Kirbys in Catania

Can I write a blogpost just sharing with you all what's been on my heart (and some of what's been on Alan's as well)? Our work continues as usual. Of course we continue to ask for prayers for our contacts. A few of them are now studying the Bible more in depth (not just for the sake of learning English). So here comes a handful of honesty.  This is what's been on our hearts and some of it is just a sticky mess. Being a missionary is hard, wonderful, confusing, rewarding, fun, different, and well just awesomely difficult at times. It's not a "real" job.  In fact, we get that question a lot, "When are you guys going to come home and get real jobs? You know, grow up and join the real world."  It's always a little discouraging when that question comes along.  But we are reminded that even though this doesn't seem like a "real" job or a successful job by the world's standards, that it's still something that is important

Happy Spring! The weather is finally warming up, the sun is shining most days, and the grass we planted in our back garden is finally growing! It's a beautiful time to enjoy and be reminded of God's creation. As usual, the English lessons continue. Alan currently has 11 active students, several of whom come more than once a week.  Many of these students have been coming for a while, but almost none of them showed any interest in truly studying the Bible until just recently. A few are starting to show some interest! We continue to pray for our students that their hearts will be open to studying more in depth. The teens of the church just participated in their first ever Bible bowl. As far as I know, it was the first one that's been done here in Italy. It went really well. They have been studying the book of Luke with Alan, and they all did well.  We also had a great turnout of church members coming to support our teens on a Saturday night! And now the adults want to do a