On June 14th, 2020, a film crew from TV Valenciana ( À Punt TV) came down to Denia from Valencia and interviewed Eunice on the campus of Colegio Alfa & Omega. The interview aired the following Sunday, June 21st on the program, DÉU DE LA TOTS (God in all) and featured a discussion with Eunice about Alfa & Omega’s Christian philosophy and how the school is coping with Covid-19. Following Eunice’s interview, Jorge added a message highlighting the current status of the Protestant church in Spain. The reception has been surprisingly strong to DÉU DE LA TOTS which is the first broadcast television program delving into Protestant topics, Click here to watch the interview which starts at around 6 minutes and 30 seconds through the program. The interview is in Valenciano but Spanish and English closed captioning is available.
DBF's 2020 Mid Year Update!
DBF’s April 2020 Board Meeting via Zoom
Denia Bridges Foundation Summer Newsletter
By JuneAn Lanigan, DBF Director - California
Greetings from California! On behalf of the DBF Board, we pray that you are all doing well and that you and your loved ones are healthy and safe. As is often said, these are certainly unprecedented times!
I came across a statement by Juan Vincent Gambuto (writer / director) which I found very insightful and inspiring. I hope you do as well. Juan writes of COVID-19 -
… It is the greatest gift ever unwrapped. Not the deaths, not the virus, but The Great Pause. It is, in a word, profound . . . What the crisis has given us is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see ourselves and our country in the plainest of views. At no other time, ever in our lives, have we gotten the opportunity to see what would happen if the world simply stopped. Here it is. We’re in it.
What I see is human compassion and kindness. I see respect. I see support. I see acceptance of ourselves and others in the face of our unhidden strengths and weaknesses. I see an opportunity to not go back to the way things were but to craft a better life, a better community, a better world. I will gladly give up my excess for simplicity. I will be both frugal and generous with my possessions. I will invest more time and energy in friends and family. I will leverage what I have learned of my co-workers and friends during this time to continue to build authentic relationships. I will enjoy the great outdoors with new appreciation and smell every flower.
Colegio Alfa & Omega has shifted beautifully to meet the needs of the students, parents, staff, and community during this time. Primary and secondary online instruction is just one of the many ways they were able to react quickly, which entailed launching a new technology platform and teaching curriculum. Students and staff have also blessed the front-line workers with appreciation through hand drawn pictures, written letters, and choreographed videos. These small, continuous, heartwarming acts of service provide a living example of Christ in the community.
Several California Bay Area DBF Board members, along with The Kings Academy students and chaperones, were anxiously awaiting our trip to Denia at the end of March. However, as the COVID-19 crisis unfolded, travel prohibited, and countries put under government restrictions, our plans quickly dissolved. With heavy hearts, we gathered together to pray for each other, and seek wisdom and guidance on next steps. This brought new hope! We agreed to consider this disruption as temporary and began making plans, God willing, for our visit in 2021!
We are also building partnership with Menlo Church, in Menlo Park, CA, and hope to engage members of the Young Adult community to partner in Colegio Alfa & Omega’s volunteer program next year. With many college age students considering a “gap year”, and young adults considering their next career steps, this is a perfect opportunity for them to participate in the program, experience comradery with peers from other countries, and grow spiritually while providing valuable support to the school.
I leave you with anticipation and excitement for the future, and blessings for today,
JuneAn
The Current Situation in Déñia by Jorge Pastor
Jorge describes how Colegio Alfa & Omega and the Trinity Church in Dénia are coping with the pandemic. Please click here to read the update.
Thoughts on Faith and Covid-19 by Felix Ortiz
Felix Ortiz of Campus Crusade Spain (Agape) delves into his own faith journey during the time of the Corona virus. Please click here.
Colegio Alfa & Omega opens its online instruction to all Students in Spain!
Please click here for details.
Colegio Alfa & Omega Opens its Online Instruction to all Students in Spain!
