God's so good!

Well, it's now the end of week 4, of classes, I believe. Crazy how quickly this is going by! At one point it seemed so slow, and now it's flashing before my eyes. Well, I am enjoying teaching, for the most part. I enjoy talking with the students more... all the social stuff, more than the actual teaching English part.

The students, well most of them anyways, are so amazing! They're so nice and fun to be around. We have gone bowling, and to dinner a few times... really trying to build relationships. My "contact", Cristina is 17 years old and is so cute. She and I have really clicked, it seems. She speaks very good English, and is helping me learn more Italian. If you would be in prayer for her and me as I hang out with her and am able to speak with her, that would be amazing. What's truly stupendous is that last Sunday my friend Hannah and I were going to go into the center and hang out before church that evening and we invited Cristina along with us to hang out and then to church, and she came! I know God's hand was on that whole thing. I'm praying that she comes with Hannah and me again. One of the elders of the Italian Christian church, Ken, came up to her and started talking to her and he asked, "So, we will see you again?" and her response, "Yes! On Sunday evenings right?" :) We will see what happens.

The ESL teachers, Maureen, Becky and I, are going through a Romans study every week. How convicting is Romans??! VERY! The main concept that I have been learning... It's not about me! Nothing is about me! Everything from what we say to how we act need to point back to Christ... not ourselves. When we go through a hard time, we should rejoice, knowing that God wouldn't have planned it out that way if it wasn't going to bring Himself glory.

A quote from the book "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan is: "Worry implies that we don't quite trust God is big enough, powerful enough, or loving enough to take care of what's happening in our lives. Stress says that the things we're involved in are important enough to merit our impatience, our lack of grace towards others, and our tight grip of control." - This book is amazing! If you haven't read it.... you need to. This is my own personal study that I have been going through, and although it's not an actual "Bible study" it has practical concepts that are really convicting. What I love about this book is it's correlating with things from Romans. And what I love about Francis Chan is that he's very direct and to the point.... NO beating around that bush!

Anyways, those are a couple things going on in my life right now. Main prayer request: that I get to have several times of getting to hang out with Cristina and really be able to share the gospel with her. That the Holy Spirit opens up her heart and that she's wanting to know more. Thank you so much for your prayers and support through out this trip! What a huge blessing you've been to me and to the people of Italy!