News and prayer information from Richard and Pinuccia Wilson

I did the talk at the cathedral yesterday afternoon. The talk itself came out fairly well at the end, after slaving over it for a few days, and by Wednesday I had become more comfortable with doing it – thanks for praying for that. There wasn’t a lot of public though, about 20-30 people, of whom a large majority were people involved in the evangelistic campaign or with the cathedral. They had been about twice as many people at the talks at the beginning of the week, but in general it seemed like the pilgrims didn’t want to see down to listen to a talk for half an hour. Just talking with people worked a lot better however. They were having about 1000 pilgrims a day going through the cathedral, and the staff tried to talk to as many as possible and leave them some literature. Since the pilgrims all had some religious interest, it was easy to start up spiritual conversations with them, and that part of the campaign was more effective than the talks.

Note: I wrote this message last Wednesday, and only just realised that by mistake I had saved it rather than publishing it. So he it is anyway, which will help you understand the other post of today.

I was asked yesterday to do a talk at St Andrew’s Cathedral on Friday 18th, on the occasion of the World Youth Day, on Can YOU experience God directly? Certainly. It is rather short notice to prepare a talk on that, and it will take a while to do since I will have to think it think, and I don’t have a lot of time in this period. So pray please for the preparation, and that the talk will have a good effect on those who listen. There is more information on the series of talks half way down the page http://www.cathedral.sydney.anglican.asn.au/ (although as I write it hasn’t been updated yet to include my name).

Next week will be another busy week, although not with deputation meetings. It is the annual prayer week for European Christian Mission in Australia, so most of the week will be spent, naturally, in praying. Although there will be a few other activities as well, since most of the ECM “family” will be gathered here for that time. Wednesday especially will be a big day for me. I will be doing a devotional in the morning, then in the afternoon it is time for our personal report and prayer time. Finally in the evening is the “Italian café”, when Pinuccia and I will be presenting more generally our work at Trent. There is also a meeting on Saturday afternoon for all the ECM supporters, at which we will be speaking.
If you are interested in coming to either of these meetings, let me know and I can give you further details. Anyone who reads my blog I count as a supporter, so the meetings are also for you, and are a good opportunity to get to know our ministry beyond what is possible in a short deputation talk.

After the anniversary of my birth on Wednesday, there was another significant milestone today: it is 15 years since I arrived in Italy as a young, eager missionary. A lot has happened since then of course, and I thank God for his support and the way he has worked in my character. I might be a bit less young (although I like to pretend that I am the same), but I am still eager to see churches that glorify God be planted and grow in and around Trento.

Yesterday was the first meeting of the year for the teenagers’ group. Three out of the possible four were there, and I think it was a helpful time for them (and for Pinuccia) as we talked about our worries. Pinuccia’s meeting on Thursday also went well, and I could see today that all of the Sunday School teachers were keen to restart as they too had their first classes after the summer break.

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 the school year finishes a few weeks earlier than the church year, the Youth Group is the first of my regular commitments that has gone into summer hibernation. On Saturday we took the members of the group to the ice cream parlour that is under our previous apartment – the best ice creams in the area. Then on Sunday morning the group’s video which summed up its activities for the year was shown. There was also the recital by the Sunday School children – a play that Pinuccia had written and a couple of songs. Then this afternoon, along with most of the church, we went up the Valsugana valley, where one of the church members made about 40 pizzas for everybody. (He is an ex pizza cook, and a very good one too, and has built a pizza oven in his garage.) With the better weather and longer days now, it was good to be able to stay outside and chat together. With three weeks away due to our trip to Sicily, there is a number of people in the church that I don’t know now, since there are often new people attending, so it was good to meet a few of them as well. There was also the announcement of another pregnancy – there are now seven pregnant ladies in the congregation, quite a high number considering there are less than 70 regular (or almost regular) adults in the church.

Just to keep me busy, there was also a concert with the band on Saturday night, which meant a quick change into my uniform after the Youth Group before going to play in a small town in the mountains just about Lavis. It was my last concert before the summer break (although the band will be going to Germany next weekend, I will not be going), although I am not sure how many weeks we will have of rehearsals still.

As I mentioned last time, there was also a public conference on depression in the town library on Friday. It went well, with a good attendance between invited friends and people who came from the advertising, and an encouragement for the listeners to have a personal relationship with Jesus.

I should also give an update on the possible meeting place we might be renting that I mentioned a few weeks ago. The negotiations with the town council go ahead, and we have got over the problems of the low roof and a few parking places that were required. There should not be any further problems, although it will still take some time for the bureaucracy to come through. But keep praying for a solution to our hall problem. Today was quite a squeeze in the hall we currently use, and with another seven babies coming along now…

Speaking of a bit of time needed for the bureaucracy, doing the week I finally got my application for Italian citizenship accepted. It took about six months for me to get all the documents and the appropriate translations and legalisations from different offices in Australia and Italy. However, the estimated time for my application to be approved, when I will become a dual citizen, is two years, so I’m not going to be holding my breath waiting.