Colegio Alfa & Omega in Dénia is now offering it’s primary and secondary online instruction to all students in Spain whose schools were closed due to Covid-19 restrictions and provided no online option.
Quickly reacting to the quarantine, Alfa & Omega’s faculty and staff prepared it’s technology platform to deliver daily online teaching to its students. Since Monday, March 23rd, all of its teachers have been teaching the curriculum online, including physical education which is especially important to its students’ (and their parents) well-being. Alfa & Omega is the only primary and secondary school providing online instruction in Dénia. Their preschool is even providing online content that parents can access for the children by demand. Ms. Eunice Pastor, Alfa & Omega’s Head of School explained, “We are providing this opportunity so that more Spanish families are able to more easily tele-commute while leaving the responsibility of teaching their children with our award-winning faculty. They can sign up for hour long sessions or for the entire morning.”
Merry Christmas 2019!
Thanks to you, we have reached our initial goal of $40,000 to fund Phase 1 of the Light for the Future project which will add the final post-16 stage of education (11th and 12th grades) known as the Baccalaureate to Colegio Alfa & Omega's curriculum. This will bring Jorge and Encarnita Pastor’s dream to fruition of an Alfa & Omega Christ-Centered education that spans the complete Spanish curriculum and provides the required education to enroll in university-level studies. Phase 1 of the Light for the Future Campaign will fund the architectural drawings required to obtain the permits for the new Baccalaureate building.
For Phase 2, we will need $250,000 to build the foundation and skeletal building structure. Please consider making a year-end gift to help Colegio Alfa & Omega break ground in 2020!
With Jorge’s miraculous recovery from his cancer through the immunotherapy treatment, Jorge has made the expansion of Alfa & Omega’s educational program to include the 11th and 12th grades his number one priority.
Jorge said recently,
“I would like God to use me to complete this educational cycle because I am sure that the Lord would use this time to allow us to dialogue more with the students and share our faith with them. High school is such a formative time for solidifying one’s faith and world view and so much of it is impacted by their environment, their peers, their teachers and their community. The families are demanding the baccalaureate program and the students desperately want it. As you know we are the only private protestant school in Spain. For this reason, Colegio Alfa & Omega is one of the most successful models for the growth of Spanish and European Protestantism. If the Lord permits, I will dedicate my life to achieving this goal. I am convinced that the Lord wants us to assume this challenge for our nation. Europe and Spain need Jesus Christ.”
Photos from Alfa & Omega’s annual Christmas pageant.
Dénia Bridges Foundation Announces New Board Member
Dénia Bridges Foundation (DBF) is excited to welcome its newest board member, Ms. JuneAn Lanigan, a senior Silicon Valley business executive with over 25 years of senior leadership positions at IBM, Siemens, Cisco, Intuit, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Juniper Networks and Western Digital. JuneAn is a member of Menlo Church in Menlo Park, California and has served in leadership for several ministries at Menlo, including LifeKeys, Equipping Ministries, Women’s Bible Study, and Compassion Weekend. In 2016, she was nominated for Menlo Church’s Elder Board (a four-year term) and in 2018 was elected the President of the Board. JuneAn will help DBF achieve its mission of supporting innovative approaches to expanding the kingdom of Jesus Christ in Spain through Christian Education and Youth Leadership programs.
JuneAn and her husband Kevin felt called to support Christian education in Spain after serving as host parents to Kiko, a Spanish exchange student from Colegio Alfa & Omega (Dénia, Spain) in 2018. The Lanigans along with their two daughters, MacKenzie and Caitlyn, then traveled to Dénia shortly after to visit Kiko and his family, touring Colegio Alfa & Omega, its special prayer garden, the Trinity Church and meeting with faculty and administration. “I am honored to be part of this dynamic and inspiring team and look forward to witnessing all that God has planned for Colegio Alfa & Omega, its current and future students and the impact of Christ’s love in the community of Dénia,” said JuneAn. Scott Johnson, President of the Dénia Bridges Foundation board added, “I am pleased to welcome JuneAn to our board. She brings a wealth of experience and expertise in her field and will be a tremendous asset to our board as we work towards our goal of supporting the establishment of Spain’s first Protestant Baccalaureate college prep program at Colegio Alfa & Omega in Dénia“.
