There are a lot of volunteers here. The school is run on volunteers. They work in the office, direct physical activities, help in the kindergarten/play school, assist in the dorms and help the teachers.
By Carelle and Peter Colquhoun

We have been in Spain close to one year, at Sagunto teaching English to the theology students at the seminary here. It is only a small seminary - about 40 students in the four years of theology. However, there is a primary and secondary school on the campus as well as a Spanish language school. Plus, American college students can come here for one year and study the Spanish language, culture and history, etc. It's a great program and they get cross credits at their colleges at home. They do tours around Spain to all the historic places, too.

Seminary students come from Spain, Portugal, Romania and some South American countries-Bolivia, Colombia and Argentina.

The Church membership in Spain is very small with the biggest growth among the Romanian people. The Romanians share about 2,000 common words with the Spanish so they can begin a conversation immediately when they arrive here. The Portuguese also have a knowledge of Spanish when they come.

There are a lot of volunteers here. All of them, except us, are bi- or tri-lingual. The school is run on volunteers who serve in the office, direct physical activities, help in the kindergarten/play school, assistant in the dorms and help the teachers in the Spanish language school. Then there's us, teaching English.

English has just been introduced into the program this year because the Euro-Africa Division (including the Spanish Union) has adopted English as its common language. As you can imagine there are a lot of languages spoken in this Division (with its headquarters in Switzerland). This means that theology students in all the seminaries in the Division will need to learn English in order to participate in seminars, conferences, etc run by the Division and to communicate with the Division.

We live in the married student apartments, but the other volunteers live in either the boys' or girls' dorms.

We have thoroughly enjoyed our year here. The work has been quite easy. We only have classes in the mornings, although that means up to 1:40 pm or 2:30 pm, as lunch is never before 2:00 pm. Then of course there is siesta after that until 5:00 pm. We get every Wednesday off because the seminary is closed for the students to go canvassing to earn money.

The school doesn't have siesta though. The students work or study in the afternoons, but all shops (except supermarkets) are shut from 2 pm-5 pm. This can be a bit of a nuisance. Tourists find the siesta time annoying when most things shut down.

The work of the Church in Spain goes slowly as the Catholic religion is part of the culture. Although not many attend mass on a regular basis they turn out for all the ‘holy processions’ at Easter, etc.

The students in the seminary are dedicated to the work they want to do and participate in a number of different programs like Five-day plans (needed here in Spain where 65% of the population smoke), health programs and cooking demonstrations, and evangelistic meetings in nearby towns. At least half of the students are away each Sabbath preaching in one of the small churches nearby.

If it wasn't for the pull of grandchildren back home, who are growing up not knowing us, we would be happy to stay for another year (or two).

Carelle and Peter Colquhoun were missionary volunteers from Australia. Prior to their volunteer service, Peter served as a Conference President.