Valentine's outreach

We try to reach out to our community in every way possible and one of the highlights from last year was the Valentine's dinner. We had a dinner on Valentine's day again this year and it was a blast. We had wonderful food made mostly by Simona ( we helped also with the side dishes), we had games, songs and obviously we had the Word of God. 

What we have discovered is how broken many couples are, you see a good marriage but that is only a nice facade behind it there are broken hearts, sadness, hurt feelings... A lot of young people are already divorced after only a few years of marriage or there are long marriages where love is not there anymore. Last year we had the joy of starting a Bible study with a couple who called out for help. This year the same thing with a different couple. We are honored to be able to help always remembering that God is the one that created marriage and that can also make it work. Pray for us as we faithfully share the Gospel even in counseling, and pray for our friends so that they can understand the need of God in their life.  Here are a few pictures of some of the moments of the dinner and some of the friends that decided to spend the evening with us and the word of God.

 Every couple got  a picture with their mate on a sweet bench decorated with hearts balloons. 

This was our table and the friends that came to the dinner, most of them are parents of our daughters' friends.

More friends...

We had a game where the husband was supposed to recognize the wife only by touching hands...you can see we had fun ...

Our husbands also sang songs to us, some of them where pretty bold, some shy but every wife got to see her husband singing her a song and that was so nice.

Some of the wives listening to the song

You might want to apologize if the spelling of words is not correct or if what I wrote is not very clear, Josh is not here with me at the moment, he is in the USA attending the Shepherd's  conference in LA. 

Please keep praying for us and for our contacts, that we may see people coming to Christ.

December 2011

I noticed it has been a long time since I wrote last. Many things have happened in our adventurous life. 

Ruhamah is now 7 months old, this past summer she was part of a VBS here in Acireale and she has travelled almost all over the world :) On the 17th of July in fact we  took a plane to the USA, visited Washington State, California, Arizona and Florida...yup just a small trip!!!

We had the blessing to spend time with the family and with our home church. Had a wonderful baby shower at Lakeside Community Chapel. We arrived back to Italy when school was already started. 

This year is a special one because Benedetta is in first grade, she is only 5 but is a great scholar. She has already learned how to read and is learning cursive .  

Time in Italy has been busy, we celebrated thanksgiving in church with about 58 people. A lot of parents from school came so we pray that the word of God may grow and have fruit. 

It was an Italian Thanksgiving because we weren't really able to find all the american ingredients, so we had a lot of side dishes that were typical of the area. Josh gave an intro on the origins of the festivity and then Marco the other elder gave a message on being thankful.

We also had our first baptisms in Acireale, a couple that got saved during the last year got baptized. Alessandro came to the Lord trough the book table and so he started to bring his wife to church. You could tell she wasn't happy to be there. They weren't married but were living together and had a son  already. The church had been encouraging them to get married and then they got pregnant again. They went against their family and got married, Simona got saved and then step after step they grew in their faith and knowledge. It was such a blessing to see those two new life being obedient to God. To see how far they have come from being lost to being saved and the growth that took place in their life.

This coming week end we are going be celebrating Christmas with an outreach party.  As I said life here is busy, we do all we can to share the love of God to share the Gospel.

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.