October 2011

Seven years! As of the end of September we have been in Italy for seven years. How the time flies. We are grateful to all of those who have made it possible to be here serving God and hopefully being useful to the church.

After many hours in airplanes, many hours in cars, perhaps many hours on foot (if you consider walking across all the airports), and even a little time on a tram, we arrived back in Pistoia for the last week of August. This year's trip to the US was about half as long as other years, but we enjoyed the time we had with our supporters, family and friends.

Fall Conference
As soon as we got back, the Florence congregation held it's annual end of summer retreat. I had been invited to speak at this last year, however remodeling at the Harding Villa after a fire caused its cancellation. This year all the renovations had been completed and the retreat went on as planned. It was my first time to attend and I was very encouraging, as I met many new brothers and sisters from around Italy. The theme was “beginnings” - times in the Bible when a new start took place. It was a great honor to have been invited and to enjoy fellowship with my brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, one of our bags was lost during our return trip and someone had to stay at our house to wait for it. It finally arrived at our house on the evening of the last day of the retreat, making it impossible for Heather to attend any of the activities.

Women's fellowship
Back in the spring, the women in the Tuscany region started to organize a time of fellowship, on a quarterly basis, between the women in the congregations. Because most of the churches are spread out and many women are not able to attend the Women's Conference in the spring, we don't know many women outside of our own congregations. There are five congregations of the Church of Christ in Tuscany: Florence, two congregations in Prato, Pistoia and Pisa. During the month of September, the Pistoia congregation hosted this activity with the theme of heroes. Each woman attending selected someone that shaped their lives and their actions, leading them toward a deeper relationship with God. At the end of the day, the women left refreshed and encouraged by the study and fellowship.

Family events
As I'm writing this I realized we have only been back for four weeks. It really seems longer than that! We've been busy as of late, getting things ready for the kids' school. Along with running here and there to get the supplies, there was a dinner for Noah's school, allowing parents and kids to reconnect after the long summer.

Elaina finally has an appointment to start speech therapy on October 5. We are looking forward to this time and praying that we can assist Elaina effectively, as a partner with the speech therapist.

With Noah and Elaina's schools in full swing, we are finally getting back into a pattern of work. Schedules are getting set and a routine is being established. We are eagerly looking forward to the upcoming period, with the hope of being productive in the Lord's kingdom.

Upcoming events
The month of October will be filled with visitors and activities. Our congregation participated in a National Day of Evangelism that was organized for the first Sunday of the month. The idea was to have a demonstration of solidarity among the congregations throughout Italy. On the 2nd of October, congregations all across the nation participated in distributing materials for the church. A flier was proposed for all the congregations to use (slightly modified for each congregation). We pray that this effort will produce fruit throughout Italy.

On the 9th of October we will have Stefano Gaudenzi from Rome as guest speaker. He first spoke for us back in March and the congregation greatly enjoyed his energetic presentation of Scripture. We were blessed to spend a week with him at the children's camp earlier this summer and it was encouraging to see his servant attitude as well. Stefano has also been invited to lead our youth study this month, since his visit also falls on that weekend. We look forward to hearing an encouraging message from him and hope to also be of encouragement to him.

On the weekend of the 16th, the congregation will host Jay Young for a series on the authority of scripture. Specifically: Is the Bible still useful? The inspiration and authority of Scripture. Jay and his wife, Piera, worked with the congregation in Pistoia years ago, and about once a year they stop in to visit on their way to the Ukraine with Christian Relief Fund.

Back in May, on the 5th Sunday of the month, we hosted an afternoon of singing to which we invited the congregations from Prato and Florence. October is also one of those months with five Sundays this time around and, since the idea was so warmly received last time, we will organize it again. Sometimes we get drawn into arguments about who believes exactly what on subjects which should probably remain secondary or tertiary and getting together just to sing to God can have a very encouraging effect. This is our prayer for the event.

In addition to all of the other events for the month of October, we are blessed to have Corene Everett coming to spend a week with us. It is always a blessing to be able to share our home, our daily life and our culture here in Italy with visiting friends and family, and this is no exception.

Conclusion
We want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving with safe travels. Your prayers and thoughts are much appreciated and we always thank God for you all in our prayers. May God bless you until the next time.