Kirbys in Catania

Hope you all had wonderful holidays! Alan and I are back to teaching our students.  We already have a couple new ones this year, so it looks to be a busy year again. During the holiday's the churches in Catania and Paterno hosted a camp for youth ages 14-25, but the ages were pretty flexible.  Camp was December 27 - January 2.  The theme for the camp was, "In the world, but not of the world." Alan and I had the awesome opportunity to get to help out in a few different ways. Alan was the "official" photographer, though once everyone learned that we are pretty relaxed with our cameras and will let anyone use them, our cameras spend most of the week in tour and the majority of the photos were taken by the campers. Alan did have the lovely process of going through the thousands of photos taken, editing them, and making a slideshow each day.  If you would like to see the photos or the final slide show here are the links. Warning: the final slideshow is long, runn

Happy New Year! Buon Anno! Alan with some of his fan club The first of January marked mine and Alan's one year anniversary in Italy! It has gone so fast, and yet so much has happened. The first six months we were living in Florence. We took language class for the first three months. We taught English classes at the Bible School, helped with events at the school and with VBS at the church.  In July we moved to Catania.  Almost immediately after we got settled into our new apartment, we went on a 10 day trip to Albania to be a part of their family/youth camp there. In September classes here began. We started with around 7 or 8 students.  Now, we have 24 students and I have had several text messages and phone calls over the holidays from people who want to start classes after the Holidays (which officially end here after tomorrow, Monday Jan 6). Market in Catania Alan and I love it here in Italy. We have absolutely fallen in love with the people here and the culture. Th