For Such a Time as This

Helloooooooo from Florence!

Well, as always, I hardly know where to begin. Our days are filled, and we are always busy doing something. However, when I sit down to write about it, I have the hardest time remembering exactly what I did!

My English lessons are going very well. I have 8 students that come faithfully every week to learn....from me! Sometimes that is hard to believe. I would like to tell you a little about them. I will give you a little portrait of each of them throughout the next several blogs.

I have one girl that comes that is 15 years old, and she always can make me smile. She is pretty quiet at first, but she usually warms up pretty quickly. We have very similar tastes in books, so that has been fun to talk about and discuss. I think she will go to see a movie in English at the Odeon with Jill and me. Also, she is very smart and remembers everything! I will try to quiz her over a Bible passage that we have read, but it's pointless, because she gets every single one correct. (I have found that to be true with most of my students, though.) We are studying Mark together, and it's so fun to be able to see small improvements already. Also, we just started reading The Magician's Nephew, the first book in The Chronicles of Narnia series. She's really liking it so far - although we are only on Chapter 2 - and I'm excited, because I know what a great sense of accomplishment I felt when I read my first book in Italian. And I get to help somebody else do that! Anyway, she is wonderful, and I always look forward to our lessons.

Well, today was our last day of language school. We are official graduates of the Lorenzo dei Medici intermediate 3 and advanced classes. It was sad saying goodbye to our teachers and all the people that work there - we are friends with both of the baristas, as we did our homework in the school bar every morning. It is also kind of liberating having all of our mornings free for other things now though. We are planning on starting to work more at the church building.

We will go tomorrow morning to the Questura Ufficio d'Immigrazione to get our permesso di sogiorno - finally! We had an appointment there on Wednesday, but when we got there the electricity was out! So they told us we had to come back another time. Boh. Beverly, Debbie, and Rachel leave tomorrow for some traveling, so we will drop them at the train station before we go to the Questura.

I'm excited about the youth convegno next weekend in Aprilia! I think it will be a really good experience for Jill and I, and it will give us the chance to get to know some young Italian Christians. We will be full-submersion Italian, that's for sure! The members of the church are going to host us in their homes. Yahooo!

Also, the Florence church (along with the churches nearby, such as Prato and Pistoia), are hosting the women's conference next year! The conference is in early March, so we have been having meetings to discuss the innerworkings on Saturdays. We have decided on Esther as our theme (thus the "for such a time as this" heading), and we are very excited about it!

Let me know if there are things in particular you are curious about, and I will do my best to write a good description! Love you all!