Convegno

Once a year in August the Italians have what is called Convegno... and its a meeting for any and all Churches of Christ in Italy, they all have an open invitation. Well Wednesday night the other three and I loaded up and headed to florence. Drove to the Huf villa outside of Scandicci, and started to meet people instantly. There were about 50 people that showed up ranging from nothern italy as Milano and as south as Taranto.

It was such a good spiritual uplift and opportunity to make connections with other churches.. one thing that excited me about the convegno was that there were other people closer to my age. most of my friends here are over 24 and some of them are my parents age....... weird i know. Despite the slight language barriers we managed to have some good laughs and conversations. Even thought all the lessons and classes were in Italian.... i got and understood a good third of what was going on which made me happy.

Overall the Convegno was an amazing experience i believe for all of those involved...

August Newsletter

First off i want to apologize for not keeping in touch very well lately and i have no excuse for it and im sorry.... all my supporters and my congregation... you guys deserve this. alright... so for those of you who are not really familiar with the Italian culture August is the month that everyone takes off for vacation.. Its been like a ghost town around here lately.

Well being vacation month the team and I took a trip to Rome and Pompeii. There was so much to do and see..... it was a good couple days. In Rome we of course we went to the Coloseo... pictured above. It is so big and so fascinating walking through and around it... so much history... but Pompeii is what really got me...... i said before i walked in there that "Its just a bunch of Rocks"...... man was i wrong.... this was such a fascinating place.. so historical, a place frozen in time. the thing that got me the most was the bodies....a family buried together.
You could even see their facial expressions and some of thier bones........ there is one picture that i took that is a body of a man praying......this picture amazes me but it also brings out a few questions
1. Who were they praying to?
2. Would they normally pray or is it just in an emergency situation

I also got to hang out with my italian friends on some nights....

Since our congregation isn't having church during August, we went to the Florence congregation. its a church full of sweet people.
Over all i had such a good August and i want to thank all my supporters for making this possible

New Friends

Alright!!!!!! i would just like to say that we are starting to make friends.... and it is so nice as much as i love my team and love to be around them it is nice to have someone else to talk to. In my opinion my Italian is still not very good... but i am starting to understand most of what people are saying i just really struggle with putting sentences together so that i can say what i want to say... so getting to talk with them is so good and refreshing for me someone that will correct me.

So when we went to language in June we met one a guy there by the name of Sandro, towards the end of june we went to Italia Wave you can read more about that in the previous post. But with his work schedule its hard for him to plan anything but we are still keeping contact and doing what we can. Then thanks to JaMarcus we were given a contact to a man named Patrizio. We met Patrizio in one of the squares in Prato, then met up with some of his friends and went to this hostile that on weekends is used as a place to hang out with friends we chilled there for a bit then went to a park and played soccer on a makeshift field using flip flops and the reflectors for car windshields . We had so much fun with these people.

Then the next day we went to a Birthday party with some of the friends that we played soccer with.... where we met some more friends...(its like a friends snowball). At this birthday party we had some good food prepared by an austrailian woman that is cousins with the birthday girl... and a chef on a yacht.. so needless to say the food was amazin and after chowin down water balloons start flying its pitch dark can barely see outlines... so much fun.... water flyin everywhere then we went to hang out at a pizzeria. went home rather late it was like 3 in the morning. Then Yesterday we met them at about five o clock the next afternoon and went to I Gigli which is what americans call a mall... hung out there for a while... it is more expensive here than in America and after that we went to florence or outside of florence really to this look out where you could see the whole city of florence and looked out and took pictures it was so beautiful up there .....


point of all this being is that i am super excited that we are making friends and things are starting to pick up here.....

AIMing to fulfill the Great Commission,



Evan Williams