News and prayer information from Richard and Pinuccia Wilson

Although it has already snowed a few times in the mountains around Trento, this weekend there were the first snow falls in the town itself. Stefania and Daniele certainly got excited at the sight. However, it does reduce participation a bit. Church this morning had about 1/3 less than its usual number, with people unable or unwilling to get out with the snow. The beginning of the usual mid winter blues, as numbers and keenness drop until Spring starts in a few months.

But there are still lots of activities. In fact next Saturday is the day when people in the church managed to organise three events at the same time (as well as the usual Saturday afternoon Bible study groups). The one that stayed on that date is an evangelistic concert at Trento, with Samuele (my ex-flatmate) and some friends from other churches playing, as well as a presentation of Altrimenti, the social arm of the church, and its project to help a hospital in Cameroon. The other events for Saturday got moved – the Sunday School’s biscuit making to the 11th, the Youth Group to the 18th – so there will be more on those in a future post.

Today I exercised my Italian citizenship for the first time. There was an election for a new level of government (the fifth!) that has been created between the town and provincial levels. So I cast my vote there. Only 6 parties in 4 coalitions, Italian politics is not as interesting/confusing as it used to be before they changed the electoral system. I actually could have exercised my Italianism a few weeks ago when I went to Spain, but when I did the on line check in I forgot that I was Italian, and gave the details of my Australian passport. If I had said that I was Italian, I would not even have had to use a passport. Part of the reason of obtaining Italian citizenship was to make travel easier around Europe, so hopefully the next time I go to Spain I will remember.

After the long summer break, preschool starts for the rest of the family on Wednesday. Stefania starts her third and final year, whilst Daniele goes for the first time. Pinuccia has accepted a job at a school in the centre of Trento from 2.30pm to 5.30pm; that is, the after school care. It means she will be at home almost an hour later than she was last year, which means an hour per day less with the children. She is not happy about this (and neither will Stefania and Daniele be once school starts), but there was nothing better available. On the other hand, with both children at school, Pinuccia and I will both get a lot more time to do other things. After a few years in which I have been able to do a lot less than what I had wanted to do, it will be a big change. I wonder though if we will suffer from the “empty nest” syndrome, having such an empty house during the day.

Although the school restarts on the 1st, it will be a couple of weeks before we actually arrive at the normal rhythm. Firstly because Daniele has a gradual insertion at the preschool, first doing 1.5 hours per day, then a few more hours, before starting full time attendance in the second half of the month. At the same time, my mother arrives on the 1st for a visit for a couple of weeks, which will help to fill the hole left by all my family going out every day!

The first couple of weeks of September are also filled with the preparations for the new church year, and getting the groups restarted. Pinuccia will be leading a meeting for the Sunday School teachers on Thursday, with the classes starting probably on the 12th. She will also have to work out a program for the monthly ladies’ meetings. I will be getting two cell groups started, as well as helping the other groups start looking after the enrolments. So I will have a gradual insertion into my normal pattern of church ministry as well.

I spent most of the week thinking it was the wrong day. Firstly because on Monday the whole family went to the ECM-Italy meeting a couple of hours to the south of Trento, which seemed like a weekend activity. So Tuesday seemed like Monday. As well as that Stefania had a slight cold, and so spent most of the week at home, so the days never quite seemed as they should me. But on Friday she went back to school, and should be right for this week. (Although there is still some resistance every morning to the idea of going to school.) By the end of the week, I had managed to get myself syncronised with the calendar again.

One of the highlights of the week was a Sicilian dinner at our place, for five couples/families that had at least one person from Pinuccia’s home town. (Although one couple could not make it due to the flu.) Since they are all good friends as well, it was a fun evening, and Stefania and Daniele enjoyed playing the whole time with my ex flat mate’s children, who are the same age. The non Sicilian components, like myself, just sat back and enjoyed the food which the others produced, especially when the talk kept dropping into incomprehensible Sicilian dialect.

On Tuesday, instead of the usual Bible study at Rovereto, there will be a meeting at Trento for the wider group of people interested in and committed to helping the whole church planting project at Rovereto. So you could pray for that meeting, that we would have good ideas, and the desire and dependence on God, to move forward with that project.

Today we had a visit from the church at Formigine, which is about 200m south of here, and where another one of Pinuccia’s cousins attends. The whole church came together, which almost doubled the number at the service. Since our hall is too small for us by ourselves, let alone when another church joins us, we hired a larger hall for the occasion. Since it happens to be very close to where we live (and is in fact where we had the wedding party for those at Trento), I looked after the booking and the organisation of the logistics of the hall. So that kept me busy most of the day, both at the service and during the lunch for over 100 people. The fun part for me was when I helped our two experts at the bar (which in Italy means serving the coffee). They (of whom one, strangely enough, was a lady from Bulgaria) looked after the coffee, making a hundred or so in about a quarter of an hour, whilst I was busy washing the cups and chatting with the “clients”. Even the people from Naples where happy with our coffee, which is indeed a great compliment.

