The end and a new beginning
We had two of our end-of-year meetings this week, with the Monday night group cell group having their last meeting at our house, and then the Young Adults’ group coming for dinner on Saturday night. There was in fact only about half of the group present, since some have already left for summer jobs elsewhere, but it was good to get to know better some of those present that we did not know too well, and also to have back at our house again the three teenagers that were part of our Youth Group for three years. This week, I have the final meeting for the Rovereto group (which will be in a pizza restaurant) and for the Wednesday group, which will be another dinner at our house. Then on the weekend there will be annual church weekend away, which is an important moment in the life of the church to pray for.
In the midst of this end of year winding up, we are also thinking about the next year of studies that will restart in September. I met with the elders a couple of weeks ago to talk about it, and then on Friday there was a meeting with the group leaders to discuss the program. We will be doing studies on 1Chronicles and the Apostles’ Creed. During the next few months, I will be preparing the studies on the Creed for the others to use, as well as creating some notes on 1Chronicles to help the other leaders prepare those studies. So I will have a bit to do in the next few months.
The other exciting news for me was that we will be starting a new group, the fourth outside of Trento, which will have the long term aim of becoming an autonomous church, like all of our groups in the province around Trento. Basically, the group in the Valsugana has had some difficulties this year, because it has been a very “fertile” area, with lots of children born in the last few years, which has made it difficult for their parents to get out to go to the studies. So the plan is to start a new group in the western part of the valley (the part nearest Trento) on Saturday afternoons, and to continue the other group in the eastern part of the valley on Friday evenings. Since my main responsibility is to start new ministries, and also because the church is still short of leaders, I will be running it to begin with. But since my other main responsibility is to train people to take my place, and there will be a lot of capable people in the group, I hope that I will only be in the group for a couple of years before I can hand it over to others, and so be free to start another group elsewhere. The other advantage is that Pinuccia will be able to come as well, so that we can go to the same cell group again. We should be starting off in September with 6 couples and 9 and a half children less than 4 years old, so it should be interesting!