Italy's Need

We are learning new stuff everyday about the ministry of Saints Equipped to Evangelize and the ministry in Italy. We got the following info from our friends' web page (Tom and Maureen Little) who are with S.E.E. Tom serves as an administrator to the director, Sam Spatola, and Maureen oversees the ESL courses where Italians are provided English lessons for free as a platform for relationship evangelism in independent events or opportunities.

We had heard that less than 1/2 of 1% of the people in Italy are considered evangelical Christians. However, we did not know how prevalent the occult and satanism is in the country. Consider these statistics and Italy's need:

Italy's Challenge

The following statistics are from ‘Operation World’, 21^st Century Edition, P. Johnstone & J. Mandryk, 2001.

• 80% of Italians claim to be Catholic, but only 10% practice their religion. The church has lost 10 million to new age thinking, the occult and materialistic secularism.

• Occultism is widespread. There are over 100,000 full-time consulting magicians. Satanism is strong in the north, Turin being one of the global centers of its activities, which includes praying for the removal of all evangelical missionaries from Italy.

• Only 1,500 of Italy’s 33,500 communities have an established evangelical witness. The northeastern Veneto Region has 4 million + people, but only 38 churches and 2,000 evangelical Christians.

• The Friulians are an unreached minority with their own distinctive culture and language.

• There is very little outreach in this region with the good news of Jesus Christ.

A Solution

Saints Equipped to Evangelize (S.E.E.) has been serving in Italy since 1995. S.E.E. is committed to apostolic church planting and is aiding in this by equipping and sending short term teams who work alongside the nationals and local churches (this includes the teams that the Saints Bible Institute in San Lorenzo sends). S.E.E. has a three pronged ministry:

• Church Planting

• Evangelism

• Education

Saints Equipped to Evangelize is one solution to the spiritual crisis in Italy. The solution is planting churches through a variety of resources.

• Career Missionaries planting churches in northern Italy.
• S.E.E. operates two schools - Saints Bible Institute and the ABC Language School
• Saints Bible Institute offers American Bible college students a semester abroad for the purpose of immersion into missions in Italy.
• ABC Language School offers English as a Second Language to Italians for the purpose of evangelism.
• Short Term Mission Trips - Every summer they invite churches and individuals to come to Italy for a Short Term Mission Trip experience to help them in their evangelism efforts. Many short-termers come back for extended internships.
• Outreach Events - One of their largest evangelism outreach events occurs each year at Thanksgiving. They invite all of their Italian language students for a traditional American Thanksgiving Dinner and present the gospel.
• Philippino Ministry - There are many Philippino refugees in Italy and S.E.E. has been involved in planting seven Philippino churches. The ministry is now assisting them in sending missionaries back to their homeland in the Philippines. S.E.E. is currently building a new bible institute in the Philippines which is almost completed, that will serve the local church planting efforts as well as new and growing pastors, layleaders, etc.
  

S.E.E. is located in the far northeastern region of Italy, Friuli-Venezia-Giuli (click here to see where it is according to a Google map). The center is about a two hour drive from Venice or from Trieste. It is only 1 1/2 hours from the border of Slovenia.

This is a kids class of ESL

This is a kids class of ESL (English as a second language). Maureen has some 70 kids coming to a number of classes, ages 6-11.

This is an advanced class of ESL. Jeannette and I actually got to attend this class. It's exciting to see how much these Italians not only want to learn English but are so ready and willing to share every aspect of their lives (boyfriend problems, future career issues, etc). Maureen and the other ESL teachers then seek to have times outside the class time to connect and hopefully share the Gospel, with the Spirit leading.

Please keep praying for us. Right now, our biggest prayer requests are:

1) Lee's health. Pray that we can get a good maintenance program for his Asthma

2) Clarity. We don't want to do anything but God's will. We are hopeful for the future but continue to desire God's wisdom and discernment in every step we take.

3) Financial support. There are two issues related to this. First, is that if and when we do transfer to our new ministry, our supporters will desire to keep supporting us. Second, is that we probably need to raise another $750 in monthly support or more. If God does desire us to go to Italy with S.E.E., it may be more not to mention that we will most likely have some serious settling in expenses.

Thank you for your prayers and love in the form of e-mails, phone calls, etc. We so appreciate that you are our friends and are for us, whatever the future may hold for us as a family.

Coram Deo (Literally, "Before the face of God"),
The Walti's


The Walti's and the Faught's, who will be leaving the field in Udine, Italy in December of this year to go to seminary at Southern in Kentucky and to give their family some time to grow up. They will be representing S.E.E. in the states. They are a sweet family (two little boys) and we know that they will be sorely missed by the rest of the team back in Italy.