News and prayer information from Richard and Pinuccia Wilson

I am back from a flying visit to Austria. Not flying like an airplane, because although it was one of my regular ECM leaders’ meetings that are using held at Madrid, there was a change this time, and I went to a place which is only 200km away. That is, if you walk straight across the mountains that separate Trento from the meeting place. So it actually took 4.5 hours driving going around to the nearest pass through the alps. But it was flying in that I could get it all done in a weekend: leave at 4am on Saturday, arrive, get a coffee, be video interviewed, and be ready for the 9am start. Then meetings all day Saturday and Sunday, leave after dinner and be back just after midnight. Since I have become the secretary to this group of ECM leaders from each country where the mission works, I also have a fair bit of documentation to write, collect and distribute as a result now.

The most exciting moment during the weekend was however receiving an e-mail from someone whom I had asked to consider restarting the Bible study group at the university. She said she will do it! There are three post-graduate students in the church, who were all part of the group previously, as well as a couple of people who just started university this month, and a number of international students currently in an English language Bible study group. So I am excited that the witness at the university, that I came to Italy to be a part of 19 years ago, will be returning.

On the other hand, there was also the sad news a couple of weeks ago that one of the church groups I was leading was folding. The six families with small children in the Valsugana valley just could not get together any more, now that the children are older, so the group stopped and the members have gone to other groups. These two changes have made the changes in my ministry this year even more evident. Now I am leading only one group in the church, but visiting four others, and helping the leaders of four other groups, many of whom are leading for the first time. So there is a lot more mobilisation, encouragement and training of people for me this year. And I have found it exciting so far, and a pleasant change from the pattern of regular programmed groups and Bible studies.

As the school/church year continues to start up, there were a few more firsts this week. Stefania survived her first week of school, although the morning wake ups started to have an effect towards the end of the week, as the excitement was no longer enough to wake her up early. Daniele on the other hand started complaining about going to preschool – because he wanted to go to infants’ school instead, like his big sister. But when we bought him a lunch box like Stefania’s, even though he does not need it, he was a bit happier.

In the church, I lead my first study for the Wednesday night group (after an introductory meeting the week before), and the first meeting for the Saturday afternoon group. There was also the first church leadership team meeting for the year, and some time catching up with the new leaders of the English language Bible study group. Today was also the first Sunday School lesson of the year. I have been promoted from the “middle” to the “big” class. It was a bit difficult, as with anything new I did not know how it worked, and there were some problems from external causes as well. But I will be seeing the other two teachers tomorrow night, so hopefully I will be able to get a better idea for next time.

This week I will be away from Thursday to Saturday for the annual prayer days for the mission in Italy, which includes time reviewing and planning for each of us individually and together as a group. So you could pray that it will be a helpful time for us all, as we submit to God’s leading.

Multiple celebrations tomorrow. First off all it is Stefania’s first day of school – she has arrived at first class. She is naturally very excited about this, but I wonder how long it will last. Especially when the wake up calls start to take their toll. Stefania is definitely not a morning person, and will now have to wake up 45 minutes earlier than last year. For me, it means that after a week and a half of looking after Stefania whilst Daniele and Pinuccia were at pre-school, I will have a good part of the days without the children now, so I hope I can catch up on a lot of work I am a bit behind on. However, with the infants’ school having two half days to begin with, and Stefania always having Wednesday afternoons off, it won’t be until Thursday that I experience the full effect. And finally tomorrow there is a Significant Milestone in my life as well, although not a round number. So I will be celebrating sending the rest of the family out! And in the evening I will celebrate with a church leadership meeting, and in the afternoon meeting the new leaders of the English language Bible study group. This will mean that I will have met in a few days the leaders of that group, the Young Adults’ group and the Youth Group, who are all fairly new at this sort of responsibility. I’m enjoying this new role I have in the church of helping and encouraging these people as they learn to lead, these people that God has raised up for us to replace those who were sent to lead at Rovereto, and who we pray will be future leaders of the church – at Trento, or sent elsewhere.

When I wrote last week, Pinuccia had a job, but for after-school care, which she wanted to avoid in order to be with our children. On Tuesday night so got an offer from another school for a job during the day, so she gave up the first and took that one. Then on Wednesday night came an offer from our local school at Lavis, so she gave up the second job to take up that one. The job is not perfect, in that it is full-time and we prefer part-time. But that means that its other imperfection – only for a month and not a year – is actually an advantage. At the beginning of October she should be offered another job at Lavis, which we hope will be part-time. So on Thursday Daniele and Pinuccia went to pre-school together for their first day, and I had an almost empty nest at home. “Almost”, because infants’ school does not start until the 12th, so I look after Stefania (and try to do a bit of work) whilst the others are at school for another week.