Last night was the reason why we came to Sicily: the wedding of Pinuccia’s cousin and one of our friends. Since it was in the same church as our wedding three years ago, it brought back memories… Even the photographer recognised us (we had suggested him to the couple, since he did such a good job for us). Sicilian weddings are quite tame really, with no entertainment during the reception (as happens at Trento) and is relatively short (for example, in the heel of Italy the reception starts at lunch and ends early the next morning, and you eat the whole time). However the Sicilian reception does keep to Sicilian eating hours – which was why I preferred a morning wedding and lunch reception, when it was all over at 5.30pm. Last night the appetisers were served at 9pm, the main course after 11pm, and the desert at 12.30. We said good-bye to the bride and groom at 1am – in Italy, the couple are the last ones to leave and not the first as in Australia, so they would have stayed for quite some time still. Since Stefania could not have lasted until 9pm without eating (nor Pinuccia due to number two’s appetite), we went to Pinuccia’s sister’s house between the church service and the reception (along with the other brother and sister and their families) for something to eat, and so the ladies could rest their feet from their hurting shoes. With that Stefania had no problems during all the time, and was the only small child who showed no signs of tiredness, still fresh at 1am despite not having had her afternoon sleep either. Two power naps of 10 minutes in the car between home and the church, and from the sister’s house and the reception were all she needed.

I do have some good photos of the three of us dressed up for the wedding, but with a slow Internet connection and limited time on line each day it is hard to upload them here. So you’ll have to wait until June when I will have returned to see them.

You may have noticed that the site (and hence also this blog) have been down for more than a week. This was because the site exceeded its bandwidth limit for the month, which was Google’s fault for spidering more than 15Gb of content in 22 days (although it is true that there is a lot of content on the site for a search engine to index). I have now banned Google from entering some parts of my site, so hopefully it won’t happen again.

In the meantime, Stefania has got her first childhood disease, with red spots breaking out all over her body yesterday evening. The doctor said it is similar to roseola – the hand, feet and mouth syndrome to be precise – but it is not as serious. Stefania anyway seems to have a very mild case of it; there should have been a fever, loss of appetite and other symptoms before the spots, but instead she is just as well and happy as always.

There is one urgent prayer point for this week. An English donor of the mission gave some money for radio work in Italy. So another missionary (who works with radio) has produced a series of 30 second advertisements, which will be aired on some commercial stations in all of our region and in Lombardy (the region around Milan, where the other missionary works). They will offer various books, CDs and DVDs, many with an Easter theme. Here, there will be seven ads every day (four from 8 to 12am and three from 5 to 8pm) on the principal regional radio station. Pray for those who will be listening, that they will be interested in getting further information on the themes the ads talk about.

We had a little adventure today. Just as we got out of the door to go to church, we realised that we had both forgotten our keys – with the better weather now we had both changed coats and left the keys in the other one. So we were locked out of our house, and also out of the garage so there was no car or stroller either. Fortunately we were able to call on the help of a friend from church who lives nearby, and who was not going to the service since both he and his wife were sick. So Pinuccia and Stefania were able to stay at his house and talk with the wife, whilst he and I got the fire brigade to come. Pinuccia always opens a few doors and windows to air the house, but today of all days she didn’t. However the door on to the balcony from my office doesn’t shut properly, so to cut a long story short the firemen climbed up two floors to our balcony and then pushed the door open, without having to break down any doors or smash any windows. And by noon we were all back in the house, ready for the guests that we had invited to lunch. It was a good way to meet the neighbours, there hasn’t been so much excitement in our cul-de-sac for a long time and they all came out to ask what was happening.

About a month ago I saw that one of the most famous Italian singers of the 70s and 80s (although he is still regularly making records and appearing on TV) was coming to Trento – Claudio Baglioni if you are interested. Since he is Pinuccia’s favourite singer, the concert was a Tuesday (my free night) and just a couple of weeks after her birthday, I got a couple of tickets to take her out as a surprise. She knew we would be going out, but the destination was a secret; unfortunately she figured it out because there was too much advertising around for the concert. So last night we went, and Pinuccia really enjoyed herself, as many of the songs brought back memories of her youth in Sicily. Every now and again I looked at her and she seemed to be a teenager again as she sang along. Number 2 seemed to enjoy the concert as well, the sound kept him or her awake the whole time, and occasionally she or he would kick along in time with the music.