Just wanted to give you an update of what we have been up to these past few weeks. As we are making our plans to leave this country we are still very active keeping our lines of communication open. Checking on our friends and contacts to make sure they are ok, in need of love and fellowship or prayer and still continuing to make contacts that will we know be beneficial in the future for bringing Italy closer and closer to Jesus.
This past weekend we went to Rome to see our very good friends Alessandro and Kristin along with their children Andrea and Gabriella. It is a chance for us to catch up, vent, share and grow in this friendship. They have been here for 3 1/2 years and have found themselves at the boiling point in regards to living here in Italy. Italy is not an easy country to make a living in and many families have to make huge sacrifices to find work, sometimes leaving them all week and coming home only on the weekends. You have to be so careful at times or find yourself in debt and nothing is worse than that, as you can most times just get by. We were able to share with them the things we have gone through and encourage them to really work together as a team and to push forward. It's so great to know that in the 5 years we have been here, we really did learn something experience wise and can pass it on. Isn't that what it is all about, helping one another to the next level, never leaving anyone behind.
Than on Sunday we went to see Laura. If you all remember Laura is the young lady we prayed with last year when we went to the church to meet Christa from Israel. In that connection we met Sorpressa Sithole from Africa, Clint from California and Brian from California as well. These have all developed into awesome friendships that we have actually been able to hook up with again since that time (except Clint because he is in a country I can't name now, but we keep in touch and pray and encourage each other with posts and music and stuff from time to time. Him more than me because he is awesome at blogging and posting).
Anyhow Laura is the young lady who from the age of 15 till 20 didn't talk due to some traumatic things that happened to her and than at 20 she started speaking in multiple voices but none were hers. We all prayed for her, who we had just met as well for the first time (talk about making first impressions, Hi I'm Clint, come out in the name Jesus, where are you from, Father set her free, wow how cool your from California as well, ) at a church that all of us had been at for the first time including Laura. After 2 1/2 hours of prayer and counseling her mom about taking spiritual authority, fasting, praying, etc. and more prayer and her mom getting filled with the Holy Spirit and more prayer, Laura finally spoke but for only about a minute or two and than went back to the voices. Well to say the least her mom broke out crying saying she hadn't heard her daugher's voice in 10 years.
Anyhow her mom called us about month after this to give her testimony that Laura no longer was on medication, was no longer screaming all night and was now sleeping. We sent her a Bible on cassette in Italian and told her to play them all the time and to throw out all the idols in her home, which she gladly did since they weren't hers and had been brought to the house by the grandmother.
She calls us about every 3 or 4 months and finally we were able to go to their house and hang out with them. As soon as we saw Laura we didn't recognize her, she was smiling and Laura was there, present, talking. She still has a ways to go as it seem in the past 3 or 4 weeks she is lapsing back into the voices and she hasn't fully gained back all her speech or mental sharpness but her recovery to this point has made somewhat of an impression on her father who is an Agnostic. Basically if we can prove that their is a God he will believe. I asked him what he's going to doing when she is totally healed and he is walking her down the isle at her wedding. He said he would go to church twice a day. I told him that wouldn't be necessary, just his heart given to the Lord would be sufficient.
We spent 7 awesome hours with this family talking and sharing. After a time I went in with Paola the mother and Guido hung out with Dario the father and we both just shared liberally and openly about the Lord. Paola is so hungry for the Lord and the truth and a relationship and it seems that she has yet to find a fellowship home. Guido shot from the hip as usual and walked away feeling like Dario was an awesome righteous and just man who just needed the Lord to reveal himself to him. Kind, generous and loving is this family. At the end we took communion (not Dario, but he hung out and watched us pray together for the communion, over his daughter who kept trying to leave the room (the other voices were a bit agitated for sure) but he kept lovingly pulling her back for prayer. This is a man who has exhausted every avenue and has found no cure for his daughter. He asked Guido what he ever did to Jesus that He would do this to his daughter and Guido was able to explain that he didn't do anything and Jesus didn't do this to her. He even took her to an American doctor who ran ever possible test and this doctor said there is nothing medically wrong with his daughter, they haven't even diagnosed her as mentally ill, so Dario indeed is a man who is stumped by the fact that he doesn't believe and yet everything is pointing to this being something spiritual and in need of a spiritual cure.
Paola grew up with some pretty hard core guilt, fear and hypocrisy in regards to religion. It is religion mixed with superstition and pagan traditions and Dario wants nothing to do with that if that is what people say is God. Paola wants to be free to know this loving God, this saving Jesus, this powerful Holy Spirit and so everything we share with her from the Bible she just soaks up like a sponge. Even Dario noticed that she is more calmer when she has to deal with the grandmother of Laura who keeps bringing prayer idols into the house. She just throws them away. She asked about pictures, books, devotions, even the music, if it was good or bad. She wanted to know how she would know it was really God speaking do her and not the devil. They shared their hearts with such openess and honesty it was pretty humbling for me and Guido.
