This is a video Josh put together so that you can see some of the faces that participate to the Valentine dinner. Half of them are member of the church and half are just contacts. But we realized pretty soon that there are so may marriages not working the way they should in both type of couples...

In Sicily often the husband is the one that doesn't allow the wife to talk or have an opinion either and this reflects even in the christian life. While getting ready to take pictures the couples were asked questions like when was last time you went on a date together or when did you last take a trip together, as a couple. Some of them said that they had NEVER gone out in their entire marriage! I am sure that if anyone asked " when was last time you said I love you to wife" we would have had a lot of silence...

I am glad we were able to put this together first of all to be a blessing to some of the couples that have not had a time alone in a long time, second because we were able to get into some lives that were struggling and wanting some help but didn't know how to ask.

Next month Josh will be gone for two weeks in the US, one week he will be attending a conference, the next one he will be one of the speaker at a mission conference put together from Lakeside Church in Florida. When he gets back we will have a special night with some of the couples that were at church at Valentine's dinner, the movie fireproof will be projected followed by a message from the word of God.

January and February

The 14th of February our church hosted a dinner dedicated to "couples in love". There were some couples from church we also had 9 couples of non believers. We had dinner together, played games and then we had a time where the word of God was taught. As a result a couple came to us wanting a Bible study and we saw many broken hearts crying out because they aren't working the way they should.

We were invited to a dinner the next day by non believing friends to keep talking about marriage and its difficulties. We are trying to translate some material so that we can use it for Bible studies for couples.

This is a picture of the group of couples invited to the dinner

We were so blessed by a lady from church that took our kids. Thanks Maria!

We had arranged a bench for the couple to take a picture. So that they could have a memory of a special time together. It was sad to hear of couples that do not spend time together and have not had a special alone time with their spouse in a long time.

Josh decided to bring the girls up on mount Etna for a couple of hours, they played a lot and went sledding and also were so lucky to see a fox really close.

Instead of making a snowman they decided to make a snow angel!!

Here you have a picture of the Volcano and the group of cool people that went up to the mountain. Rina and Francesco were here to help at the Bible school during two classes, they come from Mantova and are good servants. since they were here without a car Josh decided to bring them up to the mountain. They all went up after school, had a picnic, played and fed a fox!

We are so thankful for both our kids, they are pretty smart and very advanced for their age, here you have a message that Benedetta wrote for me while we were at church. She is only 4 (5 in April) but is picking up how to write mostly by herself. She usually writes in italian but that day at church she wrote me this message by herself....we are proud!

Hannah had her 7th birthday this year we celebrated it at church with her friends from school and friends from church. It was fun to see her around her friends and we were able to give out coloring Bibles to all the kids that came. Josh helped a lot since I cannot do much because of the pregnancy.

I did spend some time making Hannah her birthday cake :)

Last month in January I went to the USA to take care of some things related to the green card process, the trip went well even if it was hard to go without Josh and the girls. I was so blessed to have my sister with me. It was her first time to the US and she loved it, she loved the food and the places we visited. We stayed with my friend Katie in California and had also a chance to see Grace Community Church.

Everything went mostly well till we got to the airport in Rome. There I fell from an escalator and at that point my sister was supposed to leave me and I was supposed to keep going to Sicily. Time was tight. I was in a rush to get to my gate and when I was hoping to be able to sit down and rest they started boarding the plane. I realized in the meanwhile I was having contractions.

I called Josh to let him know what was going on but at that point I was scared and worried and my mind was on trying to make it to Sicily as fast as possible. The doctors response was that everything with the baby was ok but I needed to rest a bit. Since then contractions have been coming and going. I am in my 7th month and I have two more months to go. Resting is not easy when you have two kids with lots of energy and ministry still requires a certain amount of commitment. But please pray for us, this is one of the hardest pregnancy I've had and one of the hardest time for our family.