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! 








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