Happy Resurrection Sunday – He is risen & He is faithful….

It has been a whole year since we have sent out a Newsletter so we thought we ought to touch base and let you know what we have been up to.  Many of you know that we  moved back to California on March 10, 2016 to be  here for our family as the Lord really impressed  upon us that it was time.  So much has  happened, I’m not sure even where to begin.

 We have been living in the home of my Italian  teacher who is elderly and needs help around the  house.  She lives in the same city that we left  from,  so it has been such a blessing to  be back on our  home turf so to speak.  It has  been an enormous  blessing for us as it has  allowed us to be stable,  close to our daughter &  granddaughter & to save  some money.   Not to  mention, she let us bring our  cat Judah.  We have  a beautiful downstairs room a  private bathroom &  a garden view.  

Blessed is the fruit of our labors

Guido started a new job upon arrival and has been doing really well; in fact they just put him into a supervisory role and put him on salary.  This was a total blessing from our daughter who referred him.  He works Tuesday, Thursday & Sunday for 12 hours.  You can check out what he does by clicking on the link below.  For the first few months he worked so much that we were able to sock a little money away and bought a practically new car.  This car was a huge blessing a real super miracle since we didn’t have any credit as we have been gone for 12 years, and Guido had only been on the job for 2 months J

I am still plugging along doing bookkeeping with my awesome friend Kaylyn.  I am now a Quickbook Pro Advisor but have so much more to learn.   Adjusting for some reason was not that hard, although my heart really pined daily to go back home to Italy.   It almost was as if I never left, like no time had passed.  I was extremely stressed out before I even got back, thinking that I wouldn’t be able to make the adjustment.  We were told we should get counseling as it is normal for missionaries to have some difficulties but it became very apparent that we were inside an enormous grace bubble.  The Lord had personally wrapped us up and was carrying us along in such sweet and faithful manner.  Such grace & favor has been upon us.

www.habit.com

Let go, Move on!

The only thing that did make it difficult was that people kept telling us now was the time to settle back in, Italy was done & over, move on.  I started freaking out because in our hearts we really only felt that this was for a season & that our work in Italy was still ongoing.   Contacts for further work in Italy were opening up and we were just starting into this wonderful season of fruits from our labors.  It wasn't just that we love our life in Italy and just want to live there, but we still have so many plans & dreams for Italy.   I really started hitting an emotional breakdown thinking I was never going to get to go back. 

While We were visiting VOT Church, they had a guest speaker who has a very accurate prophetic ministry.  After the service, Pastor Dennis introduced us and talked about our adventures in Italy together and this man asked if he could pray for us and he started giving us this incredible prophetic word that totally lined up with our heart vision for a school in Sicily.  He talked about us going back & forth and it totally set our hearts at ease.  We really were blown away at the accuracy of the word and totally blessed & it encouraged us to kick it up a notch & get ready for these things to happen.

New Beginnings

The year had many changes for us personally as well.  We officially resigned as missionaries at New Life Christian Church.  This was not an easy decision for me as this has been my church since I was 23.  I raised my children in this church.  It has been my home & family.  They have blessed me for 30 years and loved me & Guido so faithfully.  It was a very difficult prayerful decision but we felt we had to move into the next season and align ourselves with those who would partner with us for the future in Italy. 

The church we have settled into is called Voice of Triumph with Pastor Jim & Marti Souza.  A very young, upbeat, on fire community with awesome worship & powerful preaching & teaching.  We are now on staff and are their missionaries

to Italy.  They have been so loving and caring to us.  Pastor Dennis is also

 here so it really feels like home having  my spiritual father here as well.  It feels like we have always been a part of this fellowship.  We have so many new friends our age & many young families as well.  They just celebrated 7 years on Sunday, very exciting times ahead.  They are very connected with the flow of Bethel & we have many awesome guest speakers & ministries coming through.   It really is a time for us to fill up, grow more into the body of Christ in a much fuller way and to strengthen relationships, gain new contacts & be better equipped for what the Lord is doing in these last days.

 We also had a

 young lady from Sicily come & stay 3  months with us.  Enza Maria or  Fireball Enza as we call her. 