Today there was the first morning service of the church at Rovereto. Having 15 out of about 70 adults leave the church should have left quite a few holes in the hall at Trento for our service, and maybe a feeling of emptiness. But quite a few new people have started coming in the meantime, so although the numbers were a bit down on the average, they were not much lower. So there was not much of an empty nest feeling at all.

Another highlight of the week was participating this afternoon in the anniversary celebrations of the federation of the bands in the province of Trento. Not all the bands could come, but in any case being a part of a parade of 60 bands dressed in various colourful uniforms was fun. And then the final concert all together of well over 1000 people in the main square of Trento was spectacular. It made me dream of a future event, when all the 60 churches that will have been planted in all the small towns spread out in the province, will come together at Trento one Sunday for a celebration together and to worship as one.

This week about half of the church groups will be restarting, including for us the Wednesday night group and the Sunday School. Pinuccia is also running a Sunday School teachers’ meeting tomorrow night, and I will have a meeting for the Youth Group leaders later on. So pray for this restart of activities as well.

This week was a bit of a mix. It is the end of the school holidays, so there were trips to the lake, swimming pool, and park with the family. But it is also preparation time for me, so I was able to work on some Bible studies and do some computer work. And there was also some summer church activities, with a prayer meeting instead of a Bible study group that some of the church members have been running during the summer.

The next few days will be continuing the transition, with a bit more holidays until Daniele and Pinuccia return to pre school on Thursday. There will also be a couple of preparation and planning meetings to go to, before the church activities begin. And then the following week the groups I lead will be starting up.

Pinuccia was offered and accepted one job doing the week, at a school that is fairly close, although in the afternoon which we want to avoid if possible. Then at Lavis, where we live and where she hopes to work, the teacher before her on the list took the last available job. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it means that Pinuccia will be first on the list for the second wave of offers, after some who have already accepted a job get offered something better and change their mind. This is what happened last year. There are also a few other schools which will be offering jobs this week, so we are still unsure where exactly she will be working this year. But we should know by this time next week. So keep praying for the perfect job!

Next week will be another historical moment for the church, as the Rovereto church will be beginning weekly services in the morning. We will suddenly find ourselves at Trento with twenty less people, including the children. I’m sure it will be a bit of a shock to everybody, even me, even though we have been preparing ourselves for it for months. The exciting news at Rovereto is that they have found a room that they are able to rent for all their meetings. Having a permanent place where they can be easily found should be a great help in getting themselves known and for their witness. It would be great to have our own place at Trento as well, although a lot harder since we need a larger (and so much more expensive) place.

We are back, after a good trip in a relatively short 36 hours from door to door. The sleeping patterns are still not quite right, as we all wake up early. But we go to sleep at the usual times, so it just means we sleep less without getting tired. Maybe the extra light and heat of the summer is a shock to the system after two consecutive winters.

It was fun to see the children get more and more excited as we got closer and closer to home, to the point of seeming to go mad from joy as we walked down the last stretch of road from the local train station to our house, greeting neighbours and friends from school as we went. Of course, the big highlight for them was returning to all their toys: it was like 5 Christmas and 5 birthdays all rolled into one. It seemed that within ten minutes that had pulled every single one of their games and toys out onto the floor.

Today is was of course back to work. With many away at the moment, I had to preach: the first time I have done that at Trento for a long time. Despite the jeg lag, I did survive. It did help that it was a sermon I had already done 4 times in Australia. So I just had to translate it and think of some different examples, which I had been able to do before we left. And at least I had not lost too much Italian, since I spoke Italian with Pinuccia whilst we were away. Only once did an English word almost get out. It was good to hear what had been going on in our absence, and finding out about changes in friends’ lives. I was encouraged to hear of a growth spurt in the Val di Non group, which doubled in size with a lot of new faces after struggling for some time. The church at Rovereto has started renting a room to meet in, and people from both churches have been preparing it. It was great also to see a lot of faces in church that I did not recognise – I will have to find out in the next few months if they were visitors or new people in the church.

This week I will be trying to get some preparation done for the start of the Bible studies in a few weeks’ time, as well as doing some computer ministry. However, with both children at home, and a desire to make the most of this summer time with them, I might not have as much time as I would like. Pinuccia will also be offered some jobs on Friday and Saturday, from which she will have to decide what she will be doing this year. So please pray that she will be offered the perfect job again this year, as she was a year ago.