Happy Summer 2019: DBF's Mid Year Update
Summer at Alfa & Omega means camps!
One of our first memories of meeting Jorge Pastor, who along with his wife Encarnita founded Colegio Alfa & Omega 40 years ago, was during our first month of living in Dénia on a sabbatical in August 2001.
In the midst of mounting frustration of getting used to a new country, a foreign language, a new culture, a new school, a new church and not being able to complete the ten things on our Silicon Valley-esque to-do lists every day, Jorge stopped by our little townhouse near the port to check on us. He just seemed to sense that we needed a hug and some encouragement. Jorge's visit instantly transmitted a sense of peace and tranquility and a feeling that things would be okay. From that point on, we felt that maybe God had a purpose for us being in Dénia.
Soon after Jorge’s visit to our townhouse, he asked us to help organize the school library and serve as librarians for the year that we were there. We soon added assistant scout leaders working with Paco and teaching English to four-year old pre-schoolers to our CVs. Then fifteen years later, we prayed with Jorge and Eunice in Dénia about how we could best support Alfa & Omega’s mission from the US which was the beginning of the Dénia Bridges Foundation. Jorge is truly incredibly gifted at challenging people to use their gifts for God’s purposes.
And then in November of 2017, on the same Sunday that Jorge and Antonio Calero, co-senior pastors of Trinity Church of Dénia passed the baton to Pastor Elias Nofuentes, Jorge found out that he had a large tumor in his colon. This was of course a shock for all of the Dénia community around the world. It's been a long battle with multiple surgeries with seemingly more downs than ups. Amazingly though somehow in the middle of much pain, Jorge was able to receive the honorary doctorate of letters from the Dallas Baptist University one year ago in Dallas and give the commencement address to a large chapel full of graduates, 19 members of his family from Spain and over one hundred friends from all around the US. God is truly faithful.
The chemotherapy and radiation treatments weren’t working well enough so Jorge’s doctors recommended that he try an innovative new immunotherapy treatment that might be more effective in reducing both the pain and the size of the tumor. And miraculously this is exactly what has happened so far! It’s still early in the process, but the news is promising.
Clearly Jorge is not out of the woods yet, but he feels stronger, has much of his amazing energy back and is regularly participating in Trinity’s Sunday services which are broadcast weekly on Facebook Watch. It appears that God must have more kingdom work for Jorge to do. Please Please Please continue your prayers for Jorge and his doctors and that the immunotherapy would continue to be effective and that the cancer would go into complete remission.
On behalf of DBF's board, we pray that you are receiving God's blessings this summer and getting much needed rest and relaxation. We also sincerely hope that you will enjoy this newsletter. Please send any questions or suggestions to us directly at info@deniabridges.org
In His service,
Sue and Scott Johnson
End of 18/19 School Year Update from Alfa & Omega
Head of School Eunice Pastor Sendra
Eunice shares the highlights and her thoughts on the school year that recently ended at Colegio Alfa & Omega. Please click here to read Eunice’s update.
Alfa & Omega students spend summer in Texas!
As part of its long term partnership with Trinity Church of Dénia, the Columbus Avenue Baptist Church of Waco, Texas, hosts Alfa & Omega students for a summer filled with fun. Please click here for the story and photos.
Partnership Update : The King's Academy, CA
The King’s Academy, (TKA) a large Christian high school on the San Francisco Peninsula is partnering with Colegio Alfa & Omega by sending a group of 15 high school juniors and seniors to Dénia next April 2020 for Holy Week. For more information click here!
Clara Johnson, former Alfa & Omega
student, teaches Psychology research techniques to
A&O 3rd Year ESO students.