 This is one of the most incredible young  women we have ever met in Italy.  She is  young, on fire & knows how to pray &  fast.  She got to check out the School of  Supernatural in Redding, hang out with the  students currently there from Italy, go  down to LA & visit Chapman & Hannah

 & their new baby Shepherd & even got a  surfing lesson & had her first American  Thanksgiving with Chapman's family.  She  was such a blessing to the VOT Church  youth & semi youth (lol).  She was deeply  impacted as were they 

 as they shared their love of Jesus from different cultural perspectives.  She hopefully will be back in October with a group of youth to do some music ministry/workshops & perhaps even go to school.  We feel we have become a bridge between two nations and are looking forward to many more Italians making their way here to bless our American church family and to be blessed by them as well.

Mission Base ... 

We currently go back and forth to Italy twice a year and just returned from our last trip on March 31^st.  We planted a mission station finally.  10 days of intense work building the furniture & kitchen.  We also got our things out of storage from our lovely friends Vittoria & Joyce who blessed us tremendously by storying it for us in their atic.  We managed to get most of the unpacking done and the apartment is now ready to receive our first mission guests.  It really has been a dream realized as returning to the USA, we weren’t sure how this

could happen, but our awesome friends Manuela and Marcello in Sicily found the apartment and made all the arrangements from getting the contract together, all the utilities turned on to being there when the couriers delivered package after package from IKEA & Amazon.  

                                                      We weren’t 

 able to visit with  many people  however we did  reinforce some  friendships & made

 new ones as well.  Was able to pray & lay hands  on our new neighbor Franca who had a bad back  and her daughter in law Rosalba who is fighting  cancer, please keep them in prayer. Believing f  or complete healing & restoration amen.

 We need to be convinced of this one thing, the  Lord is our provider always and He works out  His  plans in our lives.  We had many years of  being  so financially stretched in Italy but He  never  let  us  down.    We just  need to  trust in  His goodness & faithfulness.  We till marvel at how He does this stuff.  How He opens the right doors, makes the right connections and divine appointments, not just in finances but in every aspect of our life.  There is never by chance when the King of Glory is ordering your steps and you are looking to Him for everything.  A man plans his ways but the Lord directs his path has become a life plan for us.  

Having left lands & homes & families....

Another awesome report is that we bought a house.   9846 Olive Street, Oakland.  Yeah can you believe it, Olive St. I just have to laugh.  A total miracle has happened for us.  Literally a meeting with a Jewish realtor who hooked us up with a loan agent who has gotten us funding, grants & special loans to make this possible.  The realtor & the broker just championed for us through the process.  We were going to get just get a 2 bedroom 1 bath house.  We had made at least 8 offers and had been outbid on every one of them.  We were feeling a little discouraged thinking this would not be happening since this is the only place in the Bay Area left that has some afforadable housing.  Then literally right before we left for Italy, this house dropped into our laps, 4 bedrooms & 2 bathrooms.  It really is what we need with the amount of people that are coming from Europe to visit us this year.  Miracles grace & favor.  I’m still in shock; Guido is like “yeah that’s my Daddy”. 

When we left California in 2004, everyone said we would never be able to buy again, geez I even 

said it.  Homes in California already were skyrocketing & even though they had a crash, it still continues to escalate beyond reach for most people & rents are not even practical and yet the Lord saw fit to open a door for us.  We had an excepted offer on March 10^th, the 1 year anniversary of our return.  What a gift the Lord has granted us.  Such incredible

favor in finances he has given us abundantly so we can stay with both 

feet in both countries for the moment.  Instead of throwing money away on rent, we can build equity for what the Lord is doing in the future for Italy again.  I love how the Lord works out every detail. 

Oh a little side bar the Lord even put the seed money into our savings for the down payment a few months after we returned.  My friend Raye texted me in the summer and told me about a Government site that you can go to and see if you have any unclaimed money.  She said she looked me up and I had money sitting in this account.  Not possible, I know where all our money is and we don't have any lol.  But there it was $2400 dollars from a settlement?  I’ve no clue what settlement but there it was.  

We need to be convinced of this one thing, the Lord is our provider always and He works out His plans in our lives.  We had many years of being so financially stretched in Italy but He never let us down.  We like Paul learned to be content in seasons of little and now in seasons of plenty because what we need for each season is available to us.  We need but to just trust in His goodness & faithfulness.  We till marvel at how He does this stuff.  How He opens the right doors, makes the right connections and divine appointments, not just in finances but in every aspect of our life.  There is never by chance when the King of Glory is ordering your steps and you are looking to Him for everything.  A man plans his ways but the Lord directs his path has become a life plan for us.  

