June ‘05 - Thus Far
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”
