Today was an extremely productive day of conversation with our Italian friends in Ciampino. We started the day with some coffee at a bar (cafes are actually called bars in Italy). Afterwards, we attended a Church service at Andrea and Heather Gentile’s church. There were many wonderful songs of worship, community prayer requests and a lovely message from Andrea about God’s grace. It was a great reminder that God’s grace extends to all humans regardless of who they are or what they have done.

After church, we gathered around the table with the Gentiles, our mission team and 5 students from a University in Rome. The conversation was centered around a video that we watched entitled, “Why Europe, Why Now?” The video spoke a lot about post Christianity and the shift to other new religions. Italy has the amazing, beautiful, huge churches that are completely empty. People have stopped attending. As I was listening to the video, I began to reflect on the current situation in the United States and I noticed a great deal of similarities. The younger generations live in a world with heavy use of technology and science. It tends to shift the focus of things that cannot be “scientifically” proven. I think these generations find it hard to believe that God can exist in a world of science. Science is an incredible thing that God created for us. It was clear that some of the methods need to change in order to build Christ-like relationships with these generations.

There was also an exercise that we participated in today that really shifted the way many of us view and think about prayer. We were paired in twos and asked to talk about ourselves to our partner for a minute. After taking turns, we were asked to introduce our partners to the group. Following this exercise, we were then asked to pray silently for three minutes. During that time, we were to ask God to tell us about our partners. It was simply meant to get us to listen during prayer. It was astonishing that the responses we got were so accurate and true of our partner. It really got us all to thinking that prayer is not just about talking to God. It is also about listening to what he is trying to tell us!

So PLEASE keep praying on our behalf...listen to God to know how best to pray!  We are praying for opportunities to arise for us to boldly proclaim the mysteries of the Gospel and bring people to Jesus!