A hear the sounds of Revival

California also has some breakthrough things going on, so were super excited to be a part of this as well.  We got to go to Azusa Street when we got back last April & now were having the Sound 2017 on 7/7/2017 in San Francisco.  Putting our feet down & walking and praying the ground as we wait for the outpouring that the Lord has promised here.  Being a Californian you can’t even imagine how truly full of expectation I am to see this happen.  I spent most my life praying and believing for this moment, so I'm feeling extremely honored to be a part of it.  Again there is no chance with God, He is masterful in His plans and I come with the authority and right as being born here to stand and make declarations over my City/State.  How ironic that I will be living in the city I was born in.  Oakland will become a city filled with Oaks of righteousness amen.  Come and visit, our homes in both countries are open; we would love to see you.

Thank you again for all of you who have continued to bless us financially, to pray for us to follow up on us.  Now that we are moving again in the work in Italy we will try to be diligent to report on a qtr. basis. Should you desire to go & visit Sicily, the apartment is available.  Just let us know.  It can accommodate at least 8 people & has 1 small bathroom but hey, it’s Italy.  Oh & is only a 7 minute drive to one of the most incredible beaches around, Lido di Fiore.   Many doors are opening and hearts are being melted together as the Lord is blowing upon Italy/Europe in these days.  It is so awesome to see.

Or perhaps California is where you feel the Lord is calling you to come and partner with us for this great State.  Our home is always open.  Please keep us in prayer as there are so many new things on the horizon.  We are preparing to start making some trips to various schools around the nation as we  look into putting a Leaders Training School in Italy.  We are looking to partner with other ministries that are already doing this here & checking out all the awesome material they have been using.  We also will be having ALL our children & grandchildren together for a week long camping trip in July.  We have not all been together since 2006.  We are literally scattered all over the US & Canada.  

Abundant Blessings upon all of you our wonderful brothers & sisters in Christ

with love & affection

Guido & Joyce Bassi

April 2016 -- New Adventure, moving forward towards the promise of Italy, Destiny & Revival

Well it has been quite a while since we wrote and many exciting things have happened, so let's go back in time a bit.

First , please forgive us for never finishing up our posts regarding our past prayer walks on the Gothic Line that we started in 2013.  Let us just start with March 2014 and we will try to be more diligent to keep up posting on a regular basis.   Please see previous blogs if your interested in what were talking about.

 March - April 2014 -- After several mountains we had to stop due to snow and the risk of falling to our deaths, I know it sounds a little dramatic but we are amateurs so it really isn't too far a stretch to imagine us sliding down the face of one of them due to a lack of experience.  Then we had guests for a few weeks, then our car broke down for 6 weeks.  Then we found out we had to leave our apartment. so we decided to pack it up and head back to California.

Gesu Viva

In the the meantime Guido suggested we start to revisit some of the ministry connections we had made over the years, so in May we decided to head to Sicily and check in on our Church Plant in Marsala and visit a group of youth we had met some months earlier at a Bethel Event in Viarregio Italy.  Guido called ahead and talked with their Pastor and if they could find accomodations for us.  We came to find this most incredible group of youth and a most incredibly gifted Pastor.  While there they invited us up to a mountain for what we thought was siteseeing.  It turned out to be a prayer walk to pray down into the valley and over their region.  Can you imagine, they had no clue that that was what we had just been doing in our own area.  They then invited us to come and live in Sicily instead of going back to the USA.  Hmmm was the Lord up to something?

We got back home on June 6th and now we would be leaving sometime in September to live in Sicily. Plenty of time to finish the 12 mountains we had left right?  However they found us a place to live within a few weeks so it was decided we would leave in July and spend the Summer in Sicily and do the mountains in September when we came back to pick up our stuff.  The only thing is we kept feeling the Lord telling us it was vital to finish our walk before we left and it had to be done for sure before the end of 2014.  We felt such an urgency but we had no clue why it was so important to the Lord. The fact that we were rolling around to the 70th anniversary of the end of the War in 2015 might be important, but we wouldn't know just how important until later.

