter of the money in 1980 was certainly not a one off! She listens to God and has the faith to obey! She said, "If you had told me you were planning on 2010 or 2011 I would not have agreed. 2012 is the right year."
Esperanza has a friend who actually put some money towards the amount given to us thirty years ago and was with her in the Bull Ring when we spoke to her. Her friend has a daughter who was struck down with polio when she was just a few months old. As a result her daughter, Eva, now 39 years old, has never walked. She is a hopeless cripple. She came up to me in her chair and said with a beaming smile, "I am going to come to the first concert in the Palau Sant Jordi and Jesus is going to heal me, then lots of people will come on the other nights and find Jesus." Esperanza also has a daughter called Maria who is also a woman of God. She aided and abetted Eva in her faith. She said, "I think it would be better if the Lord healed her on the first night, then it leaves all the other nights for people to come to the Lord, because people all over Barcelona know Eva."
On Monday afternoon we went for lunch at the offices of Senor Correa and discussed our next step. He told us that he would outline our vision for Barcelona to a council of 60 ministers with whom he was meeting on Wednesday 2nd June. He promised to inform us of their reaction and ask for our suggestions. He is then meeting with them again in July and will at that point suggest that perhaps they might like to listen to us at a meeting in September.
I told the story of the woman in black to the group of leaders with whom we met on Friday. When I came to say her name my mind was a complete blank. I could not remember her name! I knew that Jim would remember because he had repeated it over and over when we were looking for Esperanza in March and he has a good memory. So I said, "What's her name Jim? I can't remember her name!" To my surprise Jim's eyes clouded over and he said, "I can't remember". If we had at that point said her name, her pastor would have immediately told us that she was a member of his church and the scene on Sunday morning would never have happened and 400 people would not have had that wonderful moment to cement the Sant Jordi stadium 2012 into their minds. I am not over spiritualising! That's the kind of detailed power and influence the Holy Spirit has if we are submitted to Him! He will guide us through spiritual minefields! He will go before us and manipulate events and circumstances! He will protect us from enemies seen and unseen! And He will display His glory in Barcelona and bring them out of their flats like ants to find Jesus!
Jaci Velasquez Palau Sant Jordi June 2012
Mission to Barcelona 2012 - John Hibbert
If you would like John Hibbert to visit your church to share his vision and burden for Barcelona please contact us by email with suggested dates
