After a record-breaking trip of only 13 hours or so, we made it back to Chicago to the smiling faces of Heidi’s mom and sister. After a few days of rest while our bodies recovered from the time difference, we headed off on our first trip: Louisville, Kentucky.
Shively Christian Church is a wonderful church that actually decided to begin the work in Ancona about 14 years ago. It was our privilege to meet with them during our stay in Louisville. It’s not an exaggeration in the least to say that the church in Ancona wouldn’t exist without the visionary members who listened to God’s prompting years ago. They pray for us, support us financially, send us notes and packages, and just care deeply about the church in Ancona. We met with missions committees, elders, the staff, Sunday school classes, and others who are interested what God is doing in Ancona. Plenty of talking and sharing about how we see Him working and what the next phase of ministry is.
We also spent time with the home office of Team Expansion. As Team Expansion missionaries, we are a part of a network of over 300 other missionaries all over the world who are all doing what we are doing: planting churches in places where there aren’t any. It’s great to head back to the base and see what God is doing all over the world.
We’ve spent a little time catching up with family and friends. Our short visits can’t make up for the many months spent far away, but they do help take some of the “edge” off of being overseas.
We miss Ancona, especially the church. We think a lot about Marcus and our Life Group and friends from the kids’ schools and neighbors and how hot it must be there. We’re praying that God will keep working on their hearts and maturing the believers while we are apart. God loves the church in Ancona more than we do, and it’s good that things don’t always depend on our physical presence.
Can I ask you to pray for us as we travel this summer? Pray for us to remind people of the need in Ancona. Pray for Marcus and the church. And pray for us to stay strong as a family during stressful car trips and long meetings.
Some friends of ours who work in a country where Bibles are basically illegal recently asked if we could be the middle man for them. They would order the Bibles, we would pick them up, store them in the attic at church, and they would smuggle them into their country when they got the chance.
I was happy to help, and even happier that the process involved much less paperwork than I thought it would.
As I flipped through the Bibles (and thanked God that I don’t have to learn that language!) I found a little drawing that looked very familiar. Even though the writing was gibberish, I was looking at the Four Spiritual Laws.
Almost 20 years ago, when I first started attending church, my youth minister invited me out to get a Coke. We ordered, and he pulled out a tiny booklet called The Four Spiritual Laws. A Gospel tract. It was illustrated with little pictures that summarized the simple words and concepts introduced in the booklet. I was amazed that being a Christian could be summarized into something so easy. Simplistic, even. Grace and forgiveness and God’s plan for humans were all described, along with brief references from the Bible.
In all my time as a pastor in Ancona, I have never once used a Gospel tract. Occasionally, well-meaning friends back in the US suggest that we be more bold and pass out tracts in the piazzas. I try and politely decline, explaining that the Jehovah’s Witnesses are known for that even here, and their reputation is less than ideal. If they continue to insist that Gospel tracts are the key to planting a church here, I simply ask when was the last time they passed out tracts as an evangelistic outreach, and how much success they had. That usually ends the discussion. People seem to bristle against tracts. It seems forced, artificial. How can one little booklet possibly explain things like grace and forgiveness and God’s plan for humans? How can you describe the relationship between facts and faith and feelings with a train?
And here I was, staring at 1,000 hot-off-the-press Arabic Bibles with The Four Spiritual Laws in the back.
I have no clue about its effectiveness, but the fact that it was in there seemed to say something. Do we have a tendency to make things more complicated than they need to be? Should we create new symbols, new metaphors, to describe our faith? What is the 2010 version of a Gospel tract?
I was having a particularly rough day. I was on the way to meet with someone, and wasn’t really looking forward to the things that I needed to say. I was sitting in the back section of a double-long bus, and the bounces as we headed down the road were causing my stomach to do nasty things. There was an overall trashy smell coming from somewhere. It had been raining all day, and my feet were wet.
I was sort of lost in my thoughts, trying to play out the coming conversation in my head as a sort of warm-up for the real thing. I was shooting up random prayers, asking God to grant me supernatural wisdom, the gift of tongues, and the patience of Job – and I really needed all of those things before I had to ring the bell for my stop.
The road we were on travels along the Adriatic coast, but most of the way the view is partially-obscured by train tracks and power lines and row after row of apartments. At one point, I looked to my right out the bus window and saw this:
I remember looking around at everyone on the bus with me. The woman behind me was lost in thought. Two teenage girls were listening to music, one earbud for each girl, while they simultaneously chatted. Others were dozing off. And I was worshiping. God’s promises and faithfulness all came flooding back to me and I couldn’t believe that others weren’t seeing what I was seeing. I honestly wanted to shout, “Look! God has kept that promise for thousands of years! And He will keep His promise to be with me forever!”
But the worship time was apparently meant just for me. The bus started moving and I soon got off at my stop.
With some much-needed confidence in God’s promises.
Every two years our living permits expire and have to be renewed. Immigration is a touchy subject in Italy. The last several years have seen a huge increase in the number of people from all over the world that come here looking for a better life. Because of that influx, the process has become a paper-chasing struggle to get the right documents signed by the right people and delivered to the right offices.