So with only 1 month till moving day, we walked to the top of 12 insanely high mountains while packing the apartment up on rest days (ha ha ha) and entertaining drop in visitors from the USA & Ghana.  It was awesome & difficult all at the same time.  We had great encounters with the Lord, tangible, visible presence and awesome views, not to mention pushing us physically to the limit.  It wouldn't be until December while living in Sicily that we would be invited to an Event in Germany on July 2015 called Awaking Europe.  We learned that just a few months before (February 2014) Todd White & Ben Fitzgerald were in Germany overlooking a field and they both had an open vision of a massive gathering of people in Europe, in unity coming together praising the Lord and then being sent out to gather the harvest.  Now we understood the Lord's urgency.

Ps. Antonella 

So on July, 4th 2014 we officially moved to Sicily.  The Lord had divinely opened a door for us to become a part of a very vibrant church called Gesu Viva in Santa Margherita di Belice.  This church has a female Pastor which in this part of the world is very rare and comes with many pressures and attacks  as the culture is still very much back in time physically and spiritually. She has a church full of passionate youth and she is loved and followed by many around the region.  Many Pastors call and ask her to come and help them with their youth as well.

This little church on a hilltop took us in and loved us dearly, honoring and blessing us on every occasion.  We did many things together, Birthdays, Anniversaries, Bible Studies and just hanging out.

Marika's 18th Birthday Bash

The music is very lively with a keyboard player (Massi), drums (Salvo), electric guitar (Ps. Antonella, or Anto for short), and a base player (Silvio).  Pretty much everyone has a nick name which is so cool.  You get a real sense of family and tradition while going forward and being upbeat for the Kingdom.

Guido's Birthday Bash

Although this church is far from arriving, they are the most progressively on fire church that we have encountered in our 12 years in Italy.  They have well rounded teaching, incredible worship, powerful prayers, and although the leadership is still in it's infancy (still functioning with just a pastor), they are well on their way to incorporating apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists & pastors from among their own group or associations.  They have a strong call and many mandates.  They need prayer as they traverse a very difficult terrain filled with religiosity.

Fireball Enza

They are spiritual warriors who intercede and pray with many of them doing fasts and all night prayer vigils.  Sicily was, the most exciting time and adventure we had in the 12 years.  Maybe it was just a kiss from the Lord for the 10 years we put in up in the North. It was like picking ripe fruit off the vine.

Very Serious bunch

Although our 10 years in the North was full of so many wonderful memories and times of blessings, healing, love, outpourings, friendships and the like, it was an intense time of plowing and building and laying foundations.  The North is by far a much harder ground to work, however Sicily has many challenges as well.  Some of the greatest things they really have is a strong sense of adventure, spontaneity, humor, family and openness. This atmosphere was exactly what we had been longing for and missing.  .

Really a Camel too?

Amazing Sunsets

Sicily was a season of intense refreshing, and yes some work, but the work was shared, it was no longer just us two plowing as much as we were a family working together for the Kingdom.  It was the closest thing we saw to Kingdom living with a group of Italians.  We have seen it with other groups living in Italy but they are comprised of mostly foreigners.

 Sicily is raw and still old world even among the modern things.


It often felt like we were living in the wild wild west as sheep ran through the streets guided by shepherds with dogs & farmers parking their tractors outside their front doors.

Lunch Break at McDonalds

July 2015 -- In Nuremburg, we  gathered 25,000 strong  from among the Nations for Awakening Europe .  Like we said earlier, it was from an open vision that Ben Fitzgerald & Todd White had the year before.  They did all this in faith. They  had it translated into 4 languages, Italian being one of them.  They also wanted it to be a time of reconciliation between the European Nations effected by Hitler during the II World War.  The theme was basically 70 years and the captivity was over.  Yeah so glad we finished our walk in Italy.  The Lord has a timeline.

Ran into our friend Lidia who now lives in Germany

We brought a group from Italy and became part of His Story for Europe.  It was powerful, anointed and shifted the atmosphere of Europe.  This was the same Stadium that Hitler trained his youth for hatred and murder.  From this same place we exalted King Jesus and set Him as King over Europe and commissioned a generation of youth to the Harvest of souls for the Kingdom and blessed the spiritual moms & dads to rise up and help them to do it.   Europe will be saved.

