finally some encouragement :)

this was definitely an encouraging week, for a lot of reasons. granted, it started out horribly, it ended soo well.

first of all, there's an american woman named megan who is here in pescara. she came over to be a mormon missionary, but she fell in love with and married an italian man who isn't a mormon, therefore ostracizing herself from the mormon church. well, her husband is the real estate guy who we rent the church building/office from, so she stops in every couple of weeks. this week, she stopped in for the sole purpose of inviting me over for dinner sometime, and to a halloween movie party she's having. it was soo encouraging! seriously, she came just to see me, and i had only met her once before. how nice! and she's shown an interest in spiritual things concerning christianity, since she can't go to the mormon church anymore, so it may be a good opportunity to help her a little closer to becoming a christian.. exciting :)

and then.. i made a fun catapult one day to use when i talk about david and goliath at the children's program in the future. that was just a little thing, but still fun.

and then came saturday morning, when i realized i hadn't put up signs at the park for the program. and i felt soo bad, because it was finally a beautiful day, not raining or anything, and i thought i had ruined the opportunity to have the program at the park again. bleh. i felt terrible about it. but we went anyway, and the park was just teeming with kids and their parents!! seriously, it was nothing like parks in green bay, because there were hundreds of people in the 1-block-radius park. anyway, we started setting up the puppet curtain and everything, and kids came and sat right down in front of us. it was crazy that they were so excited and ready for a program like that. it went well, and there were about 25 kids there!!

i talked about God's love for us, and how it never runs out. we used the story of the lost sheep as a puppet show for it, and then they all made a little sheep with cotton, and put them on straws so they could do their own puppet shows at home. it was soo great.

what was even more encouraging, though, was this one lady who came up to me and talked to me for a while before the program even started. her child was only 2, so the girl was too young to participate, really, but the mom hung around the whole time watching and laughing and everything. it was great. the greatest part, though, was that she really pursued a conversation with me. she didn't speak hardly any english, and i speak hardly any italian, and yet she kept on pursuing it. i loved it! it's so easy most of the time to just give up and you end up just smiling and nodding in awkward silence, but she kept on trying to get me to talk to her, to understand italian, and to relate to me by talking about different cities in america that she has been to. it was so encouraging.

after the program at the park, we went out for kabob sandwiches (but not like the lebanese ones from al khaymeih this summer, these were almost like gyros, only you got to choose from tons of vegetables and sauces and meats to put in it) and home-made gelato. it was wonderful :)

the week has ended so well, i couldn't have asked for it to go better.
praise God for the encouragement i needed at just the right time!