News and prayer information from Richard and Pinuccia Wilson

This coming week there are a few special meetings to pray for. Tomorrow night Pinuccia leads a meeting to plan for the children’s camp in June. I should be at the meeting as well, as I will be one of the leaders of the camp, but I will be staying at home with the children. I have already written up my contributions, which Pinuccia will take to the meeting, and I hope that the others will not decide in my absence that I will have to do most of the work to prepare for the camp. On Tuesday there will be a meeting of most of the ECM missionaries in Italy at our house, until I have to leave to pick up the children from school. Then on Thursday evening a church committee meeting, which always has interesting and important issues to think about. I am also looking forward to making one of my bimonthly visits to the Valsugana group this Friday: it is a group that is still special for me after having led it for many years, and is always an encouragement for me. Together with those there are the regular Bible study group and band practice for me, and two extra meetings at school for Pinuccia, so we will have a lot to do.

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.

We are enjoying an extended summer at the moment, with temperatures well above the average. When October arrives I am usually already wearing a jumper, but this year I still have my T-shirt on. So yesterday we took advantage of the good weather and brought forward Stefania’s birthday party. This has been the first year she has been able to have her party in the park, and will probably be the last for a while if the weather patterns return to normal. It was just as well that we could go to the park, because Stefania’s circle of friends has roughly doubled in the past few weeks. As well as inviting the friends from pre-school, there was a new group of friends that she has met in infants’ school in these three weeks. Too many friends for our lounge room now. So we spent 4 hours at the park on Saturday afternoon with them all.

Next weekend I will be going to Austria for some meetings with all the country leaders in ECM. I should actually be going for the whole week, but with Pinuccia’s work and the children to look after, I will have to miss the training part of the week (from Monday to Friday), and just go to the meetings on the weekend, where I also act as secretary to the group.

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.

Most of this week was spent at Madrid, with meetings of the mission leadership. A lot of the time was spent talking about structural matters, which should end up creating a more united, flexible and streamlined mission. This should give the leaders more opportunities to help the other missionaries, and all the mission more opportunities to witness and plant churches in Europe. All in all, a positive meeting. Except for the fact that a stomach virus swept through the group, and about half of the people went down during or shortly after the meeting, and a few wives got hit by virus carriers when they got home. One wife wisely put her husband in quarantine when he returned. I felt a bit sick, but managed to avoid the main effects of the virus and also giving it to the family. Now I am getting ready for a meeting that I will be leading tomorrow for all the Italian missionaries in ECM, to try to help our ministry here.

This weekend was mission weekend in the church, with the Italian representative of WEC (who for many years was the only missionary from Italy) speaking to us on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. It did good for the church; it is not often that it gets such a good perspective and challenge on world missions. It linked in as well with our emphasis in these months on our church planting vision, especially preparing the church for the effects of the new plant at Rovereto.

On a completely different tack, on Friday night the “elder statesman” of the church died. He belonged to a family which for the greater part of the previous century was the only evangelical family in the whole province of Trento – and suffered as a consequence. He has seen the church grow from nothing to what it is today, and although never had an official leadership position of the church, he was the epitome of humble service, and was a pillar on which the church at Trento, and especially the witness in Valsugana, has grown. Thank you God for giving us Amos.

This week was a continuation of what was mentioned in the past couple of messages. In the Wednesday Bible study group, we continued talking about our vision and plans for the Rovereto (and other new) church plants, and in the Saturday group we started this conversation. In the family we kept talking about the choices for Stefania’s schooling next year. We still have not quite reached a final decision, although since the deadline for enrolments is tomorrow morning we will be deciding soon. During the week, Pinuccia also hosted and chaired a planning meeting for the church children’s camp in June. We will actually be in Australia and so not at the camp, but Pinuccia is helping the people who will be running the camp with its organisation.

A couple of things for this week. I will be at Madrid from Tuesday to Thursday with ECM meetings, so life will be a bit harder for Pinuccia as she takes over my roles in the family as well. On Saturday afternoon there will be a missionary meeting in the church. This is part of our emphasis on mission in our church this year, and especially in the next 3 months. Both the world wide mission that we should be involved in, and the local mission of our church, that is the church plant at Rovereto.

We have finished our 7 days of training and planning meetings, so I have an evening  free before leaving at 4am tomorrow. I will have a taxi, plane, bus and four trains to catch. If I am lucky (I have one minute between the bus arrival and the first train departure), I will be home by 12.35pm, and will have five minutes to say hello to Pinuccia before she leaves for work. Otherwise I will be home at 3pm, and will see the family an hour later when they come back from school. It has been a bit sad to miss Stefania’s birthday and first dancing lesson today, and a few other important things that happened over the weekend. But it will be good to catch up over the next few days.

