My favorite part of re-entry? I have loved getting reacquainted with each church member and seeing how they have grown over the summer. What a blessing. With Francesca now in pre-school, I have a little more time in the mornings to go calling on the ladies in the church. Our new mom, Simona, really has a need for company right now. I’ve been able to go to her house and spend time talking and praying with her. What a joy to be able to pray together.

Two weeks ago I was blessed to be able to go to a 24/7 Prayer Conference called the Eurogathering in Frankfurt, Germany. I know that we just got back to Ancona, but I couldn’t pass it up. It turned out to be a great decision. We really had a great time praying for the continent of Europe and all of the countries represented there. How wonderful it was to see how big God’s church is, and also what great need there still is to bring the gospel to Europe.

What’s next? Well, next week Brian must return to the states for two weeks. He will be attending the Team Leaders’ Summit at Team Expansion, as well as heading off to the Joplin area to visit with churches there. Since this summer was cut quite short, we didn’t have time to visit that area. If you could pray for him as he travels, that would be appreciated. If you want to add the kids and I in there, we’d love your prayers as well.

Thanks for all that you do for us. We couldn’t make it without you!!

I don’t know if we picked a bad weekend, or if the word didn’t get out somehow, but many of our usuals weren’t on the list. For some reason it was as if God was saying to us, “I’d like to schedule some extra time just with the church this weekend.”

Kyle did his usual 2 AM – 6 AM shift. I could picture him trying to keep himself awake when I saw the psalm that he had written on the wall. Cristina made a beautiful picture of the word “Gesù” and put her handprints all around it. People wrote in the diary.

In other words, a completely normal prayer room, except the church was doing more, and longer, stretches of prayer.

Which can only be a good thing.

Mondays are usually a slower day for me. I don’t have any regular meetings scheduled, and I spend part of my day planning out my week and thinking through conversations that took place on Sunday during our church service. The introvert in me takes some time to recharge on Mondays.

But this week was different. Kyle had the idea to do a Jericho prayer walk. Remember how the Israelites marched around Jericho one time a day for seven days, and on the seventh day they marched seven times? And as they finished the last lap, God miraculously brought the walls of the city down.

Ancona’s physical walls are long gone, but the spiritual walls here seem stronger than ever. The church here is making efforts at knocking them down, but sometimes it seems we have a long way to go.

We met at the monument at 7:00, walking along the Viale until we got to the port, and then we turned around and went back the way we came. It took about an hour every day.
We prayed for anything and everything: our church, the church members, our neighbors, spiritual growth, our leadership, maybe even world peace. We prayed for big things and small things.

That weekend, our church hosted another 24 hour prayer room, and this time the one-hour slots filled up very quickly. It seemed as though many went into the prayer room desperate for some time with their Creator.

Sunday morning, we finished the prayer walk with seven laps, though I couldn’t be there until the very end since Heidi was taking her turn in the prayer room. It was a week completely drenched in prayer.

It was also the hottest week we have had here in Ancona. Many of our activities take place at night when it is cooler, which made for a long day when the prayer walk starts at 7.

But I can’t think of a better reason to be tired. Despite my selfish bad thoughts when the alarm went off, a jump in the amount of time we spend talking to God can only be a good thing.

Because it really is up to Him, isn’t it? We make sure we’re the brightest possible light, and the saltiest Christians we can be.

So now we wait for the walls to come down.

I have no idea what makes that room so special. But I feel like God really does come and meet us there. It’s moving to read through the journal on the table, or see the scribbled prayers on the wall, or to picture our church members on their knees before the big wooden cross in the room. Our team leader was telling me that he thought that the prayer rooms are the most important thing we do as a church.

It’s also one of the craziest things we do. Marcus prayed four hours straight and when I saw him the next day he said he felt like four hours wasn’t enough. My two hours flew by – I felt like I just got started. Our newly-baptized believer came out of the prayer room with wide eyes and said she’s going to sign up for more hours next time. My friend Simone was giddy at church when he told me he just did his first hour alone in the prayer room.

And so every other month or so (should it be more often?) we all take our turns in the prayer room. Some of us will write, some will pray out loud. Some will sing and some will listen to music. Some will shout and some will be still. But all of will come out somehow changed.

There’s a part of me that thinks we’re nuts for doing this. There’s nothing special about the room. We decorate it, and sometimes have a theme to help people to focus their thoughts. There are some candles and a big wooden cross. But it’s just a normal room. But at the same time there is something very un-normal about it.

I’m in a country where Easter is barely a religious holiday for most people, and really not much of a secular holiday either. I saw a poster in the center of town for an art exhibit that is opening up tonight. It’s just another day. I’m preparing to preach a simple Easter message and don’t really feel very Easter-y.

So I’m faced with this blah feeling about Easter, and this morning that feeling collided with the wonderful insanity of the prayer room. Ho-hum faced off with holy. Shrugged shoulders met bended knees. A yawn met a whispered prayer.

Guess who won?

So we pulled all of the stuff out of our little office, and Heather and Heidi worked on remodeling in it into a place for people to come and pray. We got volunteers, some from our church, some from neighboring churches, and some from no church at all, to come and spend an hour at a time in the prayer room. When I first printed out the sign up sheet with 48 blank spots to fill, I was more than a little overwhelmed. How would we ever fill them all?

But slowly, they got filled. People came to pray. If someone missed an appointment, there was always someone to fill in. For 48 hours, prayers were lifted up, shouted, sung, painted, written, and whispered. And it was incredible. People came out of the little room in tears, thanking us for setting it up and asking us to let them know when we do it again. Everyone said that an hour flew by.

Prayer has obviously always been a focus of the ministry here. But for 48 hours it was the focus. It was all we did. I have no idea what God is going to do with that. We’re in a culture where, at least some people, are accustomed to popping into a church for a prayer now and then.  The idea itself wasn’t all that strange, but I think the intensity was.

And I can’t wait to do it again…