The Year in Review 05/05/05
Each year, our home mission asks us to write an annual report. Have you ever had to do one? If you keep a journal or diary, doing an annual report of yourself and family is an excellent entry. It’s a great exercise and well worth it. I heard one pastor friend of mine say, “The best discipleship question in the world is ‘what are you doing’?” What a great point! What are you doing? Ask and answer that one and you’ll thank me later.
I’ve modified our report some and will share it with you here.
Before I do, I must announce that Reilly swung his first golf clubs today. He was hilarious — almost as hilarious as his Dad when he plays. We let Reilly hit the ball all over the place. He hit the ball so much that he got his first blister — another new experience. They say that you learn something new every day. It’s when you start learning two new things a day that you’re really living it up!
By the way, I added a new picture of the kiddos in our Gallery. I caught them sitting still for two seconds. It’s an anomaly shot…
Now, here’s a portion of the annual recap:
With gratitude to the Lord Jesus, we joyfully report another year of faithful service on the mission field of Italia. Our family has grown by one; a beautiful and precious daughter whom we gave the name Jessi Kay. Jessi turned one at the end of April, ’05. She is a quick learner and will provide quite a challenge to her bigger brother Reilly who is four. Reilly is in his second year of an Italian school and is becoming very fluent in the language. He even has the proper accent down. Reilly’s started to quote his first Bible verses, his hair is still a rich red, he’s crazy about puzzles and swimming, and dad is going to take him out to start learning to play golf. Dad realizes that he only has a few years left to win anything in this talented family so he’d better start now. Rob & Sandy celebrated their eleventh wedding anniversary and seventh year on the Italian field.
We had a full year and some of the highlights would include many salvations (of people from a number of different nations who live here), baptisms, life-changing church retreats, books and Bibles distributed by the hundreds in English & Italian, new small groups started including one in Italian, an Italian congregation started, and a trip to see our families in the States.
Last June (’04), we had a group of guests with us on the field. Brother Andrew Maxwell is finishing up Bible College and he was with us for the summer. Andrew was one of the fellows that we led to the Lord out here when he was in the USAF keeping jets in the air. Andrew is set to return again this June to help us through the summer. Also, one of our supporting pastors, Brent Snook, and his wife and three daughters visited us for about two weeks. They had a wonderful time here and witnessed for Christ among our people.
In December, we returned to the States for the holidays. During that time, Rob took a graduate class at IBC and our family visited one of our supporting churches — Grace Baptist Church of Farmington, NM.
In March, we began an Italian congregation where our Italian folks are taught in Italian, by an Italian. About once a month, Rob trades with Brother Roberto and teaches the Italians. It’s a young group, but already, there are a number of Italians participating along with people from the Ukraine, Africa, and Cuba. We would like to see this congregation established and stabilized with a good 30-50 people in it within the next couple years. At that point, we can begin to look to plant ministries into other cities.
One other project that we had hoped to have finished this last year was securing a new place to meet as a church. We have been working on this effort for thirty months now. The slow pace is due to Italian bureaucracy, corruption, and lack of religious liberty. Securing a new worship & equipping center is an important step toward future ministry and we hope to have this project completed this coming year.
Finally, about a dozen men from our church have been deployed down to the big sandbox. We will be meeting the needs of their families throughout the year. Please keep them and us in prayer. This is a very hard time for these men, their wives, and their children.
Thank you for your time and consideration in reading this report.
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