I had the privilege of joining some of the church leaders in attending the Congresso Missione 16 with John Piper. The teaching of John Piper (alternately known as "The Pipe-bomb") was a major contributing factor into my decision to stay in Bible College and declare a missions focus. Listening to him speak while I was in the midst of my first missions endeavor abroad, was kind of a big deal for me. It reminded me, for the hundredth time, that my confidence to do do missions is not rooted in my ability, but in anticipation of God fulfilling His promise to Abraham back in Genesis that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him.
Being at the conference also gave me a lot of time to get to know the team and to watch them interact with their families and with each other. The registration fee included a spot in one of several nearby hotels and the hotels provided all the meals. We were all in the same hotel so we all ate together and spent our break times enjoying the beach together. The team in Trieste is pretty awesome. There are people on the team in all different stages of their ministry. Each one has their own strengths and each is going through their own challenges. Everyone on the team respects eachother and supports eachother. It's a really good environment to be in.
Ambra and I rode with Andrea and McKenzie and their son Adrian to the conference and on the way we spent a night at an inn they are thinking of using for a coming event. In the back seat of the car, we played with a Velcro technology building toy. This involved a lot counting out pieces of a specific color according to a pattern. After an hour or two, this resulted in an owl, a tiger, half a monkey, and me being able to count to 12, with some degree of accuracy.
Being at the conference also gave me a lot of time to get to know the team and to watch them interact with their families and with each other. The registration fee included a spot in one of several nearby hotels and the hotels provided all the meals. We were all in the same hotel so we all ate together and spent our break times enjoying the beach together. The team in Trieste is pretty awesome. There are people on the team in all different stages of their ministry. Each one has their own strengths and each is going through their own challenges. Everyone on the team respects eachother and supports eachother. It's a really good environment to be in.
Ambra and I rode with Andrea and McKenzie and their son Adrian to the conference and on the way we spent a night at an inn they are thinking of using for a coming event. In the back seat of the car, we played with a Velcro technology building toy. This involved a lot counting out pieces of a specific color according to a pattern. After an hour or two, this resulted in an owl, a tiger, half a monkey, and me being able to count to 12, with some degree of accuracy.
I went to the conference knowing that a lot of the other people going would be people from other places working to reach Italy. While I was there I saw not only the need of Italy as a mission field, but an Italian church passionate about world missions including Italy. One of the topics discussed at the conference was refugees and migrant workers. It's a topic that's s pretty controversial it the media. In the states, where the issue is farther removed, I ve heard a lot of people talking about refugees with a lot of fear. At the conference, in a country were refugees are currently coming, they spoke with very missional mindset.
I've talked with Nicoletta a few times about the difficulty she has finding quality Christian books and resources. There isn't nearly the plethora of Chistian resources available in Italian that there is in English. A lot of the resources that do exist are printed in an unappealing way or translated in a weird way. People say don't judge a book by its cover, but if a book seems obsolete it's a lot harder to get people to turn the first page let alone do a book study. A Christian bookstore set up shop at the conference and Niccoletta and I tailed Nicoletta talking the opportunity to stock up, since Trieste doesn't have a Christian book supplier. Still as small as the Evangelical presence is in Italy and as few resources as they have, when they talked about people pouring in from other places they were excited by opportunity to use what they have to touch the people coming in.
I've talked with Nicoletta a few times about the difficulty she has finding quality Christian books and resources. There isn't nearly the plethora of Chistian resources available in Italian that there is in English. A lot of the resources that do exist are printed in an unappealing way or translated in a weird way. People say don't judge a book by its cover, but if a book seems obsolete it's a lot harder to get people to turn the first page let alone do a book study. A Christian bookstore set up shop at the conference and Niccoletta and I tailed Nicoletta talking the opportunity to stock up, since Trieste doesn't have a Christian book supplier. Still as small as the Evangelical presence is in Italy and as few resources as they have, when they talked about people pouring in from other places they were excited by opportunity to use what they have to touch the people coming in.