Team California

 Interestingly enough, in the 20 months we were in Sicily, the Lord brought all kinds of people around us from all over the world who wanted to partner with us to put in a training school.  All in all, we had 58 visitors in 20 months from places like Israel, Australia, USA, England, S. Africa, Italy, and other places we can't remember.

Ps. Dennis & the Church in Marsala

We have hosted teams, ministries & friends, some who returned 2 or 3 times. We never had this many people visit us in the North.  It is like the floodgates opened as people who have been longing to come to Sicily arrived.  Many have family roots here, others just felt called to be here.

Chapman, Hanna, Penny, Giovy, Silvia, Pete & Michelle

It was crazy, our house was full to overflowing at times.  They all want to be a part of the Lord raising up the Italians and learning from them as well.  The Body of Christ has so much to give to one another, every joint supplying, it is awesome.  We all want a place where we can gather with the Italians from all over Italy, and have people come from all over the world for 3 months to train and hang out and be a part of this incredible place.

Albiola & Peter from Florence, meet Enza & Christina of Sicily

 A self sustaining place that can then flow out into the surround communities & Italians going out into all the earth.  Italy needs to send missionaries out as well. The Lord renewed our vision, rebirthed our dreams (which I think we lost sight of ), and now we want to make our life in Sicily forever.

Michael Miller doing a Prophetic conference

Bethel in Palermo

With that said, one would say, "why did you come back to California then".  Well it started with a dream that Guido had about 10 years ago regarding our Granddaughter and in that dream he saw us alongside of her while she was in High School and well, that time has arrived and she doesn't live in Italy so that required a move.  Although we are really sad about that, we know that the Lord has a timing.

Penny from Australia

Onward with the Sicily story.....


It is very difficult for Italians to leave for extended periods of time from their family due to financial obligations for schooling not to mention there really isn't very many places in Italy that they can go for Bible School.

 We know in the USA it isn't if you can go, it's
where should I go,  because it is overflowing with every kind of Bible School known to man.  This just isn't the case in Italy and many are lacking basic training and forget about anything like Bethel, or IHOP, it just doesn't exist.

So it is our desire to use these 3 or 4 years here in the USA to formulate the vision into something that is tangible and workable in Sicily.  We already have sat down with our friend Sarah and begun to write out the vision and what it could look like, however we now need to type it up and begin to present it to others so that they too will catch the vision and partner with us.  It really is an exciting time and also a very challenging time as we sort of settle into a life in California that we know we are going to be leaving again in a few years.  How do you stay all in here as you live life, and all in Italy at the same time.  Only by the Grace of the Lord.

So to fast forward....

We arrived back in California on March 10th 2016.  A few months before that, Guido was given a job opportunity that he started 4 days after we arrived.  Talk about provision from the Lord.  It's perfectly suited for him in a test kitchen working on meals that are prepackaged healthy eating.  Good wage & benefits for both of us.  I am still plugging away at my Bookkeeping job that I have been doing for the past 5 years, and I am believing that the Lord is going to increase my clients so when I return to Italy I will have a good wage to supplement our missions work.

We already have settled in with a home here that is just around the corner from our Granddaughter and into a routine.  We are beginning to reattach ourselves to friends & family that are now all over the great state of California as 12 years is a long time to be away.  We still belong to New Life Christian Church as their missionaries however we also are frequenting other churches at this time.
We are not our own and so we are seeking the Lords direction at this moment to our future and what that might look like.  I personally don't like change, who does right, however we believe it is a huge season of change for us so we want to make wise decisions.

Grace is what has been on us since we landed.  We were a little afraid that we would be overwhelmed living here as everything is big, fast, and more than abundant.  Our past visits have found us crying in grocery stores and longing to leave as soon as possible, however this time it is as if we never left, which is very strange and so we know this is His grace for this season.  We have had huge amounts of favor, love and provisions.  We had to leave everything behind except a few suitcases and needed everything, which the Lord has provided, even a car.  You don't realize how much you had until you have only 2 suitcases and your missing a bunch of stuff you use everyday.

