Post-Vision Trip

It has been sad to see the vision trips go back to America. It was good in some ways having a ton of Americans here in Italy for two weeks. It was really interesting also to see how both weeks were totally different not just because the trips were from two different places.

UCF was the first week. There was four staff and four students for a total of eight. Five out of the Eight had been to Salerno before. For them it was good to catch up with their friends on campus. The week was very rainy and cold so there were not may Italian students around to share the gospel with. We ended up doing Soularium with blown up 8x10 size pictures for two days on campus inside the buildings. Soularium is a tool that uses pictures to share the gospel. People relate their life, spiritual walk, and God to different pictures and allows them to explain more in depth because the pictures are very well done, depicting certain emotions. Moreover, I was able to meet a few guys through the outreach at the Cube that Thursday.

Mississippi State came this past week. There were 22 of them and campus was booming since it was some of the best weather this year. They were walking up to people and using a gospel tool called the Ransom Principle which focuses on the law and good works at the beginning more than the 4 Spiritual Laws that Crusade normally uses. The gospel was shared so many times this past week. We met a lot of spiritually interested people. The top people that I met and plan to meet up with again that you can pray for is Francesco x 3, Emanuel, Pierre Paolo, and Lello. Please pray for existing relationships with Carlo Alberto, Alfredo, Davide, and Orlando who plays semiprofessional basketball here and came to Christ in 2006. I plan on trying to reach out to all these guys within the the next two weeks.

Soularium
Francesco and I

Playing Soccer

 

UCF Vision Trip

As Rodney mentioned in the last post, we have two different groups coming in for a vision trip over the next two weeks. These weeks have the potential to be very exciting for the ministry here, but they also require quite a bit of work. The group from UCF will be here for the first week.

Monday:

Arrive in Salerno around 12pm

Evangelism/Cultural Training 3pm-5pm

(Please pray for this small team of only 8 Americans to be on fire for how God can use them this week on campus.)

Tuesday-Thursday:

On campus evangelism 10am-3pm

(Please pray for the team to meet English speakers on campus to engage in spiritual conversations. Also, please pray for the weather. It is supposed to be cold and rainy which could mean that there won't be as many students on campus just hanging out)

Thursday Night:

Outreach event at local hang out called the Cube

(Pray that many Italians will come to this event. Pray that the STINT team would connect with any new contacts that the vision trip team makes)

Thanks so much for your prayers. Please also pray that despite the less than perfect weather (40s-50s and heavy rain) that the team would be able to connect with students on campus.

This Week Update

This week has been very busy for us here in Salerno. First, Vision Trip is next week and since Amanda and I are the point people that have been organizing the events, making schedules, delegating tasks that need to get done for our team, and communicating with the vision trip leaders from UCF and Mississippi State respectively. We will put out a schedule on our blog this weekend so you can be praying during the exact time for some of the events. (We are 6 hours ahead of you in Eastern Time, you can see the clock on the right side of our home blog page for the time in Salerno.

The Crawford's also arrived back with their little one, Lila Grace, who today turns two months old. The Crawford's are the other couple on our team other than the Valiquette's. Please pray for them to adjust back to Italian time and culture!

Also this week Jutty and I met up with Nico on campus.

Nico is one of the guys who became a Christian in 2006 during the summer project when almost 40 people indicated decisions for Christ. Nico has been discipled on and off since then with two of his friends Andrea and Paolo. Nico would like to keep studying the Bible so we are going to meet with him on Thursdays!

(Here's Rodney on campus this summer when we bumped into Nico and his friends.

Nico is to the left of Rodney in the blue shirt.)

We re-started the guys Bible study this Wednesday at 3pm where it should continue every week. Marko, Andrea, Gian Luca, and Stefano are going to be a part of this. They are hungry for the word and are interested in being in a community of believers. Please pray that we can start other studies and this one will grow.

The biggest prayer request that I currently have is we are getting about 10 people together who have professed faith in Christ, who are currently growing in their faith with us, and people we see on a regular basis so that we can keep up with what God is doing in their lives. We are going to have a time that they can share about how God is using them and how they are growing in Christ WITH EACH OTHER! Many of them only know us and not each other. We are excited because this could the beginning of people seeing that there are other Italians that are sharing their faith and God is moving in their lives. This event is going to be at 7pm tomorrow, 3/5. Please pray that the Holy Spirit moves in our midst and that God would heal a lot of people of sickness on our team including the Crawford's, the Valiquette's kids, and Evin their nanny. Can't wait to update you guys on how this goes!

Here's a pictures of Amanda and Grant enjoying some sunshine. We haven't seen very much of it since we've been here so we've been trying to take advantage of every chance that we get!