Ciao from Italia!

I have made it safely to Roma, Italia!  My flights went very smoothly, praise to God for that one!  I arrived here on the 14th of October.  My first obstacle, finding Tim at the airport, haha!  After about an hour of carrying my junk around, dropping it on escalators and moving walkways, and trying to use my phone, I found him... or he found me rather! Haha!  I am sorry to not have written these past couple of days, it has been somewhat hectic!  So I will try to do a replay of these last few days and then stay on top of this better!

Thursday- I arrived in Italy!  Tim met me at the airport, it took a train ride, subway ride, and bus ride to get to my apartment!  Once there I met all of my roomies: Meg, Beccs, Lauren and Crystal; I am actually sharing a room with Crystal.  They are all super sweet!  After changing Tim and I went to meet Rachel (Tim's wife) to get Joy (their daughter) from school, and grab some lunch.  We went to Zaza's for pizza.  I can already tell ordering food in Italian will be an interesting experience haha.  After having lunch at Tim & Rachel's I went back to the apartment to finish unpacking and fight jet lag.  I lasted until about 6 pm Rome time (11 am Memphis time), before I could no longer form correct sentences.  So I went to sleep and got woken up for dinner (fajitas made by the roomies!) and went back to sleep.

Friday-  Friday I woke up super early, because of my weird sleep pattern.  I was able to dive into the book, Redeeming Love, an incredible recommendation by Chris in Elgin.  At around 11 I met Tim and we went to meet people from his home church, who were on holiday here, and we went to my first feeding.  We handed out about 150+ sack lunches to homeless people.  We only served one woman, the rest were men.  I was able to meet the pastor of the church doing this outreach.  Their church is very international.  The services are given in English; the pastor is very Scottish, and the woman in charge of the feeding ministry is from Ghana.  They make about 500 lunches a week and hand them out on Thursdays and Fridays.  Afterwards we (Tim, the couple from his church, and I) went to check out the potential site for the Reading Center.  Please keep this site in your prayers!  It looks very up in the air on the location right now!  On the way home, we went searching all over the place for a bus pass, we tried getting my paperwork, and then I got out euros from the bank.  After all this I got home, and Lauren took me to the grocery store.  It was not too bad, something I can handle I think.  That night I met with Tim and Rachel for dinner, so that we could discuss the upcoming seminar they were speaking at.  The seminar was at Rome Baptist church in the piazza.  We discussed what evangelism meant and how to explain it to Italians, which led to the discussion of what the Gospel means.  Just some great stuff!

Saturday-  This day was quite an adventure.  I tried finding my way to the bus stop... I didn't make it, haha.  But thankfully I had a phone were I could call Rachel.  I finally made it to a bus stop and waited.  While sitting there I met a refugee from Nigeria, very nice guy.  We discussed his thoughts on how Rome just doesn't care and how he likes everything here.  It seemed very basic but was really cool to me :)  After meeting Rachel we left and went to a women's ministry gathering at their home church.  It was a bit difficult for me, but nothing to bad.  We watched a movie on Esther and discussed how we have seen God move in our life.  Thankfully I had Rachel there, because it was all in Italian.  But I met some very passionate women there!   One of which I will be working with on Saturday's and Sunday's!  After the movie and dinner, Rachel and I headed home.  It was just a good time on the bus ride home, I feel like we just got to talk, which I feel we hadn't got to do, and I got to hear more of her story.

Sunday-  Yesterday we went to Rome Baptist, or Roma di Battista, for church.  Tim and Rachel were able to borrow someone's car so they came and picked me up.  I have decided I am terrified of Italian drivers... they are NUTS!   We ended up late to service, but it was still a good sermon on peace and the beatitudes, which laid some ground work for  our seminar that afternoon.  It was a very different environment, the pastor was very soft-spoken something I am definitely not used to!  But the people were very friendly and open with visitors such as myself.   After church, we met up with Trinity (a girl I met from the women's event) and we all went to a restaurant called "La Baguette". I ordered for the first time in Italian!  But all I said was "lasagna" and pointed haha.  Their lasagna is very different here, not nearly as rich as the U.S.'s version.  Afterwards, we returned to the church for the seminar.  The population in attendance was mostly women.  I found out the person in charge of the food ministry there is a woman, which can be worrisome if difficult circumstances arise.  Tim and Rachel spoke on what evangelism means, which the crowd answered to.  One of the answers was the gospel.   So we got in groups and talked about what we thought the gospel meant.  The people in my group kept saying, it means good news.  So I tried breaking down, well yes but what IS the good news.  So we started discussing God's love.  Then we all got together and discussed the importance of the gospel and what it means.  We discussed how relational evangelizing is and different things like that.  Tim also discussed different safety tips, that I made note of for myself.   Afterwards I headed home for a few hours to rest before a feeding.  At around 8:15 Meg and myself left for the train station.  We met up with others and served hot tea to about 75+ refugees from different places, the ones I spoke to were from Iran and Afghanistan.  Just another awesome time!

So that is about it up to here, I would upload pictures but left my camera cord at home... so I will try my best to get it!

Prayer Requests:
Safe travel for the next arriving intern today
God's direction in what specific ministries to be involved in
The availability of the Reading Center
Openness of the hearts of the refugees and homeless individuals we encounter


In His Love.