New York State of Mind

Well it's official: our summer in Italy is over. Sad but true. We arrived in New York last Thursday evening after a very long day of International travel. Don't get me wrong, we were ready to get back to the U.S., but we were also sad to be leaving the place that was our home for more than 2 months. We definitely enjoyed our last few days in Italy, and have also enjoyed our time here in NYC. I wish I could write about everything that has happened, but unfortunately we'll have to settle for some highlights. Here are just a few:

We knew that we would have a few days to do some fun stuff our last week in Italy, so we took a couple of days and enjoyed them. On the Saturday before we left, Josie, Brian, and I all went back to Cinque Terre and enjoyed a day at the beach. We really had a blast swimming in the Mediterranean and getting a little bit of a tan. The next day was our last Sunday, and last worship service, with the church in Prato. I was able to say a few words (with Mike translating of course!!) to the church about how grateful we were to them, and how much we would miss them. After church we all planned to get together again before we left, so we didn't have to say all of our goodbyes then. Later that night, there was a little fair going on in Prato, so we got to check that out and see what a fair looks like in Italy. It's a little different than what we were used to, but not much really. On Monday, Josie and I decided to stay in and pack our things and clean up before we left on Wednesday morning for Rome. Tuesday was our last full day in Tuscany, so we decided to go back into Florence and see some of the things we had still not experienced. We stopped off at the market to snag a few souvineers, then we caught a open-top sightseeing tour bus. We had done this same thing in London a couple of years ago, so we knew that we would really enjoy it. We weren't disappointed. We got to see so much of Florence that we would never have gotten to see. Plus, the tour tells you all the history behind what you are seeing, which makes it so much more interesting. After spending the day in Florence, we headed back to Prato for a little get-together that the church members had planned. We all ate pizza and talked and laughed, enjoying our last night of fellowship together. We said our emotional goodbyes, then headed back to our apartment for the last time. Early Wednesday morning we grabbed our bags and headed to the train station for Rome. Since the train ride is about 3 hours, and we needed to be at the airport by 11am, we decided that it would be better to just stay the night in Rome to avoid any potential problems. We booked a night at the Hotel Riviera in Fiumicino, just outside of Rome and only 10 minutes from the airport. This place was special for us since it is the same hotel that we all stayed in 4 years ago when we first arrived in Italy. This place was also great because it is only a couple of blocks away from the beach! So, instead of going into Rome, we spent the rest of the day in Fiumicino at the beach. It was a perfect ending to a great 2 months in Italy. We really couldn't have asked for anything better. The next morning we started our long day in the air by flying out to Amsterdam first, then on to NY.

The first thing we wanted to do when we got to New York was sleep!! After a long flight like that, I'm usually pretty worn out. Josie's dad picked us up at the airport, and took us back to his house in the Bronx were we got a good nights sleep. We've been here since then, mostly relaxing and trying not to melt in this heat!! On Sunday, Josie and I jumped on the subway for a short trip to see her grandmother and sister who live here as well. Josie got to show me around her old neighborhood a little and take some pictures of her old school and playground. It was also good to spend the day with her family, especially since it was her grandmother's birthday. It was a little confusing for me, however, since they all speak Spanish and my mind is still stuck in Italian! I can see that it's going to take a little time to get used to speaking Spanish again. :) We had a good time visiting with everyone there, and then headed back to her father's house for the night. Then next day I had a meeting with Jared Looney, a church-planter here in the Bronx. I have been in contact with him for the last several months about their work here, so this was a great opportunity to meet with him in person and discuss the work here. They are doing a great work, and I enjoyed hearing about their successes and failures here in this very difficult field. Josie and I are planning on meeting with the church that meets in their home on Friday night, so we are looking forward to getting a first-hand look at church planting here in the Bronx. On Tuesday, we decided to head into the city for a little sightseeing. New York City is one of our favorite places in the world, so we definitely wanted to see it at least once while we were here. We decided to take Bobby, one of Josie's brothers, along with us since he hasn't been to the city very often. He wanted to see the Statue of Liberty, so we started there. After seeing Lady Liberty, we headed back up town, taking in the city and all its sights. After walking around for a few hours and seeing a lot of cool stuff, we decided to head back home to avoid being caught in the rain. We hope to get back into the city again before we leave, but I'm not sure if that will happen or not. Rain is in the forcast for the rest of the week, so we'll just have to see what happens.

