End of the beginning

It's the end of January already. Of 2008!!!!How time flies by. After an amazing Christmas and New Year break I failed to realize that it's a new year already. This means my date of departure is getting even closer. Sure it's a good 6-7 months away, but it has already been more than 3 months since I'm in Italy and still learning new things each day. Today I learned that most haircutting places are closed all Monday morning till late afternoon. The reason for that is because they work till late Saturday evenings. Also, even though i know that sundays everything closes, I always fail to remember to buy food Saturday. Then again I'm reminded of how much i love it here. There has not been one sunday that someone has not invited me to eat with them after church. Of course, this includes pasta (still my favorite food in the world after eating it every day), a second course which is usually meat, some salad, then fruit. After fruit, some people have coffee and then move on to just hanging out conversing. They give you enough time to digest and relax for a bit, then the sweets come out. The thing to do is to get a huge "sampler" tray from the pasticceria, so you get to pick what you would like. I don't even usually like desserts, but I eat these. As great as the food is, I will really miss just the hospitality and fellowship I get here.
This last sunday, the youth group was put in charge of organizing the whole sunday service. That included, songs, announcements, message, everything. We took it very seriously and had at least 3-4 rehearsals practicing everything. We borrowed a projector and used a more fancy program with moving video backgrounds for a nice song scenery change. We had a huge worship group, maybe about 12 people. We changed everything. New songs, more instruments, we even changed the appearance of the stage. For some reason they actually asked me for designing advice...luckily for me my idea actually worked out and came out looking like this.


I was put in charge of doing all the electronic stuff being the one with the laptop. However, I did get to lead worship and sing the last song. We sang "How Great Is Our God" and since it's one of my favorite songs, I was allowed to lead that one. We sang it in English and Italian. It was amazing. The theme was black and orange, not sure why, but that's why we're all dressed in those colors. The church really received the change well and enjoyed the new kind of more lively worship a lot. They were really getting into it with us.




The best moment for me was when we got to give our gift to the church as a youth group. Last month, I proposed that as a group, we raise some money to get a projector. The one we used is property of 5-6 different churches so we barely ever get to use it. The idea was to collect some money, and then ask the church to add the rest and get a projector just for Centro Agape. When we took the last offering at the last youth group before the service, I counted the money and we had raised about 420 Euros which is pretty close to $600. We had set a goal of 400 Euros and as usual, God thought it'd be better to help us beat that. You can't really ask something of God and expect him not to exceed your expectations. Now here comes the great part. After doing some research and calculating, we were able to get a very nice projector for a little less than that sum. How Great is our GOD?!?!?! So we got to present a brand new projector to the church as a gift from the youth group. And to top that, the church is going to pay for an automatic white screen to project on.
There is just so much I love about being here, but I figured that little highlight was just too great not to share. Keep praying for me and the group of amazing kids I get to work and hang out with here. Also keep praying for Italy. Just like anywhere else in the world, the economy is not doing so great and there are way too many people with no possibility for a job. Thank you all for all your continued support financially, spiritually with all your prayers, and also for the updates with emails and everything. I love hearing what's going on with everyone, so feel free to drop me a line!