Southwesterners reach hardened hearts in Spain with the Gospel

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Southwestern News.

While a boy was growing up in a small town in Iowa, USA, a girl was being raised in the large city of Sau Paulo, Brazil. But today those two individuals, Dwight and Mara Williams, serve together as missionaries in Madrid, Spain, the country where for more than 30 years they have lived out the Gospel for the people they have come to love.

In 1984, Dwight moved from Iowa to Fort Worth to attend Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he pursued his Master of Divinity with an emphasis in missions and evangelism. He felt called to missions and thought living in Texas would give him an even greater opportunity to use his Spanish-speaking ability to spread the Gospel while getting a seminary education.

“There was no better preparation for going overseas,” Dwight says of his time at Southwestern, where he studied under professors such as Roy Fish, Daniel Sanchez, and Justice Anderson. “I had several professors that were just really on fire for missions and evangelism.”

This time at Southwestern provided further confirmation for him in his call to missions, developed in him a love even for church history as a witness of God’s work through the ages, and inspired him through the life and character of professors. Guest speakers in classes and chapel helped him develop a fire in his heart for missions. While Spain was not at first a consideration for him, Dwight says speaking to a visiting missionary from Spain opened his eyes to the spiritual need there.

After graduating, Dwight participated in two mission trips to Spain to get a taste of that culture. It was during that second summer mission trip that he met Mara.

Mara grew up on the outskirts of Sau Paulo, Brazil, the largest city in South America with almost 12 million residents in the city and close to 22 million in its entire metropolitan area. At a young age, she felt that she was called to missions, but found herself seeking confirmation.

“When you receive a call, you’re not so sure, is this for me or not?” Mara says. “And I said, ‘Well, the best way is just to go and see what God speaks to me.’”

That calling became clear for Mara as she went on a mission trip to Spain in 1989. She quickly realized she wanted to not just be a missionary, but to be a missionary in Spain specifically.

“I fell in love with the country,” Mara says. “I fell in love with everything, and I asked God to bring me back here, if it was His will.”

At the same time, Mara began praying that God would lead her to a husband she could serve alongside, knowing that it would ease her own parents’ concerns as well as help her as a missionary. Specifically, after observing the leader of her mission team in Spain and admiring his missions mindset and way of doing missions, Mara began to pray for a partner like him. God answered that prayer quickly and in a way that surprised her.

Her leader during that mission trip was Dwight, and they were married a year later.

But God did not open the door for them to become missionaries right away. In the meantime, the young couple focused their attention on church planting in Texas.

“I always said that it doesn’t make any sense to go overseas and to try to start churches if we can’t do it here,” Dwight explains, saying they spent three years in Arlington, Texas, where they were able to start two churches, one English-speaking and one Spanish-speaking. “… We always felt that it was a great place to get training for missions and the principles of just being out there and meeting people and loving on people and ministering to the neighborhood. That really stuck with us all throughout the years.”

But while that time of church planting and serving in Arlington was a time of blessing and growth, the couple still held on to the hope that they would be able to return to Spain for a lengthier assignment.

The Williamses remained in conversation with the International Mission Board (IMB), hoping there would be a job opening in that part of Europe. Mara says at that time the IMB was not sending many people internationally.

“But God, He is sovereign,” Mara said. “And when He decides something is going to happen, He changes all the rules. So I feel really blessed that He changed things for us.”

In August of 1993, Dwight and Mara moved to Spain, where they have lived for the past three decades, growing accustomed to the culture, coming to love the Spaniards deeply, and missing Spain whenever they leave for a time of furlough. But Dwight says they also came to recognize the challenges of being missionaries in a country with many amenities and conveniences that rival those provided in the United States.

“I think that every mission field has its own sets of easy things and difficult things,” Dwight says. “Here, for example, in Western Europe, Spain, the lifestyle is very first world. We have a lot of conveniences. In some cases, I think it’s just as good as in the States, if not better. … The downside of that is that, for Spaniards in general, their need for God is not real high on their list.”