I had really wanted to add some overall reflections from our time in Italy to this post, but since it is so long already, I think I'll save that for later. In the mean time, just know that we are doing very well, and enjoying the blessings that God fills our lives with every day. I hope the same is true for you all as well. Please continue to pray for us as we seek to do His will, and that we might be shining lights in the darkness. Also remember our brothers and sisters in Italy, and those here in the Bronx. God bless you all.

Aaron

Weddings, trips, and joy!

Hey there everybody!!!
We have exactly one week left till it's time for us to head home. We have so much to share with you guys about all that we have learned and all that God has taught us during our time here, but I'm gunna leave that to Aaron. Instead, I'm gunna share with you about the really cool things that we've been able to do these past couple of weeks. We have been able to participate in all kinds of neat activities and I simply can not wait to fill you guys in.


First off, we were asked by a member of the church to sing at his wedding. Luigi, the groom, really wanted a few of us to sing some pretty acappella songs for the ceremony. Talk about a honor!! and PRESSURE! I mean Italian weddings are a HUGE deal. They spend alot of time planning them and spend tons of money to make them just perfect, the last thing I wanted was for us to go "off" and ruin their whole ceremony=) Thankfully, we practiced and we did pretty well. The wedding was a smaller one( 35 people) and it was at a garden on the top of a mountain. It was gorgeous, hands down the prettiest location I've seen in a long time! The ceremony was quite similar to the ones we have in the States, there were prayers, songs, the reading of the vows...etc. The only things that I thought were different was that they sat in 2 chairs, and that before they were pronounced husband and wife they had to sign this paper ( them and 3 witnesses). All in all, it was beautiful. We sang and then they let us stay for the appetizers, and then we had to leave. The dinner part of Italian weddings is the biggest deal. They eat for like 4 or 5 hours, like 7 courses.....all paid for by the couple. AYE! Talk about expensive, no wonder we weren't invited=) Wish you guys could of seen it. It rocked! And for a little while, I really felt like we helped to make their special day a little more perfect=)



Next on the list of cool activities, is our trip to San Gimignano. Ok, so we have developed a close friendship with a couple named Deborah and Orfeo (members of the church). We have spent quite a bit of time with them in the time that we have been here. Well, one day they had this great idea for us to take a trip together to one of the little towns on the Tuscan hillside just to enjoy our time together and for us to get a better feel for Tuscany. We decided on San Gimignano, the Manhattan of Tuscany, and lemme tell you how glad I am that we did. It's simply breath taking! It's called Manhattan because of it's many towers. It used to have like over 100 tall towers, now it only has 7 but they are pretty neat. Ok, so our trip. We ending up going with Deborah's whole family( who was already in town for the wedding) =). It was a blast, exploring and experiencing life in the small town. We all got to have some pretty neat conversations, some even spiritually focused, so besides the fun, I think that the trip was a success! =)




The fourth of July was classic! One of the Aimers has been developing a friendship with an American girl who lives here in Prato, but who isn't a member of the church. Her name is Julianna. Anyway, Juliana invited us all to spend the day with her and her fiance at the lake. We were thrilled and we planned for this pretty traditional fourth. I mean, we had hot dogs, sloppy joes, peach cobbler...the works! We spent the day soaking up the sun, talking, and swimming. My 3 favorite things!!! It was cool though because, it gave me the chance to really talk to the Aimer girls and encourage them. Girls have some of the best conversations when they are laying out=) We were thankful for that little piece of home on that special holiday!