There were two particularly noteworthy events in the past couple of days. The first was a picnic for the Youth Group after church. This was to wrap up the group’s activities for this school year. But personally, it probably wrapped up as well my youth ministry for good. The person that I have been leading with this year will be taking over, and someone else will be helping her. Of course God might think differently, but I can’t see myself being directly involved in that age group again – I am getting a bit old to hang around teenagers now. I am thankful that once again I was able to start something new in the church, train someone to take over, and then leave for other ministries, which is what my primary role in the church is. I thank God also for the 13 years of youth ministry that I have led, spread out over six groups in the past 28 years, and for the many opportunities that he has given me to serve the people in this groups.

On Friday there was my annual meeting with the two church elders, to talk a bit about the church in the past year and in the next year, and more specifically my role in it. So we talked especially about the various groups I lead or have general oversight of. With the changes in the church due to the church plant at Rovereto, and the people who will be serving there instead of at Trento, my role in the church will be a bit different. I will not be leading anything new to replace the Youth Group, so will have less regular commitments. I will instead be more involved in the help I give to the other groups, regularly visiting them and talking more often with the leaders. Especially the new generation of leaders that are coming up in the church. So I will not in fact be completely leaving the Youth Group ministry. But I will be helping the leaders there rather than being directly involved in the lives of the teenagers. I’m looking forward to this change as a new challenge, something different to do rather than continuing to do what I have done for the past few years.

We just had our recital weekend. First there was the end of year production of the dance school that Stefania has gone to this year. Two hours of children learning to dance… Stefania wanted to pull out, because she was scared of dancing in front of an audience, so it was a good teaching opportunity about depending on God. Then there was the annual Sunday School presentation, which was a time for telling the church what God has been doing in the lives of the children this year. It was also a time to say goodbye to quite a few children: some who are going to be the Sunday School at Rovereto, some who are moving away, and some who will be “graduating” to the Youth Group (and which made one of the parents a bit emotional, realising her little girl was not so little any more and would be leaving the Sunday School). So there will be a noticeably smaller Sunday School next year.

It is only the beginning of May, but the end of year activities have started up, even though the summer break does not begin until the beginning of July. On Tuesday we had our first family rite of passage, as Stefania received her “diploma” for having completed pre-school, in preparation for her starting infants’ school in September. Then next Saturday Stefania will be participating in the end of year recital for her dancing school. It is the first of what I am sure will be many similar events. On Sunday there will be the end of year presentation of the Sunday School. For us this is a big event, because Pinuccia and I are both heavily involved in the organisation and preparation. It is mostly ready, although I still have to finish up a video. It will also be the first Sunday School presentation for Daniele, and he and Stefania have a small part in the choreography of the song together with the rest of the class of the smaller children.

There should also be some preparation for our time in Australia. I said last week that I should have been starting this week, but it just did not happen. I don’t see it happening this week either. Hopefully once the Sunday School presentation is out of the way, I can start work on it.

What a day! Today there was the commissioning service for the 11 adults and 9 children who will be forming the church at Rovereto. There were quite a few tears shed, a mixture of the joy of a historic moment in the life of both of the churches, and the sadness of sending people to a new ministry. It was a time of remembering God’s faithfulness over the 48 years of ECM work at Trento (for which it was good to have the ECM International Director with us for the weekend), and of putting ourselves in God’s hands for the future knowing that we are not able to plant churches with our abilities. After the service, the festive nature of the day continued with a picnic at the park, the first of the new season. In fact it was 26 degrees today, a great change after the cold of the last 6 months and which changes everybody’s mood. The next step is the inaugural general meeting of the Rovereto church next Sunday, at which it will be legally formed as an association.

The commissioning service was the climax of a weekend dedicated to church planting, with training from the International Director on Friday night and Saturday evening. That kept the church busy, especially Pinuccia and I as we had to look after the logistics and hospitality as well. And a train strike on Friday did not help – I had to make an unexpected trip to pick him up.

Apart from the meeting at Rovereto, the other events of the week in the church (apart from the usual weekly activities) are the third public conference in the town library, on euthanasia, and the monthly meeting of the youth group. But there are other big events as well – next Sunday is our seventh wedding anniversary. To celebrate, Lavis is having a town festival, so that will be lots to do and see about the town in the afternoon, including me playing a concert with the band.