Well, this last weekend was a trip! Jill and I headed to Aprilia for the weekend, which is a city about 40 minutes from Rome. The church in Aprilia hosted a youth convegno or retreat which included all the young people ages 16-25 from all the churches of Christ throughout Italy. Yes. I just barely made it.
Jillian and I were hosted by the di Pietro family - Donatello, Laura, and their son Riccardo. I had made met Riccardo at the regular annual church convegno in August, and it was nice to spend more time getting to know him. :) They have a lovely home, and we felt very welcomed by them.
We arrived on Friday evening at about 5 o'clock, and we were met by a member of the church named Valerio. Soon afterwards, Riccardo came to pick us up and take us to the church building. We were the first ones (besides the kids from Aprilia, of course) there! Riccardo was in charge of transporting people between the church and the train station, so we rode along with him for a while. By about 8pm, there was a pretty good number of people there, and we had a welcome service and ate pizza.
The whole next day is kind of one big blur! :) I didn't really know anybody there - Riccardo I knew the best - and it had been a while since I spent the entire day speaking Italian. And what a humbling experience that was! I do pretty well in Florence, speaking and understanding, but it was a whole different ball game with 35 young Italians speaking lightning fast and in all the different dialects. So between trying to meet and get to know people and trying to understand what they were saying....let's just say my brain has felt better. And my pride! :) The day was organized and run by the youth group at Aprilia, so they led songs and prayers and introduced the convegno. The main discussions were led by Titus Robinson, an American missionary living in Vicenza, who is acting as their unofficial youth minister. The theme was "Giovani Insieme: Siamo noi la futura" - "Youth Together: We are the future".
Sunday was great too, as we got to meet the church members and have a potluck lunch with them. I knew some of them also from the August convegno, so it was good to renew those acquaintances. Also, they have a chorus made up of members of the church! Laura and Donatello are part of the group, and they sang several hymns in Italian, which was beautiful! About halfway through the concert they broke out into the English rendition of "Go Down Moses", which made both of us very nostalgic. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that song performed by first my high school chorus and then the Harding University chorus by many, many of my good friends. I couldn't help but smile like a fool the whole way through.
After the potluck, we hopped back on a train and headed back to Florence. What a neat feeling, getting off the train at Santa Maria Novella and feeling like you're at home! So, all in all it was a great weekend, and we made lots of new friends and contacts with some young Italian Christians. Giovani Insieme!!
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