Spain has a strong Roman Catholic presence, which Dwight says has led to many people believing they already know all there is to know about God. But what they really have is a “dead religion.” Others are opposed to hearing about God because of the brand of Catholicism that was once imposed on them by the dictatorial Franco regime, which ended in 1975. That enforced legalism has resulted in Spaniards choosing to be atheists as they completely reject the idea of God.

In both categories, Dwight says they have had to help the people they meet be “untaught” in their understanding of spiritual things before being able to fully share the Gospel with them.

“They know a lot from the Bible, or they think they know a lot from the Bible,” Mara says of many spiritual interactions with the people they meet. “When you start talking to them, you see that there is not much depth to their knowledge. But they think they know. But like Dwight always said, you have to unteach everything, and make them think, shake their foundation of their beliefs, to say, ‘Maybe, do you think maybe this is wrong?’”

In Spain, only about four of every thousand people are evangelical Christians. When teams from the United States come to serve alongside the Williamses, Dwight says he often tells them that they may be the first evangelical believer some of the people they speak with have ever met. Dwight says their theme verse for the people of Spain is the first part of Psalm 34:8: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

“How are they going to taste, if not through us?” Dwight says.

Despite the barriers to the Gospel, which has included even the government refusing to approve some of their plans, Dwight says they are beginning to see signs of openness among the younger Spaniards, specifically under 30 years of age.

“They’re searching,” Dwight says. “They may not believe that there’s an absolute truth, they’re very post-modern, but if they hear that you’re a spiritual person, that you have Jesus in your life, they want to know, ‘Well, tell me more about it. What’s that like? How has that changed your life? What’s that difference?’ … There’s an increased openness that wasn’t there before, and so that brings us hope.”

The Williams family lived the first seven years in Asturias, Spain, a province in the northern part of the country. There they started a church that would grow to about 70 people.

“It was a great experience,” Dwight says of the area where two of their three children were born. “A lot of difficulty, but it was just a fantastic experience.”

They were then asked by the IMB to take on a leadership role as cluster leader over the missionaries in Spain. To do that, they moved into a suburb of Madrid to be more centrally located.

“It was a great privilege to be able to lead out over the missionaries in Spain and, for a while, also Portugal,” Dwight says. “… It was a privilege to be able to help the missionaries, to not just supervise, but really to encourage them and to train them and to mentor them.”

But even while leading and mentoring other missionaries in their region of Europe, the Williamses never lost their focus of church planting and striving to make disciples in the difficult spiritual culture of Spain.

During those 11 years of living near Madrid, Dwight and Mara planted a house church, where they got to see growth through the conversions of Spaniards. During that time and since, they looked for creative ways they could serve the Spanish people around them, build inroads with the people, and create opportunities to share the Gospel.

“Here in Spain, it needs to be kind of creative as far as reaching out to people,” Dwight says of their efforts. “… We don’t do some things like health clinics or eye clinics. There just isn’t a need for that. What we do is find out areas of interest.”

They found that those interests include activities and services for children, English studies, and craft classes. Dwight and Mara assisted in the start of an annual sports camp, which grew from 30 young people to about 180 some summers. In recent years, they have built on to those summer camps with a back-to-school program providing school supplies to students. They host breakfasts and use that as an opportunity to share about their church and hand out Bibles. They also teach English through conversation classes, where Dwight says they often interact with Spaniards, Latin Americans, and even Chinese as the area has become multi-national with immigration.

Mara also began a women’s ministry through crafts and creative hobbies that has seen thousands of women attend classes and other events. It also ministers to women through a blog. Mara says this ministry has multiplied as other groups have been started in towns surrounding Madrid.

Mara says that ministry has largely been possible because of their partnerships with other churches and organizations that send teams to help, including Southwestern Seminary, which sent a team of students in December 2024 to assist with some of these women’s ministry events and Christmas parties. Mara says many women hear the Gospel for the first time at these events.

“God is still at work in that and using whatever little we have to offer—our creativity, our desire to make beautiful things—for His glory,” Mara says.

But even while hosting events and large gatherings as an avenue for sharing the Gospel, the Williamses say they have discovered that the best Gospel opportunities often occur in the more intimate settings of private conversations and small groups, comparing it to a crock pot method instead of a pressure cooker. Mara says this gives the Spaniards an opportunity to see how their faith is relevant in their lives.