In May, Clara Johnson, a soon to be doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of Washington, spent the month of June in Dénia, teaching a Psychology survey course to Alfa & Omega 3rd Year ESO students. It was a special experience for Clara to come back and teach at Alfa & Omega after attending her first year of elementary school there 18 years ago in 2001/2002 .
In 2015, we founded the Dénia Bridges Foundation (DBF), a US 501c3 religious non-profit corporation based in Menlo Park, California to raise financial support for Christian Education and Youth Leadership in Spain from the United States. Each of our six volunteer board members has deep experience volunteering for extended periods at Colegio Alfa & Omega and the other related ministries in Dénia.
We pray that you will consider financially supporting Colegio Alfa & Omega, the Trinity Church, Montgó Christian Retreat Center and/or Felix and Sara Bonet this year. And as always 100% of your donation will arrive to your designated recipient as we do not deduct any administrative fees. Our EIN is 47-3436255.
You can make either an online donation here or send a check to
Dénia Bridges Foundation
PO Box 7749
Menlo Park, CA. 94025
phone: (650) 503-4501
The King's Academy Partners with Colegio Alfa & Omega
We are very happy to announce that The King’s Academy, (TKA) a large Christian high school on the San Francisco Peninsula is partnering with Colegio Alfa & Omega by sending a group of 15 high school juniors and seniors to Dénia next April 2020 for Holy Week. The team will be working with Alfa & Omega students, helping them with their English, sharing the gospel, and encouraging their brothers and sisters in the faith. The TKA students will also be helping out with a work project on Alfa & Omega’s campus.
While TKA sends service teams around the world every Holy Week, this will be their first trip to Europe. And it’s the very first team going to Dénia from the SF Bay Area.
You can find more information on TKA’s Website: https://www.tka.org/page.cfm?p=10432
Merry Christmas 2018 from Dénia Bridges!
Eunice explains the historical significance of the Prayer Garden at Colegio Alfa & Omega in Dénia to Les, Suzanne and Scott from Menlo Park, CA.
2018 was truly a year of profound change in the ministries that DBF supports in Dénia. The torch was passed to a new generation of leadership at both Colegio Alfa & Omega where Eunice Pastor (also DBF Founding Board Member) took the helm from her father Jorge Pastor as Executive Director, and at the Trinity Church of Dénia, where Jorge and Antonio Calero passed the baton to Elias Nofuentes, as Senior Pastor.
2018 was also a year of celebration and praise. In August, Jorge gave the Summer commencement address at Dallas Baptist University's graduation exercises after receiving an honorary doctorate of divinity awarded by DBU's president. And then in November, retiring pastors of Trinity Church, Antonio and Jorge, were honored in a very special Sunday service in Dénia for their more than 40 years of ministry and service. We are also very grateful for the families in Texas, Tennessee and California who hosted Alfa & Omega students during the year. And finally we thank God that Alfa & Omega's classrooms are full and that the school continues to build a reputation for delivering a high quality Christ-centered education where kids can flourish. Colegio Alfa & Omega truly serves as a beacon of God's light from Dénia that shines all over the world.
On behalf of the faculty, staff and administrators of Colegio Alfa & Omega, the leadership of the Trinity Church of Dénia and the board of the Dénia Bridges Foundation we wish you peace, happiness and joy this Christmas and throughout the New Year. Scott and Sue Johnson
End of Year Thoughts of Colegio Alfa & Omega's Head of School, Eunice Pastor
Eunice gives an update on the past year and her biggest prayer requests. Click here to read.
Baccalaureate Program Marches Forward!
Alfa & Omega has embarked upon the Light for the Future capital campaign to add the two year college prep Baccalaureate program. We are only $5,000 away from fully funding the startup phase! Click here for to read more.
