Kirbys in Catania

The week after we moved to Catania (so the 2nd week in July), we started meeting some of our students.  Andrea has about 7 or 8 students now that we will be taking over in September.  This is her last month of teaching, and we'll be going to the classes with her.  In August, most Italians go on vacation, shops are closed, and everything just kind of stops for that month as far as we've heard.  So there aren't going to be any classes in August. Wednesday evening, everyone from the Bible School in Florence came down to help with the VBS here.  We've been planning on doing this "traveling VBS" for several months now, and the Catania church of Christ was the one church that asked us to come.  It had only been a little over a week since we'd seen everyone from Florence, but it was good to see them again. Thursday was a "fun day."  Francesco took us on a tour to Siracusa.  It's a city about an hour south of Catania.  It's one of the pl...

Alan and I are on the move again! We're going to Albania....but just for a week.  We've been invited to go with Stephano and Rina to a camp in Albania.  This is a Christian camp for families in Albania.  There will be people there from all over Albania, and we're told that we will be meeting some other Americans who are doing mission work in Albania.  Stephano and Rina are both teaching classes at this camp for families.  Alan and I will be going along to meet with the Christians and missionaries there.  We'll be helping out in any way possible, and just getting to fellowship with others. I'm writing this blog in advance, because this was an unexpected expense that we do not have budgeted.  However, since we have no classes or obligations during this time in August (1st-13th), we felt that going with Stephano and his family to help and to meet others would be a good experience. The expenses for this trip in total are $600.  If you are interest...

Megan crammed into the back of our little fiat panda. Here starts the tale of how Alan, Rachel, and Megan made their way to Catania Sicily from Florence. We rented a little Fiat Panda and we fit all of our belongings minus one suitcase into it.  Megan came along with us for our ride to Sicily as mini vacation/helped us a lot with the move (Thanks Meg!).  We made it into a bit of an adventure.  Alan planned the trip, so it should come as no surprise that the first stop was Naples just so we could eat at Da Michele for pizza (it's famous for it's pizza and they only make margherita and marinara pizzas).  It was pretty good.  Actually it was amazing!  Service...ummm yeah not so great, but pizza was worth it.  Normally people wait a couple of hours to get into this place.  We went really early for dinner (5:30ish) so we only waited for maybe 20 minutes. No matter how many times we've had pizza, we still get this excited about good pizza ...

Before VBS we had a girls day on June 8th.  We invited our students and the Harding students to spend a day getting massages, haircuts, or pedicures.  We also played a bunch of "girly" movies that people watched while they waited for their haircut or whatever it was they were waiting for.  We cooked a breakfast of eggs, french toast sticks, and fruit.  A few of the Harding students came and After VBS the rest of the month flew by. Alan and Rosa cooking for the Harding group We visited Catania yet again from June 17th - 19th in order to try to find an apartment.  We were successful!  It's a nice apartment with a little garden(patio), and it's not to far from the church.  We can easily bike to the church from it.  It has a guest bedroom, so if you're thinking about visiting us, there's a place for you to stay! When we came back we had only a few more days with the Athletic group from Harding left.  They are the second group of stud...

Since I haven't updated in a while, I have a lot to write about.  I'll probably break it up into a couple of blogs here in the next couple of days or so if I can.  Last time I wrote about our decision to move to Catania.  Well, we are here, but before I discuss that subject I have a few things to update about what we did in Florence. First, we had VBS on June 15th at the church.  Everyone put a lot of work and effort into it, and it showed because it went famously well! We had 25 kiddos show up from the churches in the area.  The theme was Corri la Corsa (Run the course), and the theme was based off of the verse Hebrews We used the analogy of being ready to run the race of the Christian life on Jesus' team with preparing for a physical race/event.  So we started with a physical warm up that Simone led the kids in.  They had a lot of fun with that.  Then they split off into classes.  We had three classes that expanded on this theme....