Spring Conference

We got back late Sunday night from our Spring Conference. We took 2 big vans to fit all 5 kids and 10 team members in. In coming up and going back we had to pack both vans at the same time in order to get all the stuff in them we needed to. It also always gets me how different driving in another country is. On top of that it was raining on Sunday evening and there was a ton of traffic as we drove on the autostrada on the outskirts of Rome.

Grant's favorite toy as we drove up

It gave me time to think about a lot of the content of the conference. God works His big story in the small stories of Abraham, Job, and Paul. The most impacting was probably remembering Job's story. His story included incredible affliction, but the central message was not about trials and temptation but just how much he trusted God. He desired answers to all his questions of why he was getting tested when the Lord just wanted his trust.

This week is a little different. One of the leaders of our team is going back home to get married and start a new life. Amanda Craig is in her fourth year here and is considered long term staff in Italy. She is pretty close to fluent in Italian and she has gotten to know the culture here pretty well. We are meeting a few times to discuss the future of the ministry again this morning so we can get her input before she leaves on Sunday. Its somewhat of a debrief in order to bring structure of what the ministry is going to look like for years to come. Between all our team there is 17 years experience of living in Italy not counting Amanda and I since we just got here and Evin the Valiquettes babysitter this semester, so we feel like the dialogue that comes about on numerous different topics is going to be key in the framework of the future.

New Friends

Some of the highlights this week is that we got to have Francesco and his girlfriend, Lucia, over for lunch this past Wednesday. I met Francesco when the vision trips were here a few weeks ago. A picture of me and him is on the blog a few posts back. This was the second time I got to hang out with them and the first time they got to meet Amanda and Grant since I met Francesco for the first time. They only know a few words in English so we only talk in Italian which is extremely good for my language learning.

We met Ambrogio on campus a few weeks ago. He is interested in studying the Bible and so we went through a lot of scriptures on how Christ is the fulfillment of the law last Thursday. He said for the first time he understood that the law is a guide and shows us our sin not the means by which we get to heaven on how good we follow it. We are going to meet again this Thursday. Please pray that it goes well and we are lead by the Spirit.

A Few Interesting Things

Newest Insieme- Agape Italia's Newsletter. I posted about it a while back. It gives you the best vision and reality of where the ministry is heading inside of Italy as a whole.

Another fun thing is this map of Italy made of words. Click on it to make it bigger. We live in Southwestern, Italy. There is great coffee and pizza is our region. The fun thing about the map is to see how diverse Italy really is region to region. The only big mistake I found on the map is that Good Pizza should not be above the Vatican.

Lastly are some interesting facts about the spiritual reality here in Italy.

DID YOU KNOW:
• 32,000 (out of 33,500) Italian communities have no established evangelical witness
• Only 10% (of expatriate missionaries) on average return for a second term
• there are 616 official religions in Italy
• there are an estimated 100,000 recognized fortune-tellers
• less than 5% of Catholics are actually practicing
• Islam is the second religion in Italy. Jehovah’s Witnesses are as numerous as all Evangelicals put together
• 2.6 million foreigners live in Italy
• in Milan alone more than 1000 teenagers commit suicide each year

Would you take a moment and pray about these things?

Buona Pasqua

Has it really been two weeks since I have posted? Time flies these days. I have something say that I am very excited about! We finally got our internet at full power! A technical person came about a week ago worked on it for about two hours and our DSL turned on 3 days later! It makes Skype and our vonage phone way more consistent. So feel free to call if you want but do not call past 4 in the afternoon. The time in Salerno is on our blog so you do not forget :)

We have been trying to get back in a groove here being on campus without leading a bunch of Americans around who do not speak much Italian. We have gotten in some good conversations where we have built some relationships or shared the gospel or both. We try to rely on the Holy Spirit to guide our conversations. Please continue to pray for us.

Our Bible study with Marko, Gian Luca, and Andrea continues to go well. God has really blessed us with 3 guys that want to go deep and also understand a ridiculous amount of English so that we only have to talk in Italian a little. They converse in Italian about what we are talking about in English. I almost think it is better because it forces them to talk to each other for understanding and it is interaction between them and not just us. The first picture below is of Gian Luca and his band. He is the lead singer. Andrea is also in a band as a drummer. The second picture below is a set with him playing drums and his friend Mimmo playing base and singing.

God also has been dealing with me in the area of my repentant heart from one of the Bible studies. It is a deeper issue that God exposed to me through the study. It is an awesome thing that God has been growing me and humbling me because here I am supposed to have it all together, but I don't. This is one of things we are trying to implement. We need the gospel just as much as any Italian.

This past week we have gone at half speed as we want to continue to be intentional but it is our Spring Break and a week where Easter at end causes the university to be more empty. I got to spend more time with Francesco. His picture is below. Also Jaime and Tyler came in town and got engaged. They were interns on the team last year. The bummer of this week was that Grant was sick for a few nights and caused us to not get as much sleep. We missed a few days that were beautiful that we could have taken day trips. We do not always have a lot of time blocked off to do a whole day because a lot of times on Saturday or Sunday we will hang out with students or at least do church related events.

It was Pasqua yesterday and Paquetta today. Basically in English Pasqua is Easter and Pasquetta is little Easter or Easter Monday. The tradition on Pasquetta is to go some other city and have a picnic with friends and family. We met some friends at Marko's hotel from Battipaglia that attend the church there.

For Pasqua you give huge chocolate eggs to people. I asked a few people if they have had Easter egg hunts or heard of the Easter bunny and they said no. So it is weird that their is the tradition of the Easter egg. Wikipedia translated says that the commercialized Easter egg is more prevalent where there is more traditional Easter and thus Easter egg hunts have not become as popular. It is basically the same as the tradition of the Christmas tree at Christmas. It is the merge of two different traditions that happen around the same time of year. Here is some of the big eggs decorated beautifully with sweet surprises in them. The first picture are Juventus and AC Milan eggs which are big soccer clubs in Italy.

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!