Visiting the church in Milano

Graffiti House

Last week went by quickly.  Our official semester is ending this week but we are continuing classes with those students who want to continue.  All of mine and Alan’s students are continuing.  Thursday, Alan went to dinner with one of his students and his student’s family.  Now that we are at the end of the semester, it’s nice to look back and see how our relationships with our students have grown.  Another one of Alan’s students, Arben, has been coming to the school nearly everyday this past week.  He made us an Albanian meat pie dinner one night.  They were pretty good!

Cute buildings in Milano

Tram in Milano

Early Friday morning Alan and I took the train to Milano.  Two men from the church took us to Marisa and Carlo’s house where we had lunch with them and a few other people from the church.  Once again, this weekend, most people didn’t speak English, so we were had to practice our Italian.  It’s been good for us to be forced to use it though.  Friday evening we actually stayed with a family that lives 150km outside of Milano.  They live in a very small village, but they wanted to bring us to their home to meet their family.  We had homemade pizza that night and met some of their local friends.  They were very hospitable and sweet to us while we were there.

On Saturday we met with some of the men from the church.  They talked to us about where they are as a church, what their goals are, and what they see us being able to do while we are there.  After our meeting, a different family (who spoke quite a bit of English) took us to a Chinese buffet for lunch (Alan was in heaven.  He’s been missing Chinese food).  It was really good!  It was a huge restaurant. 

Milano from la torre

Vanesita and I!

After lunch, we met with another young couple who gave us a tour of Milano.  We went up a tower to get a good view of the city.  It really is a beautiful city.  The minute we stepped off the train we could tell it was a lot different from the rest of Italy.  It feels more European than the rest of Italy.  It’s huge, crowded, the people seem to move faster, there is more wealth, there are tons of fancy cars, it has tons of skyscrapers, and it’s much cleaner and safer feeling than the other parts of Italy we’ve been to.  It really seems like another Paris or London or New York.  It’s the fashion center of Italy and is the economical capital of Italy.  We saw several beautiful parks, the castello (castle), the duomo (which is a beautiful gothic building that’s close to 1000 years old), and several fashion/high price shops. 

Il duomo - Gothic style.  They started building it 1,000 years ago

Il castello

Saturday evening we went to the church building and had dinner with the Filipinos of the congregation.  The congregation in Milano is multicultural.  It’s so neat!  As we were sitting in church Sunday morning, I kept thinking about how cool it is that people from God’s family have come from all over the world and different backgrounds to meet in Milano and have this worship of the same God in common.  There were Italians, Ghanaians, Ethiopians, Peruvians, Salvadorans, Filipinos, and Americans (us) there on Sunday morning.  Sunday morning service was nice.  The building is in downtown Milano (about two or three blocks from the duomo).  The building is quite large and they have an apartment above the building that they use for offices and classrooms.  They’ve been in that building since right after the war (the term “the war” in Italy is referring to WW2, which they still talk about a lot over here).

After church, they had a potluck.  Everyone was super friendly.  There were lots of kids running around having fun.  We enjoyed getting to talk with everyone there and getting to know them!  They were very welcoming and were super sweet! Per there request, Alan gave a small talk after the potluck about why we’re here and a little background on us. Then we all sat down, after eating tons of food, and sang songs for about an hour.  It was really beautiful, and we enjoyed getting to worship with the family there in Milano. 

Mother's Day Celebration at church

After church, Alan and I had some free time, in which we walked around downtown Milano.  Then Marisa (she’s one of the sweetest ladies I’ve met!) took us to the train station.  We got back to the station in Florence as everyone from the Bible School was finishing feeding the homeless, so we caught a ride home with them. 

 Alan and I are so grateful to all the people in Milan who took time out of their busy schedules to show us around town, take us to places, and host us in their homes.  We had such a lovely time there, and we felt like we were leaving good friends when we returned home. 

Alan and I would appreciate your prayers for us to do God’s will for his will to be evident to us.  We have visited the churches in Roma, Catania, and Milano.  We loved all three places, loved the people there, and we feel that there really is no wrong choice.  We feel that whichever of these three places we end up at, we can be involved in doing good work and sharing the gospel.  Alan and I are praying for His will and for guidance in our decisions here in Italy.  As soon as we know what we are doing on this particular decision of where to live, we will let you all know!