Dallas Baptist University awards Honorary Doctorate to Jorge
Dallas Baptist University honored Jorge Pastor with the Honorary Doctorate of Divinity with 17 of Jorge's family members and over a 100 of Jorge's friends from around the US on hand. Click here to read more.
Jorge and Antonio Honored for 40 years of Ministry and Service
In an emotional celebration, the Trinity Church of Denia honored co-senior pastors Jorge Pastor and Antonio Calero for their more than 40 years of service and ministry. Click here to read more.
The Power of Partnership
Columbus Avenue Baptist Church in Waco, Texas is Giving Light for the Future to Colegio Alfa & Omega. Click here to read more.
In 2015, we founded the Dénia Bridges Foundation (DBF), a US 501c3 religious non-profit corporation based in Menlo Park, California to raise financial support for Christian Education and Youth Leadership in Spain from the United States. Each of our six volunteer board members has deep experience volunteering for extended periods at Colegio Alfa & Omega and the other related ministries in Dénia.
We pray that you will consider financially supporting Colegio Alfa & Omega, the Trinity Church and/or the Montgó Christian Retreat Center this year. And as always 100% of your donation will arrive to your designated recipient as we do not deduct any administrative fees. Our EIN is 47-3436255.
The Power of Partnership: CABC is giving Light for the Future at Colegio Alfa & Omega!
by David Villarreal, CABC Minister of Missions and DBF Board Member
“I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” – Philippians 1:3-6
In the fall of 2015, Columbus Avenue Baptist Church in Waco, Texas recognized the profound gospel work that was taking place in Dénia, Spain and signed a covenant of partnership with La Iglesia Evangélica Bautista La Trinitat de Dénia or Trinity Baptist Church (TBC). The Baptist Church of Dénia has called this coastal city home for more than 102 years. In fact, it is one of the few churches in Spain where an evangelical church has remained for more than a century. Today, the church in Dénia is the largest Baptist Church in a 4-hour radius and serves as a “mother” church to several other churches in Spain.
Our goal is to work together in expanding the Kingdom of God in Spain and around the world. One of the ways this is being fulfilled is by partnering with TBC to plant 5 churches in cities surrounding Dénia where there is no evangelical presence over the course of at least a 5-year partnership. TBC has since established Houses of Hope or church plants in the nearby towns of Bellreguard, Benissa, Javea, Ondara, and Pedreguer.
Another essential part of our partnership that takes place on the campus of Trinity is Alfa & Omega School, which serves over 400 students aged pre-school through 10th grade. For the last 3 years, CABC has partnered in this work by bringing over 7 different missions teams resulting in over 100 members of our church serving in the school. From our first visit, it became evident that the school and its leaders have done an exceptional job connecting with the community. Apart from Alfa & Omega being the only private evangelical school in Spain, it is also the first and only school to have a platform that seeks to bring in the whole community and is used as an outreach program. This is why we are delighted to celebrate and support this work through the Light for the Future project. CABC recently voted to support this incredible new vision and project by donating over $12,000 to see the gospel shared with students and their families. Alfa & Omega is a light in the darkness, a refuge among the storms of life. Therefore, we at CABC want to echo Paul’s heart and give thanks for the power of partnership. I am grateful to CABC for their generosity and TBC and Alfa & Omega for their vision and partnership in the gospel.
Retiring Pastors Jorge Pastor and Antonio Calero Honored for their 40 Years of Service
In an emotional celebration on Sunday, October 28th, the Trinity Church of Denia honored co senior pastors Jorge Pastor Mut and Antonio Calero Cerrada for their more than 40 years of service and ministry. Attendees and speakers included the Mayor of Denia and other city officials as well as the senior leadership of the National Spanish Baptist Church. Friends and family members gave heart felt tributes during the ceremony while others living abroad and not able to attend honored Antonio and Jorge via video. While both Jorge and Antonio will continue to appear in the pulpit occasionally, both have recently retired from active leadership of the church, having passed the baton earlier this year to Pastor Elías Nofuentes who presided over the special service.
