Matthew Dieb | Sr. | Finance & Accounting Major | Arlington, Texas
“Today we started off the morning early by splitting into two different groups and my group went to the hotel that we met at for church on Sunday morning. From there we split into two smaller groups, one doing a prayer walk and the other handing out flyers to spread awareness and promote the new church plant that meets at the hotel. For me it was really cool doing the prayer walk and seeing the different parts of Madrid and seeing the markets. I’m used to seeing a market with fruits and vegetables, but I was impressed with how everyone there was very nice and welcoming.
On the prayer walk, we prayed for the local community and their businesses and that they would flourish. We also helped our IMB missionary, Jane, connect with people, throughout the area. When we finished our prayer walk, we went with another IMB missionary, Caleb, and he took us to El Faro de Moncloa, where we were able to see over all of Madrid, which was a very beautiful sight.
Afterwards we went to a busy intersection and started handing out more flyers and interacting with local people from the community.
For lunch, we met with with the rest of the team and enjoyed burgers, which were really good and definitely took me by surprise. Following lunch, we went back to our hostel to get our bags and start our journey to Lisbon. From the hostel, we jumped on the metro and after a countless amount of stops, we finally arrived at the Madrid airport.
We arrived in Lisbon at 9:00 PM and I touched my feet on Portugal soil for the first time. I am excited for the rest of the week and looking forward to seeing how the Lord will use my team and I,” Sophomore Gabriel Alvarez, a sports management major said.
“Today was our last day in Madrid, Spain. The trip so far has been tiring, but a lot of fun at the same time. This morning the first thing we did was pack up our things and head to do service work. The team was split into two groups. One group was involved in a prayer walk and my group was involved in surveying students at the University of Madrid for a nonprofit called TEC.
Going up to random people and starting a conversation is already a bit out of my comfort zone, however when you add the element of language barrier, it definitely made it extremely uncomfortable. With that being said, I throughly enjoyed sitting down and talking with students around my age from all different backgrounds. I met people from Spain, Italy, Germany, and the United States. Having these conversations really opened my eyes to the different lifestyles that people live. Every conversation I had was unique with all different stories and was truly enjoyable to learn about.
After our service work, both groups met back up at a restaurant called VIPS to grab some hamburgers/sandwiches and then went out for Spanish churros, which were really good. After that, the team caught the metro and headed to the airport. I can’t wait to see what activities and experiences will occur while in Portugal and the lives we will be able to impact,” Senior Matt Dieb, finance and accounting major added.
