Poured Out

I know that a lot of people think we are constantly over busy and I am constantly travelling.  While having four children does give the feeling of being constantly busy, these generalisations are not exactly accurate.  For one thing we tend not to consider travelling together as the same as me going alone.  So the four weeks in Italy were a really special time for us together as a family.  Unfortunately circumstances came together to make last week one of the more difficult experiences for Melanie (not helped by the food poisoning the day after we got back – she felt unable to bounce back from that).  She seems to be slightly better now and hopefully will regain a decent amount of strength in the coming days.

I am not travelling again for a month, and in this month my schedule is deliberately light.  I have a couple of midweek Bible studies (which is always a massive blessing), and a Sunday morning meeting not too far away (in a church I enjoy visiting).  This means that the next weeks will allow time for reading, study, writing.  I will also be able to spend several Sundays at our home church, which is part of my goals for this year’s schedule.  First of all, though, I need to clear the backlog from my desk and do some reports on last week’s ministry.  This afternoon we have a friend coming to stay overnight, and I know that our conversation will be highly significant and genuinely refreshing.

So there we are, settling in for a more stable few weeks.

Woke up this morning at 3:45am.  Headed outside to meet my taxi, but he didn’t show.  So we called another one and I made it to the airport in time.  There was a guy moving back and forth between check-in desks putting the stickers on the handles and then moving the bags back to the conveyor.  As soon as I put mine there he swept by, put a sticker on it and threw it on the conveyor.  Somehow in my subconscious I read the sticker and realized it was only to Moscow, not all the way to London.  I urged them to chase the bag, and in the end he went round the back and retrieved it.  Thank you Lord that I somehow noticed that!  So then a four hour flight, followed by a four and a half hour flight (with a 90 minute delay in Moscow – “the airport of the high heel” as I now call it, because I’ve never seen so many people perched precariously on such high and pointed heels!)  I made it home around 3pm, and it was great to see everyone again.

It has been a tough week here for Melanie.  Although she got over the food poisoning last week before I left, I suspect she never bounced back fully and this week took its toll.  On the hopeful side, she is scheduled for more tests in the next weeks which will hopefully shed more light on what is going on with her health.  I will write more soon, but for now suffice it to say that it was a real privilege to go where I went and do what I did.  This week of ministry has been a real highlight for me and I look forward to more of the same in the future.  Please pray that the door will remain open for a return visit.  For now, though, we are all ready to crash into bed and get some rest.

I have heard from Peter that things are going very well for him at the conference.  Thanks for praying. You will have to wait til he gets back for more details!  I have had a few rough days here, healthwise, but have had some good friends help me out when I needed it.  The kids have had a wonderful day with friends taking good care of them while I rested.  Good friends are such a blessing and I am thankful.  So are beds and I am heading to mine now!  Thanks for continuing to pray for all of us.

For those of you who have been asking . . . Peter has indeed arrived at his destination in Asia.  So far we have only been able to communicate by text.  He does not have his computer with him and so far has not accessed email.  He said his first teaching session went well yesterday but that is all I’ve heard.  Thanks for praying for safe travel and entry into the country.  I will write more when I hear more and also report on the goings on at home soon too.

Here is a summary.  I fly tomorrow at 1:30pm from Heathrow Airport, via Moscow, to central asia on Aeroflot.  I arrive Monday morning (hopefully after getting some sleep!)  Monday after lunch I have a lecture.  Tuesday I have an exposition (sermon).  Wednesday I have two lectures.  Thursday a lecture and an exposition.  Friday a final exposition.  I also need to chair other sessions, etc.  Everything will be through translation, perhaps into two languages.  If I can get online I will update the site, if not, perhaps Melanie will (if we can talk on the phone…no guarantees!)  I fly out Saturday morning and get back at lunch time on Saturday.  Really appreciate your prayers for this new venture and for things here at home (where all are now healthy, thankfully!)

Melanie slept well and seems to be feeling much more normal today – now she just has to get her strength up as she slowly eats and drinks more.  Joel was awake a lot in the night and seems to be coming down with something.  Perhaps a sore throat or something (Hannah has had one for a few days).  Hopefully that’s it.  Please pray for what Melanie had to be food poisoning rather than a bug, just so the rest of us can avoid getting it!  Thanks for praying!

We left Germany at 9:30 yesterday morning and drove straight through to Calais.  We arrived just before 5pm and discovered the port was closed by French fishermen on strike.  Nice.  We sat in the car, walked around the car, wandered to the restrooms, met some neighboring travellers, watched a music DVD, unpacked and repacked the car to allow the girls to lean their seats back, watched them sleep as Joel squirmed on our laps in the front, etc., etc.  Eventually as we were settling in for the night, trying not to be annoyed at the French propensity to strike and then have no consequences, we finally got to board.  The ferry left at midnight.  We arrived home at 2:15am.

But the adventure continues.  Melanie has been up all night.  I’m thinking it is food poisoning from something she ate on the ferry.  Actually we ate the same thing, but at different times.  I’m hoping it is not a bug as we only have two days before I leave for Kyrgyzstan.  Please pray for Melanie to get over this quickly – she’s in real discomfort right now as her body continues to rebel against whatever is inside.  Please pray for the rest of us to stay well too!

