After laboring these many years in Italy, we were able to reach a milestone today (I began writing this on April 9th, 2006). Some might say “milestone” and others might say “starting line” depending on your point of view.
For the first time, we were able to host our full Italian Missions Sunday. It was beautiful. We held it with our folks, in our own place, in Italian, & permeated with Italian culture. It has taken us a number of years to arrive at this point and it was a real highlight of the year for us thus far.
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I’ve been looking forward to pounding out this post for a few weeks now.
The Blue B’mer
Let’s start with the first picture. I’m featured in a rare appearance with sunglasses after having detailed my new ride (a 1988 BMW 7.30i) back in February of ‘98. What a great car! We put another 110,000 miles on it and saw it turn 300,000 kms before we sold it.
This car was our main family and ministry car for the past (almost) 8 years. It carried everything for the ministry and went everywhere. And, it has a lot of life left in it too.
Last September, we received our upcoming insurance rates for our vehicles for 2006. The insurance on the BMW was set to skyrocket 300% for the coming year. Instantly and sadly, we knew we had driven it for the last time. That weekend, we cancelled the policy, gave the car to the mechanic, my friend Brad cleaned her up nicely for me (what a great guy who loves his Pastor), and then entered the process to sell her.
Stay with the story! It’s a good one…
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“August News” is the most creative title I could come up with just before midnight. Then, in a burst of inspiration, I thought I would translate it into Italian to sound really international. My readers who speak Italian are now thinking, “Big Deal.” I didn’t say it was a very large burst of inspiration.
On Sunday the 7th, Sandy turned 29 - again. She’s decided to plateau around 29 for 10-15 years if nobody will mind. Since we were together with the congregation on Sunday morning, we had some large cakes decorated and we all celebrated her birthday together. The ladies then gave a wonderful presentation and outpouring of their gratitude to Sandy for her dedication to the work of the Lord. It was a very special moment for both of us to see.
During the invitation to the preaching, about 8 men & women came forward for various decisions in their lives. One of those was a man named Paul. Our church (and particularly one of our LifeTeams) has been praying faithfully for Paul and reaching out to him for over a year now. Paul fell under conviction and turned to Christ Jesus there in our midst. Paul will now be baptized & discipled through the LifeTeam. We are joyful over the work of the Lord Jesus.
The property owner of our new worship center has now come to our church the last two Sundays. In fact, Tiberio is now coming every morning to meet us at the conference table to read the Word of God and hear us pray. Tiberio is a Romanist and devoted to Mariolotry. However, he also has a growing hunger to know the Word of God and its power. We need you to help us pray for Tiberio and his salvation along with his wife Antoinetta. The agency that rented the building four years ago still owes Tiberio many thousands of euro in back payments. In Italy, people have no recourse in which to seek and obtain their money because of the corruption of the people and weakness of the judicial system. So, Tiberio feels as if he’s left without an option. Today, we prayed by faith in front of Tiberio that the Lord would do something mighty to reveal His glory through this situation. We want to ask you to join us in that prayer so that only the Lord’s power would be seen and that His power would accompany the Word of Truth that we are daily sharing with Tiberio.
Tomorrow, Sandy and I are heading out for a couple days break as part of Sandy’s birthday gift. One of our couples will be watching our two children. We hope we can still be friends when we return. My idea of a break is a nice lounge chair, a wonderful new book (I have 3 of them that I have yet to crack — I’m taking along 1776 by McCullough for this trip), and an ice-cold drink in the mountain air. Pure learning and thinking with no decisions to be made is a great way for me to get a break. Sandy, on the other hand, … well, let’s just say… she wants to make sure that we remember these get-aways. So, I’ll try to get a few pages in and balance my drink while white-water rafting down a river in the Julian Alps of Slovenia tomorrow afternoon. Buon Viaggio.
The other night, I was in a LifeTeam where this question was asked, “What are the best things about your Christian community?” The answers that followed were great. One of my favorite things about our church is being able to wake up every day and know what to do; literally to know where the center of God’s will is and be there. I imagine that many Christians arise daily in confusion, and I wish that they could taste of the power of basic Christian community that seeks personal, familial, and communal holiness. So many of our young Christians are making “holy steps” to honor the Lord in their walk. I believe that that is what Vision is all about. Vision is where Jesus Christ comes to have first place in everything seen and unseen. The Vision takes place when Heaven’s will is done and the future Shalom is tasted on this Earth as believers raise their hopes in anticipation of their final Home.
Over the last three weeks, we have been moving our offices (they were in our home for almost two years) over to our new worship center. You say, “Oh, you got approved…how exciting.” No, we didn’t get approved yet, but we did get preliminary word of approval. I can’t even begin to explain how many hoops there are to jump through out here. I was contemplating writing a blog post about the last 31 months and almost 300 meetings that we’ve had with banks, offices, and scoundrels but I was overwhelmed with where to start. This process isn’t just one of those easy “well, the law in Italy works like this…” phrases. My post would be an excursus in Italian culture altogether. Bottom line (which we haven’t reached yet) is — I’ve never been through anything so absolutely crazy in my life. And I never want to do it again. I’m sure the Lord is reading my blog and smiling right now.
So, along with setting up water, electricity, phones, and offices we’ve been busy cleaning everything in sight, painting, constructing temporary walls, lawncare, and a lot more.
The auditorium that we’ve rented for the last 4.5 years is now going under renovations. We were told last week that we need to be out of there by July 1. So, we’re picking up and moving into the new place in a “squatters rights” kind of fashion. I don’t know if I would or should call it faith. I don’t want to pin the Lord with Italy’s bureaucracy or craziness. Timing is everything as they say. Three days after moving our offices down to the new center, we were told we couldn’t rent the city’s auditorium anymore.
