On the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route across Spain, OM is providing rest stops for pilgrims.
The sun streams through the windows as a group of people — all carrying backpacks — chat, drink water and eat fruit.
The group are pilgrims walking El Camino de Santiago (The Way of St James) who have stopped for a rest at O Refuxio, an albergue, or hostel, in Os Muiños, about 5km from the nearest town of Muxia in northwest Spain.
O Refuxio (refuge) is run by Jason (USA), as a ministry of OM in Spain. In 2021, after two years based in the city of A Coruña, he felt led to the Camino de Santiago.
“A Coruña is an hour away from Santiago and there's even a path that goes through the town, so we were seeing pilgrims regularly,” he said. “OM in Spain runs Camino outreaches, where they set up a pop-up tent and have water like an oasis. The pilgrims are ready to talk about spiritual things, and that intrigued us.
“Our initial idea was to open an albergue or hostel and have it be an evangelistic site that the pilgrims could stay at, and we would have a meal together and just try to share the gospel with them.”
Jason said there are two or three other ministries running similar rest stops along the Camino, but not as many as he would have expected. “Not a lot of people are taking advantage of the fact that we have people from all over the world coming through,” he said.
A God-ordained building
With the blessing of his team leader, Jason started looking for a suitable building, expecting to have to put together a budget and present it to churches to raise money for the purchase. But in January 2022, he found a four-storey 900 square metre building right on the Camino for €84,000 (around 94,755 USD) — the price of a small one-bedroom flat.
“I thought, oh, it must be terrible, but I went and looked at it and I thought, you know, it's got a lot of potential,” he said. “I had some guys from the church in A Coruña that work in construction come look at it, and they thought, it's good; it needs some work because it's been empty for 20 years, but another €80,000 (around 90,240 USD) and you've got a pretty good place.”
The owner was open to a rent-to-buy contract and asked for a 10 per cent deposit.
Jason said, “I thought, ‘Alright, Lord, if You want us to do this, I don't have €8,400 (around 9,475 USD) to put down. You're gonna have to provide that and that'll be our answer if we're supposed to do this.' And God raised double!
“So we put the money down, we moved our stuff here, went back to the USA to visit and instead of saying ‘hey, we want to buy this place’, we could say we're in the process of buying and here’s what we want to do.”
The building needed a lot of work to make it habitable, with Jason and his family initially taking showers by torchlight and sleeping in the dining room. In the spring of 2023, they opened up a rest stop for pilgrims to get refreshments, sit down and chat for a while.
“We’ve received short-term groups from the USA, Germany, France and Australia,” Jason said. “A lot have been from OM, but some have been from local churches. We have a lot of electricians, plumbers, masons and so on coming to help with the building work, and others want to do evangelism at the rest stop.
“We've had a lot of people from OM in Germany coming here, which is cool because this particular route seems to attract a lot of Germans. They come here, they're in this little village in Spain, and all of a sudden, somebody starts speaking with them in German, and it’s really cool to see.
“If you think about it, if you're from like Germany or the USA and you don't speak Spanish, what short-term mission trip could you do in Spain and do evangelism? But English is the common language of the Camino, and so actually, you can have good spiritual conversations all day long, and you don't have to learn Spanish.”
Short meetings with big impact
Due to the nature of the ministry, Jason and the volunteers rarely have more than a fleeting meeting with people on the Camino, but sometimes pilgrims share their stories with the team once they return home.
Jason recalled, “A German lady, Jenny, came the first year we were open and met Laura, who was with us with OM in Germany. Laura felt the Holy Spirit leading her to pray with Jenny and as she was praying, she felt God saying: ‘Pray that you know she's valuable and that I love her.’ And so she did.
“Later, Jenny messaged us, telling us that she was planning to end her life after the Camino, but that Laura's words had really meant something to her and she was so thankful. She said she was back in Germany, and she was looking for a church. Last summer, we had another update that she's found a church, and she's following God.
“We rarely get the privilege of hearing stuff like that, but that was one that God allowed us to.”
Next steps
Jason hopes that by 2026, O Refuxio will be fully open with bunk bed accommodation and an evening meal for pilgrims who want to stay overnight in exchange for a donation.
Church groups will also be able to use the hostel for retreats at a subsidised rate in the Camino’s off-season when fewer people are walking the route.
The hope is that these retreats will become a way to mobilise Spanish churches to reach out in their own towns and cities. "With the Camino, it's so easy to get into a spiritual conversation,” Jason said. “You just start with: ‘Why are you doing the Camino?’ And oftentimes they'll have this very deep, personal reason. Or another easy question is: ‘Are you religious?’ Because they're doing a medieval religious pilgrimage, it's not a weird question at all. And then you can get into some good, deep conversations right away.”
Another idea is to open up a coffee shop in the mornings for the hostel’s neighbours in the village.
“There's another cafe in town, but it's more where people go at night to drink and we don't want to open up at the same time,” Jason said. “We aren't really looking to have a business, but we're looking to have a place where people can go, and maybe we could do Bible studies there. In the evening, we could use it for the pilgrims to have their meal. But that needs some work too. We'll need accessible facilities.
The biggest thing Jason would like to see is a church plant which uses the local Galacian language. Some churches say prayers in the language, but Jason is not aware of any which preach in Galacian. Jason is open to using O Refuxio as the base for a Galacian church, and there is an apartment in the building which could be used for a pastor.