Friendships with Our Church Body

Enjoying an evening with one of our families

The past few months we have had the opportunity to spend some one on one time eating with some of the families that make up our church. Because they each come from different parts of Italy, we get a different experience culturally with every meal. One thing they all have in common is they are great cooks and they love to feed us lots. Just like with any church body that is made up of very different people/personalities it can take a while for you to get to know each other. We are hoping that the more we are around them, the more we can begin to open up to one another and dig deeper into authentic life giving relationships. Finding and creating those relationships has been  a struggle for me (Carli) since the beginning and it continues to be one. Partly it is my timid and sometimes introverted personality and partly it is my lack of availability. Being a mom of young children, married to the pastor does not always leave lots of room for me to be present at the activities that the church does together. Justin on the other hand is full to the brim with opportunities to invest in the lives of our people and foster deeper relationships with them. It has been a huge answer to our prayers how they, especially lately, respond to him with respect and look to him as one of their leaders. So as we both look back over the last few months we are praying that we can continue to be intentional with our conversations however often they happen and that I (Carli) would continue to push myself a little at a time to let people in and seek out friendships with our people.

Some other prayer points:
-Please continue to pray for us as a family that we would have patience and endurance with our people. We long to love them as Christ loves them and we believe that begins with praying for them. -As our second child is coming any day now, please pray for us to have wisdom in setting healthy boundaries with our people, but not closing them out of this exciting time.
-On the subject of the baby coming, please pray for Carli and for the baby. The recovery for Carli when she had Luca was a very difficult time, so please keep her in your prayers.
-Lastly pray for the men of our church, Italy desperately needs humble leaders to serve it's church and we are hoping that this summer Justin and Stefano will be able to invest time in training up two of the men in our church that are showing interest in leading more.

Hopefully our next post will be full of pictures of a new little baby. Until then here are a couple of pictures from this month:

Luca having fun at the park

Celebrating Mother's Day with my boys

End of April Update

Photo of the whole group in attendance

Last week we had the wonderful opportunity to go to a two day conference with nine of our church family members. It was the first time for seven of them to experience something like that. (Special thank you to The Door Church for their financial support, which made it possible for so many from our church to go to the conference) It was also the first Gospel Coalition Conference in Italy. I think it was eye opening and also encouraging for them to see so many others in love with Jesus and following Him.  Our hope is that being with other believers will encourage them and give them a renewed boldness in their faith and in how they live out God's love in their daily lives. One thing that really struck them was the dedication to God's word. Wanting to know God's word and applying it to our lives is something that continues to surprise our people that come from a non-practicing Catholic background. Please pray with us that the community they experienced as well as the teaching will spur them on in pursuing God and their walk with Him. It was encouraging for us as a family to hear stories of how the Lord is working through various churches throughout the country. It is easy for us to feel discouraged when we may not see the fruit we want to see in our timing. We are quickly reminded that God's timing is perfect and any fruit that we may experience is grace from Him.

All three of our birthdays are in April so it has been a month of celebrating in our house. It has been good and life giving to look back on all that the Lord brought us through in the last year. We are jumping into May with lots of joy in the Lord. We are thankful for a healthy pregnancy for Carli and the baby. We are just five weeks shy of his due date and we can tell that Luca is really getting excited about meeting his baby brother. He has been learning how to hold babies (by practicing with his animals) and getting diapers for us. Please be in prayer for us as the final preparations are on for becoming a family of four. We know that the Lord is writing our story and our hope is that our faith in Him is displayed in the coming weeks of intense moments like labor/delivery and recovery. Pray that all our interactions with nurses, midwives, and other patients would display our love not only for our new baby, but our love for God and His constant care for us.