very brief update, address

Posted by Drew | Filed under General

It’s been a while since my last update.  It may be just as long before the next one.  It seems like since we started going on campus I haven’t stopped moving.  Thankfully, the Lord is moving as well, and we have some encouraging things to share.

Most notably, 3 students have prayed to receive Christ since we arrived.  Nunzia, Paola prayed with Gayle and Kat and Sarah Love on Monday, and the next day Gayle and Adam witnessed Francesco pray the same prayer.  It’s so great to see fruit in such a tangible way.

That was almost 2 weeks ago, and we haven’t seen as much success since.  In fact, our conversations have been a little discouraging overall.  And we’ve had trouble connecting with the new believers from the Summer Project.  We’re still missing contact information for several of them, and for others the information was wrong.  But some have been very excited to meet our team.  Not excited enough to come to an event, though.  We’ve had three gathering events fail pretty miserably in terms of attendance.  But we trust that the Lord is sovereign.

This week we’ll go to Florence for a national training conference.  All Italy Campus staff will attend, and possibly some students, if any are available to miss class from Wednesday to Friday.  It will be the first time all of the STINT teams have gathered together in Italy.  I’m not sure we’ll have the pleasure, but I’m really hoping to hear Haswell Beni tell us how beautiful our feet are.

General summary of the last few weeks.  Last weekend we went on a spiritual retreat as a team.  We chose an agriturismo outside Caserta, about an hour and a half from Salerno.  Agriturismo is Italian for “this place has amazing food because it’s a farm/hotel/restaurant where all the food they serve is grown/raised on their land.”  Did I mention this was a prayer and fasting retreat?

Otherwise we’ve done a lot of initiating, met a lot of students, forgotten their names, had some awkward conversations between Americans and Italians where verbal communication wasn’t much of an option, and squeezed in some really good team time.

We also finally all got our Permits to Stay.  All 10 of us.  We went out to a special restaurant to celebrate and thank the Lord because it felt like that big of an accomplishment.   But our VISA situations are still very complicated, and may involve a trip back to America to apply.  This issue is bigger than we realized, and we really need specific prayer for favor in the eyes of the Italian Consulate.

And we now have a mailbox.  Encouraging letters and packages are now an option.  We dont’ know how long it will take, but if any of you care to experiment, we’ll be happy to help.

Drew McNeil

via Portacatena 47

84100 Salerno

Italy

Permalink | October 22nd, 2006

3 Responses to “very brief update, address”

  1. Brittney (Liverpool) Says:
    October 22nd, 2006 at 6:03 pm

    draw MACneil…

    what? and i’ll say it again….WHAT? you are in italy.

    i think i may have heard you were going back, but not to salerno.

    glad you’re there supporting a team. i’m sure your experience is invaluable to them.

  2. Kat Says:
    October 23rd, 2006 at 1:17 pm

    Dreui…

    I can always count on you for some amusing….musings on our team life….

    keep ‘em comin

    love!

  3. Lyle Says:
    October 23rd, 2006 at 4:45 pm

    DMac
    I’ve long been jealous of your chiseled physique and ridiculous good looks. But now, from the forehead up, we look basically the same (or at least we did when I was shaving my head). Bold move on the whole head shaving thing.

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