News and prayer information from Richard and Pinuccia Wilson

Today was the big day… and nothing happening. But at 40 weeks, Pinuccia starts regular monitoring sessions, so we went to the hospital anyway in the afternoon. The baby is healthy, but just shows no signs of wanting to come out. So it will be back to the hospital again for another monitoring session on Wednesday.

In the meantime, one of the other ladies in the church who was due after Pinuccia went into hospital today to give birth, which means that Pinuccia has gone back to fourth place out of the seven church members who were pregnant 22 days ago.
This did mean however that my in-laws arrived in time – I went to the airport at Verona last Wednesday to pick them up, so they are helping around the house and with Stefania. They might be in for a long visit, if the new baby takes more time still before being born.

Another summer week: I prepared a couple more Bible studies for autumn and got a fair bit of computer ministry done. There was also more time to do things with the family, like visits to the lake and to the shopping mall.

Today is minus one week for Pinuccia’s pregnancy (and during the week there was another childbirth in the church). The gynecologist said on Wednesday that the baby shows no signs of wanting to move yet. Pinuccia however has decided that anytime now is OK (or at least after her parents arrive on Wednesday) – she is suffering a bit with the temperature (it has been 35-37 degrees at very humid every day) and the extra weight.

With the reduction in my activities, I will be posting less often until the end of August since there will not be as much to say. Except when number 2 is born of course. (There are two weeks from today until the due date, so we are in the “hot” period. Literally as well, as the temperatures are moving into the mid 30s. Pinuccia is suffering the heat a bit, so we take the car everywhere now, even to go to the supermarket which we used to walk to.)

It turned out that my evenings did fill up anyway during the week, with a friend coming to dinner, band practice, a final Bible study, and the annual meeting of our apartment block. I even had to postpone going to visit a friend so that I did not lose my weekly night at home with the family. This week however it is a normal summer week, with my only night out being band practice (they have a month off in August, although only about half the band is present at practices in July). The church is getting into its normal summer state as well, with less than half of the regulars in church this morning, although there were six Dutch and English tourists as well (as well as a couple of new people). It is quite likely in a few weeks’ time that there will be more tourists than church members. Since I will leading the service a few times in that period, I will probably have to do a couple of bilingual services translating myself as I go.

Since coming back from our trips away, we have been busy, mostly taking advantage of the more free time that we have. On the weekend there was a small festival at Lavis, so we ate there on Friday night, then had a picnic at a lake on Saturday and went to lunch at the house in the mountains of some friends (another Sicilian relief teacher that Pinuccia had met) on Sunday. Stefania certainly enjoys running around outside, although being out in the sun and heat tires Pinuccia out a lot, so we might have to reduce such activities for the next few weeks. Pinuccia also had a regular check-up on Friday, and the baby is growing well. The next check-up is in 10 days’ time, after which we will get into the serious monitoring stage with quite a few trips to the hospital until the birth.

We are now back from one and two half days near Lake Garda, where the ECM Italy team (and a few guests) met for their annual time together. We certainly did pray, as the name suggests, but it was also an opportunity to just spend time together and get to know each other better, especially as there were two people there for the first time (one who started working near Milan in January, one who is studying at Bible school and intends to start working for ECM in one or two years’ time). It was also an opportunity to talk about what we thought of ECM and what we would like ECM Italy to become. ECM Italy has had a rather traumatic history lately – one person noted that at least one missionary has left every year since they joined 10 years ago, and in fact another announced during the prayer days that he had resigned. But this has been an opportunity to focus on what we as ECM Italy want to focus on. And the discussions were good. We are different personalities with different ministries, but the guests were impressed with the trust that there is in the team so that we can honestly say what we think about our role in the mission. We came back with some proposals to change what we do as ECM Italy together, and I pray that these changes will help to create an ECM Italy identity.

We are back now, with time for a bit of rest, washing and repacking before leaving again tomorrow morning for the ECM Italy prayer days. The houseparty was certainly good for ECM getting to know the church better; having spoken with the mission’s director of ministries who was speaking, he was impressed by the church and the direction it is going, with many ideas about how ECM can help it. And from what I have seen and heard so far, the church appreciated the input from the mission, and sees possibilities in the partnership together for planting churches.

Apart from that, there was a good time together, with a better physical structure this year allowing more and better interaction between us. And as usually, we ate a lot and well!