There is an office here that is set up to help people wade through the beruacracy. Since finding this office, the process has gone from nearly overwhelming to relatively manageable.
Here’s some statistics:
My application is 49 pages long. I needed to go to three different city offices to get all the right documents. So far it has cost around $150.
My wife and kids’ application is 43 pages long, but much of their application is photocopies from my application. Their permit will cost around $130.
The Department of Health came to make sure our house meets all of the housing codes.
The waiting time from when we apply until we receive our permits is usually around 6 months, though we’ve been told that the waiting times are much shorter now.
My wife and I were required to get documents from the courthouse stating that there are no warrants out for our arrest, and that we have no pending jail sentences (happy to report that we’re in the clear!).
I probably sound like I’m whining, but I’m really not. The paper chase can get frustrating. But it’s what we need to do so we can stay here and work with the church, so it’s worth it.
Soon after contacting realtors, we were faced with the question: are we looking for a furnished or unfurnished apartment?
Most people think of Italians as having big families with kids running around everywhere. That was probably the case years ago, but now the average family size is just over 3 people: Mom, Dad, and one kid. Consequently, apartments are being built (or remodeled) to fit that size of family. Our family of six doesn’t really fit in an apartment built for 3. And so the chances of finding a furnished apartment were slim and none.
So unfurnished is the route we went. But unfurnished here means a very different thing than unfurnished in the US. We’re talking bare walls, wires sticking out where lights will be hung. No kitchen cabinets, sink, appliances, fixtures, nothing. Just a little hole in the wall for the drain and two pipes for hot and cold water. It seems like the bathroom is usually left (toilet, bidet, sink, tub/shower). In the house we ended up picking, the people before us actually took the hooks that you hang the ceiling lights with. In other words, completely unfurnished.
In one sense, it’s kind of fun to make the house exactly how you want it. On the other hand, it is expensive. But my wife being the way she is, she was able to find some incredible deals, mostly at a little place that has made furnishing a house much easier: Ikea. I’ll write more about that experience in part 3.
We have a group of 15 university students from College Heights Christian Church here in Ancona right now. They’ve been a great group, really ready to dive in and experience the culture and learn about our church.
On Monday, they hosted a day at the beach. They invited people they had met and we also invited the church to come and enjoy hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill (something that few of them had ever experienced).
It rained off and on all day, and after weeks of hot, humid weather, it was cool and windy. Just about dinner time, some church members showed up, and we got the grill going.
That’s when the storm clouds rolled in. The owner of the beach let us use his outdoor seating, which had a roof. We started seeing lightning hitting the ocean near us. And then, all of the sudden, it hailed on us. Ice was bouncing off the roof and into the area where we were seated. We quickly moved the food out of the rain, and took shelter under an awning. One of our church members said he had never seen hail before! And about 10 minutes later, it all stopped. We shook our head and laughed at the horrible weather for beach day.
And then we noticed the rainbow:
I’ve never seen a rainbow so large before! It was a full semi-circle that went into the sea on one side, and up and over the city of Ancona. I tried to stitch two pictures together above to give you an idea of how big it was.
Paris Hilton has recently been on Italian TV doing commercials for a cell phone company called 3. Watch this … then keep reading.
The guy in the scene is Claudio Amendola, a famous Italian actor. Paris is playing the part of … herself. The commercial is about how it’s inexpensive to switch your cell phone over to this company.
This commercial is awful for several reasons:
Paris’ accent. It is literally one of the worst American accents I have ever heard. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s hard for an American to get rid of their accent completely, but Paris is borderline hard-to-understand.
For the second commercial in this series, they hired an Italian actress to do a American-speaking-Italian voiceover for Paris when she speaks in Italian.
It’s possible that Paris Hilton wouldn’t recognize Claudio Amendola, but absurd to think that Claudio Amendola wouldn’t recognize Paris Hilton. She’s really popular here.
So now that I have gotten that off my chest… I do have to wonder why certain parts of American culture (Paris Hilton) get imported here, and why other parts (Taco Bell) do not. It really is a strange thing.
PS – The title of this blog post comes from my teammate, Marcus, when he heard that they released the second commercial in this series.
Last Sunday was a big day in the life of the church here in Ancona. Our church looks a lot different than most churches in that it is a “Cell Church.” Basically, we meet in homes and function as a church. But just like cells in the body, we seek to multiply into more and more cells.
So now we’re meeting in two groups. We just got too big to comfortably meet in a living room. It was different to suddenly be half the size that we were last week. But at the same time it was so excited. Towards the end of our time together we talked about the vision that we having cells meeting in every neighborhood of the city. Two members of our church were discussing what it is going to take and it was really exciting for me to see them talking about where we are heading as a church. One encouraged patience, as church planting is generally slow here. The other encouraged boldness; he talked about how people need someone to be strong and to lead. They are both right, and I think we all learned a little from both of them.
Please pray for the church here. Big steps are being taken – pray that this is just the first of many multiplications.
