Time Flies

Hello all! A lot has happened since my last post. We had our first full week of ministry that was completely uninterrupted and that was wonderful. Everyday our team was meeting multiple people and getting into great conversations about God and Jesus and what the Italians believe. I have been so encouraged by the boldness of our team. While I will mostly write about the good conversations that people have, there are plenty of bad conversations as well. And when I say bad conversations, I just mean that the person was very unreceptive or rude about what we believe or would discredit the Bible and what we believe. The thing I am most impressed about our team is that even when that happens, the people on our team refuse to get mad or angry with the person, but continue to speak the truth of God's word and "kill them with kindness." For example, last week a few of our students were in a coffee shop talking to this one guy who was doing nothing but putting down God and Jesus and Christianity saying it wasn't important and things like the Bible is fiction. While they obviously disagree, they did not back down or try to minimize what they were trying to say. They continued sharing their faith and eventually shared the gospel with another Italian that was near and had been listening. I am just proud that they continued with what God wanted them to do, regardless of the obstacles that were in the way. Obviously we will not face the persecution that is written about in the bible, but we will still face verbal persecution, which is not easy to deal with. It can be discouraging, so when our team is bold in their message, despite the challenges, I am encouraged.

I have been blessed by having such a great team to work with. I never want to leave that unsaid. Since this is my first time leading a trip of this magnitude, I was hoping for the most cooperative team and I know they are an answered prayer for me. This trip has been same in some ways as last year, but different in other ways as well because I am not following, but I am being followed. While those of you that have known me for a while know that I have been involved with many leadership conferences or activities, this has been a test of all the knowledge and training I've had over the years. Not only am I sharing the gospel with the Italians, I am also building up the guys on our team so that when they return from Italy, they will be bigger men of God than when they first arrived at briefing. During the week, we have a scheduled guys night where I have content for them and we can get more intimate that during a normal conversation with out whole team. One of the main themes for our Men's time has been Proverbs 27:17 which is " As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." While we are pouring out on campus to Italians, it is good to be able to pour into each other during these times.

We have an outreach dinner tonight where we have a bunch of Italians coming and hanging out with us. Pray that it will be a success and our lifestyles and actions will be evident to them tonight. Thank you for they prayers and please continue to pray for our team and our mission. God bless! Ciao!