Melanie’s post yesterday bordered on an internet based Magnum Opus, so I won’t add too much here.  One thing we’ve been meaning to mention was from a couple of weeks back when we visited the Duomo in Como (yes, Italian does tend to rhyme with itself more than other languages!)  Joel was in his stroller, so had a different vantage point than the rest of us, but also a different perspective on Catholic church ritual too.  As we rounded a pillar he spied one of the tables full of candles burning near a statue of Mary or someone similar.  “Birthday Cake!” he bellowed and pointed.  He took a couple of minutes to convince that it wasn’t a birthday cake, and nor should he be shouting in the quiet church building.  As we were about to step out into the bright sunshine a group of about 50 folks entered the door, so we had to stand aside and wait for them to pass.  They were a group of elderly tourists.  I leaned over to Melanie’s Dad and told him they were actually a school group that left in 1957, but had lost their bus.  Somehow that struck us as funny and we contained ourselves until we stepped outside.

So why a sandwich?  Well, we had amusing moments at the beginning and at the end of our time in the church.  But in between there was the quite different sensation of sadness at all the trappings and images of biblical truth, but the absence of the gospel in the state religion here and across so many European countries.  People are now starting to call Europe the new dark continent in spiritual terms.  This is not just because of French-led secularism, growing paganism and occultism from Turin to Glastonbury, or the results of surveys measuring responsiveness to evangelism (the top 10 most resistant people groups are all European)…there is a great darkness found in both the buildings and the influence of the Roman Catholic church in this part of the world.

As we celebrate the fact of Easter, let’s pray for the light to shine in Europe again.

Well, I decided it was time I put a post on myself . . . just to give a flavour of what life has been like for our family over the past few weeks.  Get ready for a long one – I guess it’s always feast or famine with my posts!  Last night we visited a church in Paullo (2 hr. drive away).  Quite the opposite of our normal style, we arrived quite early (we couldn’t remember what time we were supposed to be there actually!) had a delightful time with a sweet and fun family. I have been understanding more and more Italian but still can’t speak too much.  But it has been fun to try to communicate with people -their limited English and my limited Italian.  I learned a very random verb last night – aparechiare (to prepare, as in, to set the table!) I also got a lesson on how to prepare tomato sauce for pasta.  You can be sure I will try it at home!  We had lots of laughs and fun at the dinner table.  The girls do very well saying things like – “My name is . . . ” and “I’m x years old” in Italian and people are always delighted!  Even Joel knows how to count to 10 in Italian!

Anyway, the meeting started at 9 and we showed up at 9:10 (we and our hosts lost track of time!) and slipped in the back (slipped in is the wrong word!) of a tiny meeting room.  We were packed in like sardines.  I literally could not move a muscle where I was sitting.  It is so wonderful to see a group of believers so hungry for the word and growing in numbers too.  They seemed very grateful for and challenged by Peter’s message.  There were lots of lovely people, lots of kisses afterwards and much love shown to us, despite the language barrier (Peter and I are usually not in the same place after a meeting so I don’t get the luxury of him translating for me!).  The longer we are here the more I understand and I am really motivated to study Italian more when we get back!  It’s such a beautiful language.  I love the culture too.  Very family oriented and warm and friendly people.  Maybe the Lord wants us to move here someday!?  Anyway, we arrived back last night at 1 am so we slept in til 9 this morning.  The kids did great, behaving well overall in the meeting and then sleeping the whole way home.

Today we went to a new friend’s house about 10 minutes drive away in a little village at the top of a hill – gorgeous setting.  The wife is American and she has come over to our place a few times to meet up with us and our friends who live here in this house.  It was really fun to spend time with her and get to know her family.  She blessed us with giving us some pass-on clothes for Joel too.  Tonight we will go to visit a family with 5 children (a HUGE family by Italian standards!) along with our friends who we are staying with.  So altogether there will be 11 kids and 6 adults – wow!  Tomorrow is Easter – Peter will preach twice and we’ll enjoy Easter lunch with our friend’s mother (3rd floor of this house).  Then we plan to go out for a meal in the evening with Andrea and Marta – our hosts – something we’ve been trying to do all week but sickness in their family has prevented.  Thankfully, their son seems to be much better now.

One more fun thing we did the other day was to go to Rivanazzano, the little town where Peter grew up.  We intended to get there at breakfast time so we could go to the bakery where his dad used to buy him foccacia every morning for breakfast.  Well, in Mead fashion, we left late and got there about 10am.  So we wandered the streets of his town for the next 2 hrs, listening to Peter tell “little boy” stories, stopping at 3 bakeries for foccacia, and 2 playgrounds too!  So that covered breakfast and lunch!  It was special to see the places that hold so many memories for Peter.  Anyway, I should end this rambly post . . . in between all the socializing, church visits and eating good food, we have managed to maintain a good routine of work for Peter and school for the kids.  I have also been able to do quite a bit of reading which has been fun (away from home it’s easier to sit down and rest in the afternoons instead of finding housework, etc. to do!).  I finished Kevin Leman’s Birth Order Book – very interesting and insightful.  I just started #7 of the Left Behind series. It has been ages since I’ve read this series and I thought I would allow myself the rare treat of reading fiction.  Happy Easter to all of you.  Thank you for your prayers for our family.

Well, one more weekend of ministry here in Italy and then we can hit the road and head home.  Tonight we are a couple of hours away in a town called Paullo.  Then on Sunday I speak twice here in Mombercelli.  As ever, appreciate your prayers as preaching in Italian is far from easy.  We have had a good time here, but it will be good to get home as well.  We leave on Tuesday morning, staying with friends at the Black Forest Academy in Germany that night, then finishing the journey on Wednesday.