Updates, Activities, and Lessons

I apologize for how far behind I am on this blog.  This is my attempt to catch everyone up to what we are doing here in Italy lately.

The day after we came back from our camp trip to Albania, Alan and I packed up again and returned to Florence for a week of Convegno.  The first half of the week (Aug 18-21) was a youth convegno.  We had so many kids there! We were expecting somewhere around 25 since that's all that registered, but we had somewhere around 45 teenagers and young adults come to the Bible School for the youth convegno. It was an amazing experience.  Though we were in the kitchen a lot preparing their meals or busy preparing other activities for them, we enjoyed the time we got to spend with the youth.  Alan and I were burnt out with photography that week, so we took hardly any photos.  I will be stealing some photos from my fellow Avanti Workers for this blog (thanks guys!).


puppet show
The theme for the youth convegno was "Like Children" and came from the verses in Matthew 18:2-3, which says, "And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.'"  There were devotionals twice a day discussing this topic, and we did activities that went along with this theme such as: playing games at the park, preparing a puppet show, and hosting a kids day at the park (about 15-20 kids showed up to play games with us, get their faces painted, and watch a puppet show).  We also took them to the station to feed the homeless, sang at the nursing home (absolutely love getting to do that), and translated a couple of new church songs into Italian.

Our park day sign "Day of fun"


Singing at the nursing home

 After the youth convegno, the main Florence convegno started.  I'm not sure how many people were there, but there were a lot.  We enjoyed getting to fellowship with people that we've met so far this year from all over Italy, and we enjoyed meeting new ones.  Alan and I also got to spend a little bit of time visiting with our former students there.  
Laura and Joele practicing for the talent show
Basketball (not soccer for once) Notice Dario cheering them on with the construction cone
It was Sicilians versus Italians. ;) Alan was on the Sicily team.  lol

 We returned to Catania for the last week of August.  August in Italy is a holiday.  Everyone is gone, the shops are closed, and there just really isn't anything to do.  So during this week, while Alan and I struggled to find things to do, we came up with some ideas to carry out here at the church.  We have since had a meeting with the elders at the church and are looking into carrying out some of these ideas now.  

 Currently, I am working on creating large posters and a banner (for the door) to advertise our English classes.  We also handed out fliers on one of the main streets this weekend and 4 or 5 people walked back to talk with me to get more information.  So maybe we will be getting some new students here soon! Currently, we have seven students.  We also have been going to the Universities here to pass out fliers and tack them up on their billboards.  It's all about advertising right now. 

 Alan and I area also looking into starting a children's English class here at the church.  It looks like we have enough interest, so we might be starting that up here sometime this month (we hope).  We will be encouraging the kids to invite their friends as well so that we can meet more people in the community. 

 Our lessons with our students resumed last week.  So far they are going well! 

 We've been practicing our Italian. We've had lots of opportunities this last weekend to practice.  Friday night, we had a family from church over for dinner.  We had a really nice time.  We're looking forward to opening up our home to get to know people better.  Alan (the cook) made a really good meal (I think).  He even braved making pasta pesto for Italians.  I would be too scared to make pasta for Italians myself, but he did a good job.  Then, Saturday, we went to one of the little girl's birthday parties.  That was fun! They definitely do parties differently here, and it's fun getting to participate in this different culture! Then Sunday, after church, everyone from church headed up to Pipo's country home where we had a goodbye potluck for Andrea and Dario (they are going to the States). We spent all day there with people from church and several people came from the church in Paterno (a town about 30 minutes away from Catania). 

 Well, I think I'm caught up now. Thank you all so much for the prayers and support! We couldn't be here doing this work without you. God Bless! 








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thoughts on a Thursday Evening

Image
Sitting here in my living room in Catania Sicily, I can’t help but wonder how life can change so drastically in so short a time.   My husband has collapsed from exhaustion rather early this evening, and I’m sitting here waiting until my parents get off work so I can skype with them tonight.   As I was sitting here, I glanced over at my husband’s computer, which he left open on some photos he was working on.   Naturally, I started skimming through all the photos that we have on this computer.   I guess I was in a sentimental mood, because I went to see if we saved any photos from our wedding on here, but we didn’t.   They are all on a hardrive in Maryland with our other pre-Italy photos.   Then, I had a thought.   I wondered if we’d remembered to delete our home videos too or if they were still taking up storage space on this computer.   I was in luck.   All of our videos are still stored here.   I started looking through ones that w...
Read more

The Italian Bible Project

Hey everyone! Yes, we're still here in Italy! If you're wondering why the blog has been even more quiet than usual, it's because I no longer post updates specifically about our work on here anymore. I do continue to write letters to our supporters and to those who have specifically let me know that they wish to receive our newsletters. If you'd like to be added to the mailing list, then please let me know. I will still continue to use this blog occasionally to give some basic info on what we are working on and also just fun tidbits of our experiences here. For this post, I'd like to tell you all of a project Alan is working on. If you use a Bible reading app on your phone for a reading plan, then you might be familiar with The Bible Project. If you aren't familiar with them, their mission is to show that the Bible is a unified story that points to Jesus. They do this by, in addition to making a reading plan, making short animated videos that explain the ov...
Read more

Lessons and Decisions

Image
It's been a while since we updated on here.  As usual, lots of events have happened, and Alan and I have learned a lot of things this month. After our visits to the churches in Catania and Milano at the beginning of May, Alan and I tried to take some time alone to pray separately and together about this decision.  If you've ever visited the Bible School here in Florence, you know this is a hard task to accomplish - alone time.  So we spent a lot of time thinking about this decision separately at first, mainly because we never had sufficient time to discuss it together.  This was probably a good thing though.  The third weekend in May we went to Gensano, a small town not far from Roma. There was a convegno there.  It was great to meet even more people from all over Italy, and to reconnect with those we've met before.  We got the fun job of babysitting, so we mostly played with the kiddos all weekend.  The youth at the convegno in Gensano Also...
Read more