We Moved!!!

We moved!! Yep, that should have been the post I made about ten months ago. You see, last year I was offered an opportunity to help out a friend get their host site up and running by moving my blog to their site. Did that. But I forgot to say we moved. Turns out, their host site does not work well overseas. Do not know why, I have tried every which way to get it to work but...anyway we are back to this site and probably not going anywhere for a while. So what has happen in the last ten months...well, we moved!! We have now been in Italy just shy of six months and so far things are staying fairly in the realm of chaotic. Which for new missionaries this means normal. We do have many things to be thankful for though:

1) We found a house to rent that is located fairly close to the church we'll be working in.

2) All of our stuff arrived intact. (late, but intact.)

3) We were looking for a van, found one and bought it.

4) We received our Permesso di Sogiorno's (our "permission to stay" documents) So we are now legal residents. (At least for the next ten months.)

5) We have been able to study Italian with a member of our church.

There are a host of other things I could list that we are also thankful for but I'll save those for another time. All in all, God has been gracious in His timing and blessed us more then we could imagine or deserve. We are currently learning "proper" Italian. That is the first phase for every new missionary on the field, language learning. For the next year or so we will be full time students trying to grasp the concepts of grammer, conjugation and pronunciation of the Italian language. So for now I will say,
"Ci vediamo  a piu tarde e Dio ti benedicti." [See you later and may God bless you] Ciao.

"Time is fleeting!"

 Anybody out there recognize the line I used for my title? Its from a famous midnight movie? Tim Curry's movie debut? Yep! Rocky Horror Picture Show! When I was in my teens this was a movie my friends and I used to go see every night for an entire summer. I remember the butler explaining how do the dance callled the "Time Warp" and one of the lines in the song (by the same name) was the one above, "time is fleeting." Back then time seemed to last forever. But as I have gotten older (I would say "more mature" but my wife might have something to say about that!) time seems to move ahead at a much greater pace. And now that we have raised 85% of our support and have set June as our departure date for Italy time definitely feels as if it is fleeting! They say the last 20% of support raising tends to go the fastest so I guess we'll just have to trust whoever "they" are! No, on second thought I think we'll stick to the one person we have found to be the most trustful so far and thats Jesus Christ, he's gotten us this far so even if time is fleeting I know where we'll end up...eventually. Now, how'd that dance from the movie go again, "a jump to the left..."

...So close yet just far enough!

I know the saying is, "so close yet so far" but I modified it just a little and it has everything to do with God's timing, I'll explain. We in the west plan out everything. Our days are sometimes planned down to the minute! This type of planning leaves little wiggle room for God and that is the point of my modified saying, I relish when God has room in my life to be God! As missionaries we are always on the look out for ways to meet people and then take advantage of those opportunities to talk about our ministry. But sometimes we plan so much that we really never give God the chance to show us that no matter the amount of planning we do he always has something better for us. Lately we have backed off just a bit from all our planning and instead of being anxious about whether or not we have a full calendar we are just allowing ourselves to go "just far enough" and then letting God do what he does best...be God! And the results have been amazing! Which is kind of funny when you think about it. Why is it we are so amazed when we take the time to allow Gods plan to rule in our lives but anxious when we do it the other way around? We are close to our goal of being 100% funded to go to Italy but I am finding more and more that with God in the midst of our planning we are just far enough and thats a good place to be! Ciao.