The last really interesting thing that we did was this last Sunday. The whole church decided to head up the mountains after church top attend the annual "Wild Boar Festival". =) . It was all new to me, but they were all pretty pumped. We all caravaned up this curvy and really dangerous mountain road to get to the festival, that was at the summit of a huge mountain. It was scary but really neat. When we got there, we heard Italian folk music and saw what looked like a little fair. It was soo cool. Old people were dancing and waltzing in the center of it all.... soo cute. Basically what you did, was pay for whatever type of wild boar meal you wanted, and then you picked it up at this huge tent. The food was AMAZING! Wild boar is my new favorite meat. It was juicy and soo tender, who knew? We all ate, listened to music, played cards, and just hung out all day long. It was "an event". It was soo cool to see the church members fellowshipping and enjoying each other's company. I loved it.

I know none of the activities listed above sound much like "work" and maybe it wasn't much "work" for us, but they were amazing opportunities for us to love people. We just spent time with people and tried to show them that they were important to us. I just feel like that is soo important here, well everywhere. Relationships are everything! People will not respect you or listen to what you have to say if they don't know you. And on top of that, I really felt like all of these activities really gave us some time to strike up some much needed and beneficial conversations, so for that I'm thankful! God is good.

We love you all soo much and miss you. We are excited about being able to be home to see you all soon! Thank you again for helping to make this amazing experience possible. You have truly been a part of this work, right along with us. Thank you. May God bless you all wherever you are, whatever you are doing. We send our love.

Josie

Overdue Update!!

Ciao tutti!! I sincerely apologize for not writing sooner. We have been so swamped with things going on here that I really haven’t had much time to update the blog. So much has happened since the last post that it would take far too much space and time to write about it all, so I’ll give you the Cliff’s Notes version.

On June 25^th, Josie and I travelled to Venice to celebrate our 3^rd wedding anniversary. Venice is such a beautiful and romantic place, and even more special for us since our relationship first started to bloom there 4 years ago. We had an amazing room right on the Grand Canal, overlooking the famous Rialto Bridge. After spending a day and night there, we took a short train ride to Padova to visit with the mission team that is working with the church there. They were gracious enough to endure our endless questioning, and even fed us lunch! They are doing a great work there, and are an encouragement to us. Please remember their work there in your prayers.

After our two day outing, we returned to Prato to finalize our work on our “mini” campaign that began the next week. We printed, cut, and distributed about 5,000 flyers, as well as put on puppet shows and hosted dinners for the church. The campaign was only three days, but it was a lot of work, and I believe it was very beneficial for us and the church. In fact, the flyers seemed to be already gaining a response. The day after we distributed our evangelistic flyer (advertising only Bible studies, no English lessons) a woman walked in the church requesting a Bible and future Bible studies. We were amazed at such a quick response, considering it is apparently not unusual to distribute thousands of flyers and never receive one response. I can’t tell you what an encouragement it was to us all. I believe there has also been a response to our flyer offering free English lessons (using the Bible) as a result of our distribution. Please pray for these responses and others in the future.

As I mentioned earlier, we also hosted dinners for the church and those in the community. The ladies of the congregation prepared amazing meals for us all, and then we all gathered together for a devotional. The first night was a singing devotional in which Josie and I taught the congregation 3 songs in Spanish. There is a large family of Honduran immigrants that attends the church, and we decided to do the Spanish songs in an effort to make them feel special. It definitely worked! When we told them that we would be singing some songs in Spanish, they were so excited!! They even brought some of their other Honduran friends that have never come to church because they do not yet speak Italian. They all were so excited to speak to Josie in Spanish; you could see their faces light up when they got to speak in their native language. What was better is that the church, even though they struggled through the songs, decided to sing them on Sunday for the Spanish speaking members! It was a beautiful gesture to illustrate how much the Hondurans mean to this congregation, and something that is certainly outside the norm for Italians here in Prato, considering immigrants are very discriminated against and disliked.

The second night was a night of prayer, in which we divided the men and women into two groups and had them each pray for certain things. It was a blessing to hear the men of the congregation discuss their own individual prayer requests and praises for the church here. The women also seemed to have a good response in their group, bringing laughter and tears during their session.

