Ruhamah at 3 weeks old

Here are just a few pictures of Ruhamah, she is 3 weeks old. I know it may seem repetitive but she is so beautiful and we are truly in love with her. She is our blessing from heaven.

13th of May...Carmela's birthday

Josh organized a surprise birthday party for me with some of the parents from Hannah's school. Most of the kids in the picture take English lessons from Josh.

He also made a cake for me. It had to be lactose free because Ruhamah is lactose intolerant, so he found a recipe for a lactose free icing too.

Hannah and Benedetta holding Ruhamah, but I think she is falling....

Now it's better...

Daddy holding Ruhamah, and the little one looking at her wonderful super daddy!

Walking around Acitrezza a town close to Acireale

Our beautiful princess

Welcome Ruhamah Lois

On April 23, 2011 we had the blessing to welcome Ruhamah Lois in our family. She weight 3,440 grams and was 51 cm tall. Giving birth had some complications but we are grateful to the Lord for giving us the opportunity to be all together, for the blessing of life for both Ruhamah and mommy. Here are some pictures to show our little precious girl.

Ruhamah means "who obtained compassion" and comes from the book of Hosea, Lois is the name of Josh's grandmother that left a great impact in our lives.

Ruhamah at two weeks old

Ruhamah playing with daddy!!!

precious tiny life

This month has been caracterized by many trips to the hospital trying to get different check ups taken care of and then also for our baby faking her coming a few times!!!! We are pretty tired and can't wait for baby #3 to be here. Going back and forth the hospital is no fun, it takes 30 minutes to get there without traffic and then even more to find a paid parking spot....:(

We also celebrated Benedetta 5th birthday, it was a princess bday party, so we shared some of the girls dresses with friends and had a fun party. Vanessa, on the left, is the owner of the place and also one of our contacts. She let us use the place for free. Annalusa, next to Vanessa, is one of the mothers we minister too and she helped us with princess face painting.

Spring is at the door so we went out to play with the kids and met one other mom there, she sends her daughter to the free english lessons. Through our daily life and friendship we hope to gain their trust and share the Gospel with them. We actually have had some good conversations with a couple. we watched the movie FIREPROOF and then had a good conversation afterwards for few days in a row. Josh was able to share the gospel wth the husband and spent hours with the husband until midnight while I was with the wife.

We had also FIREPROOF projected at church and invited many friends. Here in Acireale a lot of couples have marriage's problems, pray that God could use this to let them know that they need God the maker of marriage to fix not only the marriage problem but also the heart one.

The day after Easter we will have a picnic outreach at Pennisi. We have 3 families of non believers coming and others from the church have invited more people. So hopefully if our baby#3 doesn't come out we will be there working with the kids in telling Bible stories, singing Bible songs, doing face painting and getting games ready for them.

Pray for the outreach and for this pregnancy that everything may go well, and we can hug our baby soon with no complications.

in Christ

The Daugereau family

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.

December 2010

At the end of November Josh's parents came to visit, stayed for 13 days, took care of our kids while we left for a vacation. When we came back we celebrated together an early Christmas. In fact in the pictures below you can see our half decorated tree :)

The kids had lots of fun with grandma and grandpa, they played at the playground, baked cookies, went shopping, took walks, watched movies...ate cookies with cool-whip...:)

grandma and grandpa with Hannah and Benedetta

After Josh's parents left, we had only few days to pack again and go to Naples where we had an appointment at the American Consulate concerning my Visa. We stayed at my uncle's house, had two very long days but at least two positive good things that came out of it were lunch at Ikea and that we finally got a permanent resident visa for me. So now I won't have anymore problems with going back and forth to the States.

Coming back we were approaching the Christmas season and in Italy in the schools it's time for school plays...

Hannah had hers first and she was one of the servants of king Herod. I was impressed with the costumes for the play...Hannah was just a servant so I had an easy time just borrowing a dress (an angel costume from a friend!!) It was a nice play, one of the best I have seen in the last few years.

At the end of the play the mom in charge of presents for the kids asked Josh to dress up as Santa Clause and he accepted. It was a fun time also because the outfit wasn't made to fit Josh!!! That same day we were able to give our own present to the teachers: a calendar with a daily verse and message and some cookies that we had been backing.

This is a picture of Hannah with the main teacher (on the left) and the religion teacher(on the right).When we started the school year last year we had opted for not taking religion class. But then Hannah had to sit in class for two hours and draw pictures quietly. We felt so bad for her. She didn't want to leave the class because she had just found a group she enjoyed being with after the move and didn't want to try to get out and be with another group of kids that she didn't know. She also felt like her friends didn't think she loved Jesus( maybe they had told her something about it) so she felt the need to bring to school her kids Bible to demonstrate that she knew Jesus and loved Him!!! We ended up talking to the teacher, explaining our faith and putting her in the class, she was soooo happy and we have been blessed by the decision and it has been a good time to respond and reflect on diversity of faith and what the Bible says with our own daughter.

Hannah in her play singing and dancing

The servant near the king Herod

The day after Hannah's play we had a big outreach in church: a Christmas dinner. We had lots of people there, the believers helped with the food and decorations. The evening started with the white elephant game and then we moved on the dinner.

This is the youngest baby in our church: Andrea. His dad got saved last year and now he and his wife come to church regularly. She is not saved yet but we can see progress in her life.

Jaqueline and Orlando

This is a couple from Brazil, they were already believers. Orlando plays soccer on the cites professional team and we are blessed by having him attending our church. Pray for their growth.

More faces from the dinner. The guy with the tie is Johnny, one of our coworkers. Here he is at a table with some of the people attending church as members and some that come just here and there to discover the truth.

Francesco e Sara

Francesco got saved last here and Sara comes to church every now and then.

Pam (on the far right) and her unbelieving family

This was our table at the dinner. We had invited some parents of Hannah's classmates. We have been trying to reach in these families with the Gospel in the last few months.

At the dinner Josh and I sang a song: While you were sleeping of the Casting Crowns translated by some friends of ours near Perugia.

Marco, our coworker, shared the Gospel using a kids' story

Benedetta had her play also. It was something a little more simple than what Hannah did, but she enjoyed it and we loved to see her on stage.

reciting a poem on the microphone

Benedetta and her friend Giulia

This is the nativity scene that the city hall put together in the main square of town. My family was here for Christmas so one night Josh, myself my dad and Benedetta went down town to look at not only the nativity but also at the Christmas bon fire...it was very windy that night so they started the fire but put it out right away.

A photo shoot of us and my family on Sunday morning. My dad came to church and this is a blessing! We had a good time and ate a lot and made many things from my hometown that I cannot find here in Sicily.

Wishing you all a happy New Year

Carmela for the fam