News and prayer information from Richard and Pinuccia Wilson

It was my turn to lead the service this morning. It started a bit late – everyone said it was because of the end of daylight savings last night, although it seemed a strange reason to me because it should have meant people arrived earlier not later. We’ll see how the punctuality is next week, when we have a special service in the afternoon rather than the morning. This is because it is for Reformation Sunday, with a few other churches from the region participating as well. We will be using a theatre instead of our usual hall for the occasion.

Yesterday afternoon there was the Youth Group meeting at our house as usual. Once a month we have a special activity instead of the Bible study, and this month it was kitchen time. Unfortunately the two guys could not come due to other commitments (we still have not had all four youth turn up at the same meeting), but the two girls had a fun time. We ended up having dinner together with what they cooked, so I kept telling them that they could come and do this every Saturday (especially as it is usually my job to cook on Saturdays). Next month’s activity will be interesting: dinner, video and a sleepover – possible now that we have a larger appartment. We asked their parents if we could do it, and they said that it was fine, but were more worried about our well being than their childrens’.

We decided to see how Stefania goes eating by herself, and she seemed to go pretty well, even though the hands were a more popular option than the spoon and fork. Perhaps just as much ended up on the floor as in her mouth, although it seems that that was food that she was putting away for later when she crawled around.

At the moment there is the second half of a rarity: two nights off during the week (that is excluding Sundays). Usually the maximum is one, which I guard jealously to at least have some time with the family. But the way the church programs work out, every eight weeks I get both Thursday and Friday free. (Although occasionally I do get bonus nights, when a Bible study meeting is not held because of lack of people, a public holiday or other reasons.) I’ve taken advantage of these nights to get some non-deadlined computer work done, for example creating a search engine for Italian Evangelical web sites, looking into ways for people to insert the Italian Bible text on my site into their sites, and doing some work on the site of a friend involved in another ministry in Italy.

Welcome to my blog, in which I will try to keep you more up to date with what is happening in my ministry and my life than is possible with the printed and e-mail newsletters. The aim will be to write a couple of times a week, and at least once a week, although whether I am able to keep that up remains to be seen! I will also try to avoid writing just for the sake of writing if there is nothing to say.

When something important is coming up, I will try to write about it a few days beforehand so that you can pray for it. And when things have happened, it will be easy to report on them here. If you are using an RSS (feed) reader, you can subscribe to the feed of this blog with the address at the bottom of each page, so as to be informed automatically when there is a new message.

I am a missionary with the European Christian Mission, working for the Evangelical Church of Trent in northern Italy. For more information about the various things that I do, about my past, and for approximately six weekly summaries with photos, see my site.