The third night was more focused on evangelism. We decided to have a Mexican food night in which we would invite all our friends who are not yet Christians into the church for a free meal. One of our Honduran sisters helped Josie make tortillas and empanadas, and Mike and I prepared the cheese and toppings. We had quite a turn out; apparently Mexican food is quite popular, although there are no Mexican restaurants to be found here! Several of our friends from the community showed up, and the building was so full that many of us ate outside in the courtyard. The food (of course) was amazing, and everyone seemed to have a really great time. We all stayed until pretty late, talking and laughing and enjoying the fellowship. The church really seemed to get a lot out of these three nights, and Mike later mentioned that he thought they would try to do this again in September. We were blessed to be a part of it, and it was a great experience for us to learn how to organize a campaign.

Well, I think this post has been quite long enough! I wish that I could say everything that has happened. In fact, I wish that you all were right here with us, experiencing it all for yourselves. Our Lord has truly blessed us during this time, and we thank you all for your help in making it happen. I pray that you are all doing well, and continuing to see God in your lives. Drop us a line and let us know how you are doing, and if we can be praying for you about anything. Continue to remember us and the work here in your prayers. God bless you all.

Fotos

Here we are in the centro the campaigners on the night that they arrived. We had such a great time just catching up and showing them around Prato.

Cinque Terre at it's best!!!! This the 4th City, Vernazza. This is shot from the actual vicious hiking path! It was a total killer, but isnt the view gorgeous?!!?!

Me and my sweetie on the hike, The coast was soo beautiful! If you know me, you know how important the ocean is to me. I was in heaven with the sea so close!

We found out while we were there that Italy was Playing against France that night so we found a restraunt with a tv and watched the game with the Italians. It was a blast because the natives are crazy when it comes to soccer! They yell and scream...hahah.... but I guess thats what makes it soo fun huh?

This was taking during one of our puppet shows this week. I am the "conductor" of the gospel train, and here I am leading the kiddos around the park. Quite fun! The love it, esp. when I spend the train up to running speed.=)

After the week of death

Hello everybody!!! Im alive! Back in the land of the living. Sorry it has taken entirely too long for me to update the blog, I've just been a mess. Like Aaron said earlier, a big mean stomach virus came along and took me out for a whole week. I felt like a prisoner in this house and it was miserable. Good news is, though, that Italians do have good medicine. Who knew?=) So anyway, after the week of pain, great things started happening again. The Italy campaign finished that same weekend, and they made their way up to Prato to see us for a night. That was a blast, we got to hear all kinds of amazing stories about the work that was going on in cities all over Italy. It was nice to be reminded , after a week like I had, that there is soo much going on, so much work to do here. It was definitly a pick me up to see them. The best part about them being here is that we were able to plan a day trip together to go to Cinque Terre (a series of 5 smalls cities on the coast). We went first to Florence to catch up with the Daggett family on their way through Tuscany, and that was amazing. It was soo nice to be around people that we knew loved us and that could offer us some encouragement. They were great about telling us that they think we're doing a good job and to keep it up. They really encouraged us not to loose heart and to work even harder this last month that we have here. They gave us some ideas of new things to be involved in and ways to make new relationships. That was soo needed and totally priceless to us, because we had been getting a little down. We feel renewed and refreshed and ready to work, Thank God. We have realized how important relationships are. Sometimes when the work is slow or we feel like we aren't making a difference, it's good for us to remember that relationships are the reason we are here. Through forming relationships we can encourage, teach, and comfort. We intend to spend a big part of our time doing just that, forming relationships here. The Christians in the church in Prato are so closed off from each other, and they dont open up to each other. What an opportunity for us to be what they need while we are here! =) Anyway, thats been really on my mind, sorry about the soapbox=) Outside of spending time with the Italian families we have been hosting puppet shows in parks around the city all week and thats been fun. Really HOT, but soo fun. The kids love it. Sooo many actually come out and sit through the 2 hour show! warming all over the place! There is a ridiculously vicious hiking path the runs to/ thru each ofOh yeah, I forgot to tell you guys about the actual trip to Cinque Terre! It was soo stinking fun! WE loved it there! I'll post pics, but the cities are in the mountains right along side of the Med. sea. They are super quaint and cute, with tons of tourists swarming the cities. There is a ridiculously viscious hiking path that leads through each of the cities and it was fun/exhausting to do that with the campaigners! We couldn't have asked for a better end to the "week of death". Before I go, I just wanna say how much I miss you guys. SO MUCH! I am having a bit of a hard time with being so far away. I feel completely excluded from your lives, and its killing me. PLEASE, please write me updates on you. Let me know the new and exciting things that are happening in your lives! I love you all soo much, and pray for you daily. God bless you all this week!

