Jesus and us: Spring 2010

Dear beloved supporters and friends,

We hope this update finds you happy, healthy and passionately in love with Jesus. In fact, if you are not the first two, we hope, at a minimum, the last thing can be said of you. Happiness is truly fleeting, health mostly stays with you in the early part of your life but Jesus? He is with us always and so desires all of our hearts that He might work in and through us for His glory.

As I write this, we are bringing our 2^nd eldest, Hannah, to the airport in Venice to return to the United States for a visit for the first time since leaving two years ago (we’re excited that when she returns, she will bring Bethany back with her to Italy so that we will be altogether as a family for the first time in a year). Hannah is a good example of what our time has been like in Italy. She left at 15, a very critical time for a high school kid. Just before, she cancelled her own baptism we’d scheduled for her at church, not believing she was ready yet. Arriving and immediately starting Italian public school, she knew but a few words of Italian. Many nights until 1am or 2am in the morning, we’d all struggle to translate the Italian into English, let alone to understand what was being taught (that’s with four of five in public school). With 13 subjects and no interpreter, Hannah tried her best, even trying to have a good attitude, but it was horribly difficult. Having a bully in her class program who showed his interest in her through mean and immature ways, it felt at times as if it were just a bit more than she could handle. Hannah eventually would get mono and be out for over 23 days. Later, her doctor would tell her not to return to school for another month…this was her experience in only the first 6 months. But the story doesn’t end there…

Hannah began to search for God. Where before she would not even pick up a Christian book, she was now waking up every morning, reading the Bible and any Christian-growth book she could get her hands on (yes, in English). As the year progressed, Hannah began to respond to her trials and difficulties and extreme difference of the Italian culture with an unusual peace, joy, and confidence in God’s plan for her life. She went from saying she was ready to go back to the U.S. to being excited for ministry opportunities that God had for her here. It wasn’t much later and Hannah asked to be baptized and proclaimed before the entire congregation that if it were not for having come to Italy, she believed she would not have been saved. Now she has many ongoing relationships with Italian girls where she is building into their lives, sharing the gospel, and seeing fruit. One young lady, Chiara, 22 years old (5 years older than Hannah) loves Hannah, loves to hear about God and Jesus and has now attended church with us twice. Chiara looks to Hannah like she is her hero…she sees Hannah’s faith and is moved. Another lady, Mary Ann, thinks the world of Hannah and sees in her an incredible example of Jesus, the way Hannah has served her and her business without expecting anything in return.

So it is with our family! Trials, tribulations and challenges that would fill a book but oh, the blessings of growth in Christ! And with God’s sovereign providence in our lives, we are able to look backward (isn’t it always this way) and see all He has been doing. Would we have chosen this path knowing all we would experience ahead of time? Heck no! But thank God, the Lord knows us, knows our frailties and gives us truly only what we can handle. And then turns the ashes of our pain and suffering into beauty…beauty that displays His glory.

We are looking at our recent transition and new opportunities with Italian Ministries with thankfulness and faith even with all we’ve been through. We would have never known or seen the blessings of the future with a ministry like this, to seek God’s will for our lives, unhindered, simply seeking the lead of the Lord, His Word, His Spirit and His people. And we wonder, why us? Why do we get the privilege of doing this work, meeting with Italians as a full-time job, getting to tell them about the best news in life? We bemoan the fact that some days, we can’t get through a day without complaining about the difficulties of living in Italy (our one car broken down again for the 8^th time, computer drive crashed again for the 4^th time, waiting for 2 hours for our permesso di soggiornos in a hot, humid, stinky police headquarters with people lined up 4-wide but no one knowing who is before or after who, and still no furniture, no clothes dryer, health problems, etc, etc, etc). But such small things when considering all that God has given us and praise God, the Lord is at work!

A QUICK UPDATE:

We had a wonderful time with Loredana just this Friday night, going to an American burger and fries place. She comes over nearly every week to ask us to do something. Loredana, a single mom who is an English teacher working on her masters, struggles with great feelings of guilt. She is 48 years old and she still feels so impacted by the fact that at 3 years-old, the nuns would have her do penance for her sins. Her parents riddled her with guilt, teaching her she could never be good enough – true, but without the grace of God, she is full of shame and guilt. And then a husband who made her pay for their relationship each step of the way, trying to get her to sign a contract that she would not have a child until she got a job, as if it were all her choice. But now she is hearing the gospel. A very lovely gal, on the inside and out, she is hearing of God’s grace and the other night in tears, she was telling us that she knew we were right. That she needs to accept God’s love for her. Please pray for Loredana.

And this weekend we took Ramat and Akim, Ramat’s new friend to church with us. This is our 3^rd time with Akim. He’s been over for dinner twice, gone to church with us twice and stayed the night once with Ramat. Ramat, a new believer himself, has been sharing about Jesus to Akim (also from Afghanistan). Akim has gone from not wanting to have anything to do with Christianity to telling us that he has never seen or heard of anything more beautiful (the church experience, hearing of Christ’s love for him, etc). Just Saturday night we started watching the JESUS Film in Dari, his language and we hope to finish it together later this week. God used this film to save Ramat and we are hopeful for the same for Akim.

Also, please pray for Sandro. Lee has been developing a relationship with him for some time now and he vocalizes complete agreement with the idea that a relationship with God is based on grace and seems to really love Lee and wants to spend time together but he is very busy and often working or helping his family. But on more than one occasion, he has expressed his desire to be more like us, knowing God, the Bible and how to live life in a way that is pleasing to God. Please pray for Sandro, that Lee and him would have more time together, and for Sandro’s wife, Tekla, and Jeannette’s relationship with her.

We now have two churches interested in partnering with and encouraging us, one that is in Sacile and another in Trieste, Italy. Both are very supportive of our family, are committed to the same values, and would love to work with us to help us determine where and how God would like us to move forward in reaching a community. Please pray that God would lead and direct us as we seek His will for a new church and community in which to serve.

Finally, we have just returned from a successful trip to Great Britain to meet with our director, Jonathan Gilmore, and his wife, Annette, and kids, Rosanna (19), Alex (16) and Kristen (14). We had never been to England before and so it was nice to see the countryside, meet our director, strategize about where we would visit this summer (out of a dozen and a half opportunities to serve; we already have 5 to 6 inviting us to come and stay with them and explore ministry) and generally talk about ways we could serve. So the plan is that this summer, as a family, we will visit many of these and explore where God would have us minister and try to reach a community for Jesus. While there, we got to spend a day in London for Jeannette’s b-day (highlight for me was getting to visit Charles Spurgeon’s church, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, where Spurgeon would sometimes preach to over 10,000 people) and then later, we got to attend a Sovereign Grace evangelical church in Newport, Wales, staying with a very kind couple, Bob and Anne Marie Mc Cann (he is a pastor there) who were both very encouraging and insightful.

Well, that’s it for now. We are so grateful for your love and encouragement. Please drop us a note and let us know how we can be praying for you. We will be sending out a snail-mail letter here shortly (we are a little limited on how often we can send this being that we live here in Italy) sharing about all our summer plans and some ways you can pray and support our time exploring God’s will for ministry.

Thank you and we want you to know, that God sees your faithfulness and generosity and is and will bless you for your commitment to further the gospel in Italy.

Love, the Walti Family