But even in those close relationships, the Spaniards still need to be shared with over many conversations as they take time to consider the Gospel.

“They are very proud people,” Mara says. “You cannot just tell them how things are. And they will not easily accept it. They have to see. They have to prove. And many of the Spaniards, you’re going to talk to them several times about accepting Christ. And when do they do that? They go to their house, in their bedroom, all by themselves. And they do it. Very rarely, you’re going to have somebody … that will say, ‘Okay, I want to pray right now.’”

But the fact that Gospel conversations with an individual can carry on over years without visible fruit causes them to rely even more heavily on the work of the Holy Spirit, Mara says. It has also caused them to adjust their idea of success and instead focus on being faithful and patient. At times that has been difficult when they planned events that no one attended, or conversations seemed to go nowhere.

“You just say, ‘Well, I’ll do my best,’” Mara says. “I’ll do everything I can with excellence, but everything is in God’s hand. If He wants to give fruit, He will. If it’s not His time, He’s still going to be at work. I have to trust that.”

Mara explains that it is difficult to gain access to a Spaniard’s inner circle of friends, but once you have built that bond and trust, they will be faithful friends for life. In the Spanish culture, Dwight says the people are more relational, spending extended lengths of time with family and friends over meals, for example. This way of life has led them to gain friends among the Spaniards that they have known for years and yet continue to share the Gospel with.

“We have learned to be friends with them, even when they say no to Christ,” Mara says. “And keep on loving them until one day, hopefully, they will enter the Kingdom.”

Recently, the Williamses have begun to see areas of fruit and growth among the Spaniards.

In June of 2020, they moved to the inner city of Madrid on a church planting assignment, just as the Covid pandemic caused much of the city to shut down. This led the church to first meet online and then in people’s homes and even in parks or large halls as they followed the protocol of the city for gatherings. But as they dealt with inconsistency as Madrid closed and reopened repeatedly, and while they struggled to find a place to meet, they still saw conversions. That church now has about 50 members and they have seen six people baptized.

Southwestern alumnus Graham Griffin saw some of that growth in person.

After finishing his Master of Divinity at Southwestern in 2022, Griffin spent two years in Madrid through the IMB Journeyman program, saying he was honored to serve and learn under the supervision of Dwight and Mara.

“They are legends,” Griffin says, adding they inspired him in how committed they were to the people of Spain. “… They’ve given their lives to really invest in and love those people.”

While working alongside the Williamses as a worship leader and in a variety of other ways, Griffin says he was amazed by how well they understand the Spanish culture and even adopted it as they molded their lives to fit into that culture, even as they themselves came from two very different cultures. Griffin says their home environment, the food they cook, and the way they live is welcoming to Spaniards and makes them feel comfortable.

“They’ve sacrificed not only their time, but their cultural preferences,” Griffin says, saying they minister to people from other nations as well due to recent immigration. “And that is something to be celebrated.”

After more than 30 years of following God’s leading in Spain, Dwight says they now have the joy of seeing the baton passed on to their children, as their son Christopher started the 2+2 program in 2022, and their daughter Amanda is a biblical counseling student (and serves as the staff photographer for the seminary). Their daughter Sarah also has taken classes at Southwestern.

Through the scholarship Southwestern provides to missionary families, Mara completed a biblical counseling certificate with Southwestern and is now pursuing a Master of Theological Studies through the Hispanic Program, attending classes in person when on furlough and taking other classes online.

“I can attest to the Spirit of God on the professors and the way they share their lives,” Mara says, saying pursuing a degree had always been a dream for her. “They’re not just talking about history or theory. You can see their hearts through all of that. … We’re very grateful to Southwestern for all that it represents, and the people that are being touched around the world today.”

Despite the hardships Dwight and Mara have faced as missionaries, including spiritual warfare, enmity from the government, and even their own exhaustion and disappointments when their plans fall through, Dwight says their time in Spain has been a great adventure and the country has become home to them.

“We love it here,” Mara explains. “With all the difficulties, I think I was made to live here. I was made to serve here. … I come from a big city in South America. He comes from a small city in Iowa, and then here we both found ourselves at home in a third country. God is very creative.”