The meetings have been hard going. I have had a headache for three of the days, and there were a few participants who were feeling worse than me. But it certainly was worthwhile. Although I have done a lot of the training on leadership and teams in the past, it was good to go over it again and think about it in my current contexts, where I am leading in teams now. And we could certainly see the difference when we came to our two days of planning. This is the group of mission leaders that meets twice a year to talk. We worked a lot better together that we have in the past, as we put into practice what we had learnt and, knowing each other better, could use our mutual gifts better.

Tomorrow I’m off to Madrid, for one of my twice yearly meetings for ECM leaders there. But this time it will be a bit different, because as well as the usual 2-3 day planning meeting, there will be 5 days of leadership training. So I will be away from Monday afternoon to Tuesday afternoon of next week, which is the longest I have ever been away from the family, and which does create difficulties for Pinuccia to manage everything by herself. Thanks to God she is working at Lavis this year, at Stefania and Daniele’s school, otherwise it would have been almost impossible. Another unfortunate aspect of this trip is that I will miss Stefania’s fifth birthday next week, so her celebrations have had to be delayed a couple of days. But there are positive aspects to the trip as well! I am sure it will help the ECM ministry in Italy and my own work with others.

The other thing that I will miss is the first meeting of the new youth group. After a two year gap, we are restarting this ministry with eight teenagers. However, it is a lot harder to get them together than the old group, both for geographical reasons (two live more than an hour north-west of Trento, two others more than an hour to the south, another half an hour to the east) and because of other commitments (eg most have school six days a week). We have settled on a Saturday afternoon per month for a study, with a few social outings as well. But the only possible starting date was this Saturday, when I will not be there. There is another lady that will be helping us with all the meetings and that we will be training, and another that will be a support person to the group, so they will look after this introductory meeting. Then there will be the first meeting with a study next month. So pray for these meetings, and especially for these teenagers as they pass through an important stage in their life, making many decisions that will have an effect for the rest of their life.

If you have been following the news, you would know that most European flights have been cancelled for the past few days, including in Italy from Saturday morning. Which was when we were supposed to fly out from the ECM conference in Spain. So after getting trying three different flights, all of which were cancelled (including one in the time between walking from the security control to the gate), it was obvious that nothing was sure of getting to Milan (where we had left our car the previous week) for at least a few days. After considering a few options, we (together with the other Italian ECMers) became part of a group of 30 Italians who hired a bus to take us to Milan. It was not cheap, but it was the only way to get back at a decent time. We were told that it would take about 10 hours, but after various adventures (eg getting lost twice during the night in southern France, and being held for an hour by French border officials because one of the group did not have the correct documents), it was actually 21 hours. Adding the time to get from the hotel to the airport, organise the group there and wait for the bus, and then get home from Milan, the whole trip was 34 hours. I am thankful that our children are good travellers, and hardly complained the whole time, despite a lack of good food and sleep for almost two days. And I am thankful that I am home already – I think we are one of the first of the ECM conference participants that isn’t from Spain, Portugal or southern France to get home. Some still haven’t left the hotel yet. One person I met at the airport was not able to get a new flight for 10 days!

As was said at the conference, events like this help to remind us that we are not in control, and that we always have to depend on God’s provision. And they remind us how lucky we are able and how much we take for granted. Even less than 10 years ago,  such a long and costly trip would have been normal for an ECM family to get to an ECM conference somewhere else in Europe.

The conference itself: Having to look after the children meant that we are not able to use much of the time outside of the meeting to chat with others, which is something I have missed in the last few conferences. But it was probably one of the most helpful conferences for reflecting on my own ministry in the light of the Bible and the example of others. Having as my main ministry now the starting and handing over of small groups, most of my church ministry time is spent in preparing and leading group meetings. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it has been a shift from what I was doing in the past, when there was more individual discipleship. It was a gradual shift in my ministry that I had not been aware off. Maybe when I talk with the elders in a couple of weeks about my ministry after the summer break, I will be able to reduce the number of groups I lead so as to be able to meet with more individuals.

I am early with my usual weekly posting, because tomorrow it is off to Spain again. But rather than being my twice yearly meeting for leaders in the mission, it is the two yearly conference for everybody in ECM. So the whole family is going this time, leaving early Saturday morning (which is also our anniversary, so I hope to celebrate the end of it on a Spanish beach), and returning late next Saturday. It will be a time of reflecting on the Bible, on the past and future of the mission, of communion with friends and co-workers we rarely see, and also relaxing by the pool with the family. So you can pray that it will be a fruitful time in these things for us and for all who attend.