ONE IN TEN!

by Chris Mathieson

This time last year we wondered how we could possibly begin a ministry with the mentally handicapped. We were in touch with only one such person! Yet the statistics showed that ten percent of the population is disabled, a fifth of these mentally. That means one hundred thousand mentally-handicapped people in Madrid alone, with no evangelical ministry to them, no-one working to enable them to understand the gospel. If ever there were an unreached people group this was it!

A year later, we have seen some encouraging signs of progress. We sent out publicity advertising a meeting, and within days we had received several 'phone calls. On the last Sunday of October, seven mentally disabled people arrived at the chapel in Saconia, a remote suburb of Madrid. They were accompanied by family members and well-wishers, as well as the team. Mefi-boset was born!

In November we organised a second simliar meeting, and then a Christmas party brought in a number of people with no previous evangelical contact. We suddenly realised that we had found an open door to reach people who would never normally come into a church.

In February a parents' group began. This has been very helpful for the members, both with practical self-help issues and also enabling them to understand the support that only a relationship with Jesus can give.

The group has met monthly over the year, gradually growing to about ten regulars, seventeen having attended in all. With an age-range from five to mid-thirties, it is hard to pitch presentations at the right level, but we have alternated between material aimed at children and simple Bible studies, painting up the events as we find them verse by verse.

The sketchboard has been useful, but far from indispensable. On one occasion the "kids" read, rehearsed and then performed the Prodigal Son to the parents, when they came together for the closing snacks.

"Do you love me?" 15 year-old Raquel asked her mother on the way back from a meeting. "Of course I do," came the reply. "Why?" "Jesus loves me!" She had got the message!

Meanwhile, we are working to extend this kind of ministry around Spain and even beyond. In June we hosted a visit from Mike Lynch, director of Joni And Friends ministries, whom we had previously met in Brussels at a European seminar. Mike and his wife Georgie were kept busy with numerous activities, speaking to the Mefi-boset group, to pastors, to the team and on a radio programme which goes out to fifteen cities.

The result of all this is that we may well also see a ministry to the deaf beginning in the near future! Our skills with visual aids will no doubt be in demand again...