Within a few weeks we went to LA to  Azusa Now and it was an extension of the same kind of reconciliation work we have seen in Europe.  Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos, Catholics, Jewish brothers & sisters repenting and forgiving.  Calling forth Heaven to invade Earth. It was great fun running into other fellow missionaries and friends who have been with us in Italy or partnered with us for Italy.  We are living in times where Heaven is touching Earth and we are calling down the revival rains.  We are walking in a time of great favor and Mercy as the Lord longs to touch each and every person on the planet and bring them to Himself.  We are living in the greatest times ever and we all get to be a part of it.  The world is so desperate for hope and love and need answers and we, brothers & sisters, we have it, we have Him and He is moving mighty upon the earth.

So we will leave you with this, and we will continue to update you hopefully more regularly.  If you want to be on our mailing list, please drop us a line at ocityofgod.italy@gmail.com and ask.  If you have a heart for Italy and would like to partner with us, drop us a line.  If you would like us to come and speak at your church and share with you the vision, again the email address above is the best way to contact us at this time.  Do you get the hint, contact us.  Father God is doing wonderful things in the Nations of the earth and there is a call for everyone to go, be it short term or long term, the fields are white with harvest and we pray that the Lord would send workers, we hope he sends you to us in Italy./

Blessings & Love
Guido & Joyce Bassi
Missionaries to Italy

IMPORTANT NOTICE 3/17/2015:

Well, is has been a year since we were here walking on the mountain tops and so much has happened since  this day.  Guido was sure we were done when we did the first part of the Gothic Line in 2013, running coast to coast upon the mountain tops praying but I knew in my spirit that the two remaining lines (also called the Gothic Line) were part of the Lord's plan to bring healing to Italy.  It would be 9 months before we got back up on the mountains in March of 2014 starting once again our trek running coast to coast.  There was an urgency to get this finished as it is was already 69 years since the war ended, but we felt that the 70th year anniversary in 2015 would bring a shift in Europe.  Didn't know what, or why it seems important but we felt the Lord pushing us to get it done.  What we do know is that the war was finished on this stretch of the Gothic line and we felt the weight of declaring & releasing spiritual liberation  upon our shoulders.

If you have been following us, you know that we started again March 11, 2014 and actually ended up running into snow and had to stop going to the mountains over 1200 mt as it  was way to dangerous and so we started our adventure on the lower elevations where spring had already starting to bring life.  I apologize that we didn't write this sooner but as we get further along in the next several blogs you will see why this part got pushed off.  Frankly, seeing that hardly anyone read the blogs from 2013, we just didn't see the need to write about it as much as just do it.  Now with all that has transpired in the past several months we know why it had to be done and why we have to write about it.

We finish the walk  right before we moved to Sicily, literally packing on our rest days and walking the other days.  We were running out of time to make our July move date which at the moment of the walk we didn't even know we would be doing.  All we knew when we started again was that the 70th year anniversary was just around the corner and it was urgent that it was done before that moment.  We calculated that we couldn't walk in summer months so that only left March through June.  September it starts to cool down pretty fast and October it is already raining again, so that is how we ended up waiting the 9 months, just like the ally troops had to do before they pushed on to these final battle lines.  Winter is brutal in the moutains and so just like the troops we wouldn't be back on the moutains until spring. 

In any event now that it is the 70th year anniversary, the doors have opened wide for us to represent Italy in Germany, for a reconciliation event of the European Nations as well as other ministries being interested in what we did as well.  There is the possibility, Lord will for us to join a group in Japan & Israel to represent Italy as well in reconciliation work.  It seems that when these events have been happening, Italy hasn't been represented, which is hard to believe since they were the other part of the war. Everyone seems to be repenting to one another and yet Italy hasn't been a part of it, except with the Jewish people of Israel, there has been many ministries doing an outstanding job of blessing and opening the doors of reconciliation for years.  We were a little behind in the healing process, but, it is time.  So please take the time to read over the next few months the blogs that we post about our walks.

 It is important to know that the Lord is calling us to take our Nations back and bring restoration where there has been brokenness.  If there is to be any revival in our land, any fresh steams of the Holy Spirit, we have to do the work in prayer first.  When there has been wounds of war and nations have stood apart from one another in division, we can change it with prayer.  Our eyes are literally seeing the fruits of our walking the land and praying. 

Come and join us as we take you step by step through mountains of Tuscany & Emiglia Romagna. 

Thank you everyone for venturing with us, all your love, support, prayer, finances and encouragement to push on and push through.  We couldn't have done this without you. 

Love
Joyce & Guido