p.s. This Wed. coming up (the 25th) is a very special day. It will be our 3 year anniversary!!!!!!! We are taking an overnight trip to Venice to celebrate and we are soooooo excited!!!! Pray for everything to go well please, so that we can start year 4 with a bang!! =)

One Month

Dear Family,
I hope you all are well and enjoying your summer as much as we are. As I sat down to scribble out this post, I was reminded that this week is our fourth here in Italy. We have roughly six more left. It’s hard to believe that we are nearly at the half-way point for our time here. In some ways, it has flown by. We are learning so much Italian and have become pretty well adapted to the way things work here in Prato, at least in our little circle. So, in that respect, it seems as though we’ve been here a while. Then, when I think about the fact that one half of our time here is nearly over, and that one third of our entire summer is gone, it seems that time is flying by!! But, all in all, it has been a great month overall, except for the fact that we have been sick for the last few days. Josie and I both seem to have gotten a stomach virus that is going around, so we’ve been in bed for the last couple of days. Especially Josie; she’s had it pretty bad. I’m confident that we’re on the better side of things now, and we’ve finally gotten some good medicine that seems to be helping. So, no worries about us. We’re in good hands. :)

Up until our illness, we were staying quite busy with the activities in the church and other things. As for activities with the church, we’ve been able to visit with some of the members quite frequently, going to their homes and hanging out, and getting ice cream together. Also, a couple of the members of the church here had birthdays last week, so we threw them a part that practically the whole congregation attended. As for our group’s (the Mahan’s, the AIMers, and us) activities, we all went into the mountains Sunday night to sing for a conference held by a local battered women’s support group. As a show of their appreciation for our singing, we were invited to dinner, which was a four-course meal that lasted over two hours! We as a group are also doing singing and puppet practice, getting ready for those activities later this week. For Josie and me personally, we got a chance see some friends from the States when the Wilson’s came through Florence as part of their European backpacking trip. It was good to see old friends, and to experience Florence together with them. We also have been working on Italian, both in private lessons and in everyday conversations with church members and people here in Prato. It was a lot of fun going to the pharmacy to get Josie some medicine, and trying to explain to the woman there what I was wanting! I have a hard enough time doing that in the States, much less here in a language I really don’t know!! But I made it through, and learned a few new vocabulary words as well. :)

We have yet to get a chance to do much traveling to some of the really beautiful and scenic towns here in Tuscany. Between bad weather and illness, we’ve basically been in Prato the entire time. We hope to venture out for a couple of short day trips in the next week, and maybe a couple of over-night trips to visit with other missionaries here in Italy later in the month. We should be back in Florence with the Daggetts and some of the campaigners this Monday when they come through. It will be such a blessing to see them again, and hear about all their adventures from the last month. We had hoped to be with them this week while they were in Naples, but it just didn’t work out. So, we’ll settle for Monday, since even a little visit is better than none at all.

We miss you all dearly and pray for your well-being constantly. We also ask for your continued prayers for us and the work here. May God continue to bless you and your work for His kingdom in your everyday life, and may he bless our brothers and sisters here in Italy as they struggle in the same effort.

Love to you all,

Aaron

This is what the Piazza at the Center of town looks like. This is where you will see everyone hanging out on a typical afternoon. We pass this on the way to church. It's pretty huh

He He He. ok, ok, this is just me being silly, but take a look at what's behind me. That is the river side/mountain side of Prato. It's gorgeous. Aaron and I have bible time over here often. It's what I always imagined Tuscany would be like....

Here we are singing at the Nursing home. This was soo much fun. We sang some Christian songs and some Tuscan folk songs. They loved it! Notice... one of the little old ladies even got up to be with us=) Sooo cute!

Here is "La Chiesa di Cristo" on a Sunday morning. There are about 25- 30 members at the church in Prato, and they are all great.