Megan-Alicia Berry reports after attending CMF's student conference

In February, my friend Eli and I had the opportunity to attend CMF's Student Conference for the first time. We are both third year medical students at the University of Granada, in the south of Spain. While we were there, quite a few people asked us what it was that had made us decide to come to the conference. Now we've had time to think, here are some answers.

What is your CMF group like?
We are our group. As far as we know, Eli and I and one other girl we have contact with every so often are the only Christian students in our medical school. The ICMDA movement in Spain, the Unión de Médicos Evangélicos (UME), is a much younger and smaller movement than CMF UK. At the moment there is only really one group as such in Madrid.

What is there for Christian medical students, then?
Where we are, in Granada, there isn't anything specifically for Christian medical students. Committed Christian students generally get involved with the local Christian Union at their University. Thankfully, in Granada we have a great group in which we are involved. However, there are still quite a few universities in Spain without a Christian student movement on campus.

So, why did you decide to travel all the way to England to go to a medical student conference? There is nothing quite like it in our country. Of course we have student conferences and summer camps, but they're not aimed only at medical students. Even if there were, there might only 10–20 medical students in all of Spain interested. In a country where most Christians either know each other or have at least one friend in common, I only know seven other Christian medical students. So that wouldn't make much of conference.

The UK is blessed with a strong CMF movement, great speakers, amazing and seemingly unlimited literature and other resources and we wanted a taste of that. It was an amazing experience which we both enjoyed very much and would be happy to go again. Spending a weekend surrounded by over 300 other Christian medical and nursing students was great. The teaching was very useful and inspiring. And the seminars...there was so much choice it was hard to choose! We enjoyed the ones we went to, but are sure all of them were good.

Hopefully this is a better answer than I was able to give to those who spoke to us at the conference and to those who wonder why international students travel such a long way to be there. I hope it helps you understand a little of what it's like to be a medical student in a different country. Thank you for welcoming us with open arms.

Megan-Alicia Berry is a medical student in Granada, Spain.