Today my heart is elated. Two days ago a friend sent a picture of a lady giving her testimony in the church plant we were involved before coming to the States. This lady happens to be our dear friend. We spent many days and hours talking about the Gospel while we were there, 7 years ago, but nothing happened.
As I am going through the book of Acts and learning from Paul, his calling, his missionary journeys, his sufferings in ministry, I am reminded that God is faithful and His Word sewn in peoples heart will produce fruit at the right time and according to His will.
I love looking at Paul's life, he leaves his sending church and as he travels speaking to the Jews about Christ and speaking to the Gentiles, he finds himself in many difficult situations, in riots, verbal and physical attacks, and when he finally goes back to Antioch to give a report he finds out that there has been established a "rule" for the Gentiles; they needed to be circumcised to be saved.
So Paul has to sit down with them and discuss the question with the church of Antioch showing them what God was doing among the Gentiles and showing them that there was no need for circumcision in order to be saved. As Paul is happy of the results of the "debate" and turns around to inform the churches he had planted of this good news, he finds out another piece of sad news; this heresy had already spread to the new churches.
Ministry is challenging and full of difficulties, we have seen it and we have been through it, sometimes you move a step forward and two backwards. But I will rejoice in knowing that God has perfect plans and sometimes in His plans we must endure difficulties in order to grow and mature in our faith and spiritual walk.
Leaving Sicily was so heartbreaking because we knew our work wasn't done and yet we knew God wanted us here in the States. We have seen the church go through all kinds of struggles and we have seen the blessings from afar.
For all of those that have supported us during these years I just wanted to let you know that we feel blessed to be able to be ambassadors for Christ, following in Paul's footsteps and fulfilling the Great Commission. We feel blessed to be able to see people who heard the Gospel and are finally coming to Christ, even if He took almost 7 years to bring them to His side. We truly rejoice with the angels and wanted you to rejoice with us. Embracing Christ is so difficult in Italy that it feels even more special a person commits their life to Christ.
We will be in Italy this summer and visit the church and hopefully see our friend and now sister-in- Christ being baptized.
Praise the Lord with us because He has done great things and He has not yet finished His work.
What an amazing God we have.
