In April 2025, I was part of a mission trip to Granada. The group was a mix of Fusion team and students from a local church in Loughborough. In total, there were nine of us who went and some of the students had themselves become Christians within the last 6 months. We did this trip in partnership with the Fusion Spain team and students from their local church. The trip itself was only three full days, Tuesday-Thursday. Our time was limited, so we knew we wanted to be effective in how we spent it.
We spent Wednesday morning connecting over breakfast and then moving into a time of worship and prayer to start the day. As the time of worship began, it was clear that the energy in the group was high and there was a deep sense of excitement for what might happen in our time on campus. After praying for one another, we went to see what God had in store for us.
By the time lunchtime came around, we already had a number of contact details of students who wanted to meet up and read the Bible, try an alpha course or visit church. That afternoon, we went to another campus where an art exhibition had been put up, gathering hundreds of students throughout the day. We asked the students about it and found out it was only there for Wednesday and Thursday. The same two days we were doing mission on campus - it felt like a miracle! With the afternoon and hundreds of students before us, we got to work.
Over the two days, one group of students said they would be up for reading the Bible which led to some of the team leading a Bible study with them, then and there on campus for a few hours. We used the Fusion survey, translated into Spanish, to help open up conversations. We also handed out Bibles to students who were open to reading more. One student I spoke to said he had just started reading the Bible the night before!
We also did an exercise called treasure hunting, a way of praying for specific names, clothes/accessories, words of knowledge and then doing mission with the aim to find those people. One of the Granada students, Sofia, from the local church had a picture of a young woman with black hair and a very specific set of ear piercings on her right ear. As we finished talking to a group of students, another student tapped Sofia on the shoulder. She turned around to find a young woman, with black hair and the exact set of ear piercings she had pictured in prayer. The student asked her, "Are you christians?” to which Sofia said “yes!”. The student explained that she had a lot of questions and wanted to know more. They sat down and began to talk. They prayed, cried and read the Bible together for the next hour.
There are too many stories to write them all down here! Many of these stories are just the beginning as well. We handed over these contacts to the local team to take forward and we are praying there are many more stories to come. One of the students from Loughborough said that the spiritual openness among students feels greater in Granada than it does in the UK. That stood out to me as a statement because we are seeing that roughly 76% of non-christian students would go to church if they were invited. This spiritual openness runs throughout the student generation, across continents. We are convinced there is so much more to see. This week was just another glimpse into how God is calling this generation back to him.