We also have a couple of college students staying with us for the summer. Maybe I shouldn’t use the phrase, “staying with us”. More appropriately, let’s insert “working for us”. Oh, they’ll think twice next time about coming on a missions trip!! That’s for sure. 
We also have 5 different outreaches planned through our LifeTeams during these two weeks. There’s a big one this weekend that I hope to write about later and have some pictures for. We’ll be impacting about 50 homes in the neighborhood of two of our families. Please pray for these outreaches that we might see evangelism and discipleship in full force.
Sandy informed me earlier today that she’s almost done with our taxes for 2004. I provide all the paperwork. She sorts it out. What a gal! Not only will she bare my children but she’ll do our taxes. Not many fellows get that lucky on mail-order brides!!
Reilly finishes his preschool at the end of June. We speak in Italian about 30% of the time at home now. He’s doing great.
We think Jessi is cutting her molars. Enough said. We should feel your prayers any moment now.
Some good friends of ours shipped us a couch from Montana. It’s not just a couch, it’s a sleeper-sofa that’s 3 centimeters too big to get through our doors. This is a story to cry over for another time. Needless to say, a friend and I did a Vulcan mind-meld (didn’t come up with much) and three hours later we had it through our doors in its rightful place just like Sandy dreamed it. It’s never leaving this room. It will be destroyed in this room when it is finished. Tonight, we’re taking the folks who brought it to us out to dinner, and I can’t wait until they ask, “How’s the couch?”
Last night, the temp in our room crested over 90 degrees and molto humid with the fan on. So, we hooked up a portable AC. Summer is set to “hot”. Our whole family had our best night’s sleep on June 23rd. We’re stating this for the official praise record.
Oh, and last but not least (only some of you will be able to really identify with this), my father-in-law sent us the 4th season of “24″ to watch. We like the show because it’s like “crack on TV” and highly addictive. Usually, we have to wait about a year before we can see it here and who wants to wait episode to episode? So, we’re cruising along, America is in full melt-down, and tapes 3 & 4 are blank when we pop them in — the last half of the story. That’s a sick joke. And to do it to your children on the mission field… that’s just depraved. He says it’s something about his master copying machine — yada yada yada…. He used to be a quality assurance engineer for Motorola for 32 years — so we’re not buying it! More later… “dink, dink, dink, dink”
At our Italian LifeTeam (small group), one of the men who we have asked you to pray for has been digging into the Word for months now. The man’s name is Dino. This fellow has not yet formally declared his allegiance to Christ, but he has been devouring the Scriptures and pouring out proper interpretation again and again.
Last Thursday, all of the LifeTeam members were present — even though they were all physically exhausted from work and other conditions. I digress for a moment. I want to give you a small example of how much of a blessing it is to see these Italians meeting together. What you don’t know is that one has lived in slave-like conditions for a long period, another is raising two teenage boys after their spouse died last year, another is newly pregnant (tired and sick), and another closed his factory early to be there.
For two hours they devoured the Word with fresh zeal after devouring fresh pasta. You didn’t realize that zeal and pasta go together did you?
In the course of the action of the moving Lord in their midst, the verse of Isaiah 52:7 came up, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”
And Dino asked if he could share what he had come to understand about this verse. So he says, “The beauty lies in the message of good news. Really, the feet are not beautiful at all. They are the lowest part of the body. They get in the dirt and do the work. But when a person brings the Word of God in truth to another person, even their ugliest and dirtiest aspects become beautiful. That is the power of the Word.”
Now that’s beautiful! And to have Italian men richly pouring over the Bible in a Christian home is like a beautiful gem pulled out of a vast field.
Pray for two men in that LifeTeam to be saved — Dino & Giancarlo.
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.
We had a wonderful Resurrection Sunday in our church on the 27th. Many visitors came (even though we had poor weather AND the Daylight Savings Time “spring forward” of one hour which we do 1 week before the US in Europe). We had American, Italian, African, Ukrainian, and Filipina guests with us. We also had a whole group of Spanish speaking friends. Afterward, we had a banquet for a little over 100 people. It was lovely & honoring of the Risen Lord from start to finish.
A couple points of rejoicing are that the Italian congregation (only a few weeks old) conducted a beautiful lesson from Isaiah 53. In the group, there was a couple who had lost both of their young daughters to a tragic accident about nine months ago. Brokenhearted, they asked for prayer among the Italian believers. There, in their language, a mantle of care, peace, and Truth was wrapped over their aching spirits. Later, a few of us delivered flowers to them at their home and prayed with them before they went to the cemetary to visit their girls. While there is a long way to go for Mauro & Gabriella to come to true repentance through submission to the Word of God and biblical Christianity, the chains were rattled. Please pray that they will yearn and ask for the Key.
Also, another young lady named Carolyn has been with our church for about eight months now. Sandy, her ladies’ small group, & a deacon’s wife opened their arms to friendship and help. Through the ministry of the small group, teaching & example of the Lord’s Supper, and genuine Spirit- conviction, Carolyn broke in sorrowful repentance and turned her life to Jesus Christ in the service.
Carolyn is one that we know about and there may have been others who turned toward repentance that leads to eternal life.
I have uploaded two new albums of photos in “The Serenissima Ministry Group” folder & our personal family folder in our Gallery. I’ve included pictures of the flowers that we delivered to the Italian couple and a picture of Carolyn in the album. Also, we’ve included photos from our family Easter.
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