David Bowers was influenced by Psalm 91 when he was on the train. Find out how he beleived in Jesus Christ in his journey.
I felt led to share this story on your website. In 1991, one day after the start of the Gulf War, I started a 7 month backpacking journey to Europe. I didn’t know a soul and chose Barcelona as my base city. I chose to stay there 3 months then travel by Eurail for another 3 months, then return to Spain for the rest of my time. After a month in Barcelona, I had found it tough to meet anyone locally. I had gone through a strange relationship with a local girl that only depressed me further. Only as a last resort did I want to turn to a local church because I wanted to see how hard it would be on my own. I knew that as a Christian it would be fairly easy to meet people at a local church, but I was determined not to go the easy route. As strange as this may sound, it is amazing what the good Lord is able to do through our own failings and strange ways of thinking!
On Wednesday of that week, I met a girl from the US at the youth hostel. She was a recovering alcoholic and had been traveling throughout Europe to visit the different AA groups. This time she was in Barcelona and had just arrived from France. Though I tended to avoid other Americans just because I hoped to focus on meeting locals, my recent discouragement led me to befriend her. She wanted help with the city and with someone who knew English since her time in France was quite difficult, she related. I showed her around Barcelona all that day. We talked about a lot of things, including spiritual things because of the ten steps in AA. I asked her about her “”higher power.”" She said she didn’t really believe in Jesus so much but thought there must be a Creator. We talked about this and I shared with her a little about my faith, but I’m not one to preach unless they want to hear about it. I told her that my simple prayer to God is that if he can use me in someone’s life that I am available. Well, after the whole day, we parted and decided to meet on Friday at the Arc Del Triumph at 3pm for coffee. I showed up on Friday, but she never arrived. I figured that she must had forgotten or left the city. I was meeting all kinds of people every day, so it was really no big deal. But a part of me wondered if something had happened to her. I said a little prayer for her safety and went on my way. The next day, Saturday, I decided to spend the day in the Parque de Ciutadella. It’s a beautiful park across the street from where I was staying with a large lake, palm trees, sculptures, birds, kids, elderly feeding the pigeons, and little vendors selling snacks and toys for the children. I spent almost the whole day reading and writing in my journal there quite often. But this day, I had planned on visiting one of the churches I had written down the first few days after my arrival to Barcelona. There were several churches in Barcelona and I wrote many of them down as possible places to visit. There were two close to where I stayed. But I didn’t find out about the closer one until later. Good thing, because this was obviously part of God’s plan! About 4 O’clock that Saturday afternoon, I realized that I better get down there to find out about services on Sunday. I had almost completely forgotten that I intended to find the church. So I hurriedly put my stuff together and began to walk down the street to the church about 8 blocks away.
I walked down the city streets, not really knowing where I was going but eventually found the church. It was an old church and the giant dungeon-like doors were beautiful and gave it great character. I walked up to these dungeon-like doors and knocked loudly. Suddenly, one of the giant doors opened and a man smiled at me. I spoke to him in Spanish and he responded in Spanish and asked me where I was from. I said the ‘Estados Unidos.’ Then he spoke in English because he was American too. He asked what state I was from and I said South Dakota. He smiled and exclaimed that he was from South Dakota as well! (To this day, I have never met another South Dakotan in Europe in three trips and over one year of overall time spent traveling from city to city.) This was strange enough in itself to peak my interest in the church. He invited me in and showed me around. They were remodeling and he told me that the church was shut down under Franco (since this was a Protestant evangelical church) and that now it was open again. And he said that people who were children when they first went to this church are now elderly and have been able to return for the first time since childhood. It was a very exciting time for them. He himself was a missionary and had come to help them replant the church. He was building a crib for his youngest daughter that day, so he didn’t have the time to spend with me, but he said there was a group in the back room meeting over something. He asked if I wanted to meet them. I was a little shy and almost turned him down, not wanting to bother them. But I decided it would be good to meet them. So he took me back to the room and we walked into a meeting of three people sitting around this small table. I looked and to my amazement and her complete surprise was this girl I had met! She jumped up screaming “”David!”" as her chair went flying behind her! She ran over to me and hugged me and asked “”How did you find me?”" She asked me this over and over again how I could have ever found her in this church. “How did you know I was here,” she asked! She was so taken by this she couldn’t stop asking me! I looked straight at her and said, “”This is clearly something God is doing in your life!”" I was as dumbfounded as she was! Everyone in that room, including the missionary, had to admit this was quite remarkable. Especially the fact I was from South Dakota, suddenly showing up at the door at that time when they were meeting, and then to find this girl in the middle of city of 6 million. Now the odds of that is so beyond my mathematical imaginations, I will say this was a miracle and brought together for a reason. I had found out from her that she didn’t make it on Friday for coffee was because of an emergency situation. She was actually at the hospital all that day with a lady from that church she was staying with who also was an alcoholic and part of AA. She had fallen off the wagon and went into a coma and had ended up in t
Get your free registration and log in to view entire article
Post new comment