Pistoia and the past week

So its been over three weeks since we have been here. Still loving Italy! Thank you all for your prayers and encouragement. God is good! This past week has been awesome. On Sunday night we were invited over for pizza and a movie by a family from church. We watched a movie in Italian with English subtitles and had a great dinner. The pizza here is awesome. As a lot of you know i have a passion for music. This family definitely does too! Our team spent a good portion of the evening sharing songs on the guitar, singing, playing piano, and laughing when we werent sure what one another was saying. It was great.The language was a barrier but didnt stop us from having a great time!

So yesterday we went to a town called Pistoia about 30 minutes away. Our coordinators brother works with the church there so we went to help out a bit for the day. In the morning we passed out flyers around the city that gave information on the church and invited them to come and see what it was all about. This is a good way to get the name of the church out and also to make people think about God. Even if the flyers dont get large masses of numbers to the church, it still caused people to spend a few moments thinking about God which is great!

After flyers were passed out, we did some work in the church organizing and cleaning up a bit. It was good to get to know the missionaries there, Heather and Roger, and get to see the town of Pistoia. In the afternoon we went to a few apartment buildings and passed out some more flyers. This can sometimes seem just like busy work but God can do tremendous things with this. One of the members of the church in Pistoia who is a strong christian and is now leading many to Christ, came to the church through one of these flyers she came across.

After the work was done for the day, Roger and Heather took us to the mountains. On the drive up to the mountain you can look out and see for miles. As i looked down on hundreds of houses it really gave me encouragement. In the houses and cities i was looking at, lived the people i am here to serve and the people i came here to tell about Christ and His love for them. I am a servant to the creator of the world....how awesome! We went on a short hike and i again realized how fortunate i am for this opportunity. God has really blessed my life with so many things and I am really thankful for this chance to serve Him in Italy. Love and miss you guys and please keep in touch!

Serving in Italy,

Tracie