Domenica (Sunday)

Well, yesterday was my first day worshipping with the Florence church. A lot of the members were just coming back from vacation. In Italy, everyone vacations in August--many businesses and restaurants even close in the cities, while everyone is at the beach or the mountains. By next week, the building will be quite full with everyone back in town, and many of the students with Harding University's overseas program here will also be worshipping with us for the semester.

The church just got new songbooks. With so few non-Catholic churches in Italy, a new Italian-language song book is a major event. The last ones they had were falling apart; when a song was announced, everyone had to flip through a few books to try and find one that still contained that page. In class, we sang and discussed several songs (well, I'm assuming we were discussing the songs; we could have been discussing socks in between bursts of singing for all I would notice with my Italian...). One of the men in class, Luigi Giardino, was one of the translators who adapted many songs from English into Italian. After church, we had a fellowship meal. It's universal...there was a plate of chicken legs at the end of the table. I enjoyed meeting many of the church members while we ate.

On Sunday night, we (AI workers) held an English devotional at Pepperdine University's study-abroad building in Florence. The Pepperdine students won't be in until later this week, but the devotionals go on even in the summer so that any American travelers will have a place to go. We were happy to have four girls, all members of the church, who are spending a semester abroad on their own studying at an Italian university. They found the Florence Church on the internet, and came Sunday morning. They were very excited to find Christians they could spend time with in Italy. We invited them to the Pepperdine devotional, and they plan to be with us at both services for the rest of the semester. When we arrived at the Pepperdine building, two more girls were waiting who had also found us on the internet when they searched for English-language services. They normally attend a community church in that states, but they hope to be with us at that devotional again. Hopefully, we can be an encouragement to all of these girls.