Than to top off the whole awesome time, they told their part of the story about the church we met at last March. It seems her mother heard that there was going to be a guest speaker (Sorpresa Sithole) at this church and she wanted to go and see him and asked Paola to come with her. It is a charasmatic Catholic church (which Paola said the Vatican has recently shut it down. I will check that to see if that is in fact the case) t and I guess when she got in there and saw all these little nuns dancing around, singing Jesus is risen, and just having a awesome Holy Ghost time, she wanted to split. So they (Paola, her mom and Laura) went to the car to leave and the car wouldn't start. So they called Dario who said he would come over and check it out and pick them up if necessary. They came back into the church where I guess Laura started manifesting and she was taken into a room for prayer (enter Brian, Clint & us into this story as Christa who knows all of us asked us all to come and pray. Don't know where Grandma was because only Paola and Laura were in the room with us. Dario than called Paola to tell her that his brand new tire was flat and that he couldn't come. Than as this thing went on and on she told him to wait and after the 2 1/2 hours she went back to the car which started back up. Now that Dario knows the whole story and not piece by piece, he has some thinking to do.
So Thursday we are off to Switzerland again to meet up with Bella and David whom we met at the conference back in June. They are going to put us in contact with a group from I think he said Argentina who has started a whole home church in the area of Lake Constance. They recently told Bella (Italian born in Switzerland) that they had a real heart for Italy and would probably be doing some prayer stuff there in the near future. They contacted us shortly after to let us know and I felt we needed to hook up with them before we left Italy to insure that we leave no loose ends and that possibly a connection for prayer (very specific, strategic prayer walks, warfare, etc) in future is established amen.
We still are looking to do our prayer walk of the Gothic line but as the Lord is starting to unravel this, it seems a bit big for us to just knock out in a few weekends. We did pray the one end of it several months back and we are going to the other end which is near us to pray as well, but we may have to wait till we get back to really pray into the communities that were impacted by the last assult by the allied troops in Italy. August 10th and 11th I was in Cesena with Emily and Eric and had the most awesome priviledge of watching their son while they worked. He was awesome and I got to read almost 1/2 of Frank Viola's book "From Eternity to Here". If you haven't you should read this book. Awesome. Anyhow when I spoke with Guido I told him I though that the City were were staying at was on the map as one of the Cities we needed to pray in, I mean it is 300 km. of area we are talking here and so many cities start with a C I couldn't be sure. So he said pray anyway while your there, it can't hurt.
So when I came back to the room after lunch it was raining and while Zick played I started praying. As the rain came down I just said Lord, use this water to wash away all the blood that was spilt her, heal all the wounds, just flood this area with your presence. Than it starting raining really hard. So I brought Zick to the open window to watch it because he was a little frightened of the thunder and the sound of the rain which was so forceful. We watched as some people had arrived and the women wouldn't get out of the car because the rain was big drops now and heavy. The man with them ran with his umbrella to the room but he was soaked just in the few minutes he was standing there trying to get them to come out of the car. Normally it just rains a few minutes and than stop. All of the sudden a huge wind like a downward blast came blew the bathroom window shut, picked up a chair and blew it accross the yard next to the park car. Than another giant strong downward gust and another. This chair I was for sure was going to slam into the car. Zick now is really crying and I decide I'm going to run out there and get that chair but the wind is so hard I can't open the door and than I think I'm going get soaked and Zik is going to freak out if I run out of the room. It looked like a tornado wind wind pushing down huge gusts for 20 minutes and than stop, calm.
When I got home I checked our map and not only was this a city but this was a German occupied stronghold city and this city took huge casulties. They said it was a freak storm. I just found it interesting . I took a train back to Montecatini that afternoon, which I missed by a few seconds again, but the next one I waited for got me there at about the same time as the train I missed so it totally made up for the 5 hours train diaster from my trip to Amsterdam. Thank you again Emily and Erik for your generousity to us and your love and your friendship and for bringing Chloe all those Golden books.
Amsterdam with Debby at the end of July was awesome. I love that woman, what a woman of God. Keep her in your prayers for those of you who know her as this is a real time of change and she really needs the Lords healing and direction and for those of you who don't, pray anyway, because the Lord knows how to have you pray for her amen. Who would have though french fries and maynoise could be so good. Yeah I know it is totally un American but hey when in Holland do as the Dutch. I loved it, it was beautiful and the only sad part was that it was so short. We will be back for sure. Met some awesome people, Cory you know who you are, ha ha. Visited Debs church where I was invited to come down and introduce myself (first time they asked a new visitor to come and introduce themselves, I always seem to be the first at something new and than churches end up setting a standard after that. That's a ha ha Ps. Dennis if you get my drift.
Mr. Guido is at the middle of a bunch of tests on his hands. He seems to have something really wrong happening since he started working in the freezers. He has had and x-ray, electro magnetic, he will have in a few weeks some sort of hand imaging done and a meeting with the Rheumatologist. Pray that they get the source of the problem as he is in intense pain 24/7 and his hands are swollen. We already had to have his wedding ring enlarged once and it is getting tight again. He didn't wear it for 3 months because he hoped it would go down and resized it because he has never not had it on since we were married. Yeah he's a sap but I love him for it. Yeah I know some of you other guys out there like that, you know who you are Dean and.......
Love you guys, keep us in prayer as we do lots and lots of travel. Pray for an open time slot to catch a plane that we will be taking it looks like on standby from Frankfurt. Dave B. has gotton us some passes but it has to be from Germany and he said we might have to wait a few days. Pray the Lord directs us to the right time so we don't have to wait to long. Target is still end of October if the creek doesn't rise or the Lord pulls off that financial miracle were waiting for. Should we go fishing?
