One year already? Crazy!

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. The language is coming along nicely, and of course we are becoming food snobs over here where everything is so fresh and good. :)


Cooking at Antonella's

Tuscany!

Mt Etna and the sea.
Mt Etna!
We stuck with local tradition and ate schiacciata con broccoli for Christmas Eve. yumm!
December was an eventful month for us. We added on several new students. We have several students now who are interested in studying the Bible, and do just that with Stephano after our English lesson.  We usually sit in on these unless we have another student at the same time.  We had some church meetings to discuss projects for the New Year. It looks like Alan and I will be starting a youth group meeting/devotional at our house each month. The youth in Paterno (a smaller town about 30 minutes away) are also invited to come.




A young couple at church got married in December. The wedding was beautiful and Deborah was gorgeous.  I had heard that Italian weddings are a lot different, but it didn't seem that different to me. To me the main difference was the meal lasted several hours, but after living here in Italy for a year, I expected that because, in general, they take longer to eat their meals here and have more courses. They don't wolf down their food like us Americans.  The only sad thing about Deborah and Emanuele getting married is that they will live up in northern Italy. I will definitely miss them. They are both such sweet people.

Love this photo of one of the flower girls!

I had some issues with my paperwork so Alan and I had to make a surprise and quick trip to Florence to get that taken care of. It's a long story so I won't put it on here, but everything is worked out. We ended up taking a car because it was the cheapest option on such short notice.  So we tried to make it fun and less stressful by stopping at a few cute towns near Florence to sight see a little, and we really enjoyed our "mini vacation."  We made it back Christmas Eve morning.  We spent Christmas with a family here at church eating good food and playing games.

On the 27th we headed off to a little village up near Mt Etna where we helped the churches of Catania and Paterno host a camp for the youth in Italy, but.....I will write a separate blog about that because...well, it just deserves a separate blog. ;)

Classes start back up for us this week.  We look forward to a busy year of sharing God's word with others and spending time with the members of the church here in Italy.

















Story time:
DISCLAIMER: Alan loves pizza like nothing else (I think I've just barely beat pizza in the list of what's important in his life) so owning a pizzeria is like a dream job for Alan.
The other day Alan saw a guy who owns a pizzeria sitting outside eating pizza and just chilling. The thought passed through Alan's head, "Man, that guy has got the life. He owns a pizzeria, can eat free pizza whenever he wants, and the guys in the back are working for him so he can relax." Then Alan stopped and thought about it. He realized, "Man, that is a sweet job, but I wouldn't trade it for what I'm doing now. I love what I'm doing now. I get to spend all day loving on people and sharing Jesus with them. This is awesome and I love it."

So that basically sums up how Alan and I feel about being here. We love it, love what we do, and we are really excited for this New Year and the new opportunities to serve God.

We love and miss you all! We thought about all of our friends and family a lot especially during the holidays!

Below are some photos we took on our trip to Florence. 




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