At the Bible study at Rovereto on Tuesday I got a surprise when I saw a new person in the group when I arrived. Gradually as the meeting went on I learnt various things about her, until right at the end I suddenly realised that I knew who she was. Although her family lives at Rovereto, she is studying at Bologna, and refounded and led the group at the university there (which is how I heard about her). I also knew that she is very enthusiastic in her evangelism. In fact, even though she only moved back to Rovereto last Sunday, by the Tuesday evening she was already looking at planning an evangelistic event there and had done some preliminary organisation. I believe that she is just the type of person that will be a great help to Suzanne Bikker in her church planting work at Rovereto, and has arrived at just the right time. God’s time, of course.

I have never been a great fan of Facebook, as the information I might have put there I have been writing instead on this blog. But I thought recently that is would be a good way to great my blog read more, and as a result more people praying, as probably more people read Facebook posts than RSS feeds to blogs. So I have set up a Facebook page, which will have pretty much nothing more than the contents of this blog. And probably I won’t visit my Facebook page often to see what others are saying – life is too short to follow everyone! In any case, this is a test message, which hopefully should show up as my first message on Facebook as well as on my blog.

So if you read the blog and want to follow it instead on Facebook, send me an invitation to become your friend. And if you are reading this on Facebook, and want to see the last three years of messages, head over to http://richard.laparola.net/

E se sei un amico italiano e non capisci inglese, mi dispiace ma non troverai la mia pagina di Facebook molto interessante!

Pinuccia today went to the meeting where her work for this academic year (starting on Tuesday) was decided. Last year, she got the last available job. Now she is a bit higher in rankings and was able to choose one from the last three available. She was able to pick one which was a lot better than last year’s job in many ways. It is still 2.5 hours per day (which is all we really want), but from 1pm (or possibly 1.30pm, the school hasn’t decided yet) instead of from 3pm. This means that:
a) although I will still pick up Stefania from school, Pinuccia will get home shortly afterwards, which gives her a much longer time to be together with the children. Last year, Pinuccia got home, had just half an hour to play with them, then it was time for dinner and then bed;
b) I get some time to work in the afternoon (although I lose a bit in the morning – see later);
c) since it is in school hours, not the after school care, Pinuccia gets to do some actual teaching, rather than babysitting;
d) as she will be helping a child with problems, she won’t have to look after 25 children by herself, but there will be another teacher in the class;
e) Pinuccia will be able to do a course. A few months ago Pinuccia applied to teach English in the preschool, and she was accepted, but needs to do a course of 180 hours to bring her own English level up a bit and learn how to teach it to children. The course is in the afternoon, so with last year’s job she would not have been able to do it. But this year once or twice a week she will go straight from school to the course. She will also need to study for it, so probably she will lock herself in my office for an hour every morning, and I will look after Daniele (whilst Stefania is at school). So I might lose an hour of work there, but which I get back in the afternoon.

I did manage to work on quite a few small projects during this week, although I did not get as much done on the Bible studies for next year as I was hoping. So there will be a bit of work to do on those during the holidays. In fact we are leaving at 2am tonight, catching the ferry at Salerno at 1.30pm for an eight hour trip, then another more 3 hours by car to get to Pinuccia’s parents’ house. A long trip, especially with two small children. We will be back at Trento on August 19, and in the meantime there will be reduced blogging here.

It is certainly a snowy winter this year – there have been more snowfalls than I can ever remember, even though for the most part they have been fairly light. Although heavy enough to disrupt quite a bit of my activities. So this week band practice on Friday and a bookstall at Rovereto on Saturday did not go ahead, and Pinuccia also ran into a snow storm as she drove home from the Monday night Bible study group. There is more rain and/or snow forecast on Monday night, so hopefully it will not disrupt our getting to the hospital for Daniele’s operation on Tuesday.

Apart from the snow, this also seems to be the time for guests. We had a friend from Australia staying for 4 days this week, who is the second of four visitors who will be sleeping here in the course of a month. It is good to have the opportunity to show hospitality to all these people!

Yesterday was another heavy day (as Sundays often are on deputation), with more than three hours at two church services in the morning, and then another almost three hours in the afternoon at a recommissioning service at our main supporting church in Sydney (Carlingford Anglican). But the afternoon was very encouraging for us, reminding us of the support and care that others give us. Pinuccia especially was starting to feel a bit of deputation weariness, due to the constant movements and repetitiveness, and the fact that she does not understand a lot of what is said in meetings, but the meeting helped to cheer her up and remind her why we are doing all this. It had an effect on the rest of us as well: I lost my voice at the end of the meeting, and Stefania was so tired out that she went to sleep in the car at 5.30pm and didn’t wake up until the following morning – she never sleeps so long.

This coming week is Bible college week for me. On Wednesday I will be representing ECM at a mission exposition at Moore College, and on Thursday I will be speaking at both of the campuses of the Sydney Missionary and Bible College. These are important meetings for “recruitment” – the most likely places that we will find people during our deputation time who are interested in serving at Trento in the future. We are also visiting friends for dinner one night, going to a prayer breakfast on Saturday, being interviewed and preaching (a sermon I still need to prepare) three times on Sunday, plus some time with my family, doing some tourism, and some work with the mission.