We’re doing well here in Rome. It’s an uphill climb when you move to a new city, whether it’s in the US or overseas. After all we were so comfortable with friends, jobs and places in Niceville and now we’re starting all over again.  But, we see the friendships developing and we’re learning our way around.

   We’ve gotten settled in really well and we’ve been making lots of friends. Language study is going well, but fluency is a long way off. Mary and I have started working one on one with language coaches.

   Through the summer we have wished we had air conditioning. The days gott to 85-95 and the nights cooled down to about 75.We kept fans running non-stop and they kept us alivel. We really adapted to the heat. Mary and I walked about a mile to the train station for school then climbed the stairs of the subway and walked from the subway to school every day in this heat and we did well. It’s amazing what you can adapt to.

    I miss my dishwasher the most, then comes the clothes dryer. Though hanging clothes really isn’t that much of a bother.  Really, we’re enjoying the simplicity of it all.

   A typical day in our life is really based around our language study at the moment. Mary and I have been enrolled in a language school. School has been great mission field for us. As we make friends and share with them that we are missionaries they get curious and ask lots of questions. That leads to all sorts of opportunities.

    We take the metro (subway) to school each day. We walk down about 1km to the metro station from our house and then ride the train to the main station “Termini” switch trains to our final destination “Policlinico”. We go to the “Torre di Babele” school. It’s a well run school with great teachers. For the most part we are learning grammar, we work on listening and speaking but I find the speaking part is slow because there is such a concentration on grammar.

    After school we come home and study, do homework, contact friends and supporters on line. We have also made quite a few Italian friends and we are committed to those relationships, particularly because these friends are seeking  spiritually. So, we’ve had quite a bit of opportunity to witness and help them grow. Our friends range from the young gal who lives next door who Mary meets with in the mornings for private language lessons to some older folks who are our land lords and their family and friends to a young couple who were friends of the couple we bought our car from before we got here. This couple helped us pick up our car and they instantly became great friends. On weekends we may go to watch their son and daughter play baseball (yes, they have baseball here in Italy).

    We would also take the afternoons to see some of Rome. One afternoon we went to see Castel di San Angelo, a few days ago I got off the train a few stops early and did my homework in the park of Villa Borghese.

    One night we went to a play that our next door neighbor was in. It was a comedy about 5 women on vacation together. We get invited to homes for dinner quite regularly and tonight we are having some of the students in Mary’s language class over for dinner. Praise the Lord Mary is a great cook and loves to entertain. That has been our single most effective way of building relationships here.

    Some of the friends we have had over for dinner include three college students that we met at an Evangelical conference about three months ago. They are two Italian girls and a girl from Finland, all believers. They have been an amazing blessing to us. They have been over for dinner and we’ve maintained a friendship via the internet until they return for classes in the fall.

    We also have made friends of some of the local shop keepers. Particularly, our friends Walter and Gilda from the local ice cream shop. We have had them over for dinner. They have been very friendly to us and Walter loves to talk about the USA. So, we’re trying to make the most of every minute of every day with the sole purpose of introducing people to the gospel.

    Oh, we also have other missionaries here in Rome who have a house church and bible studies going. We meet with them at least once a week to plan and pray. We are making plans for a year from now to have a group from Niceville, FL come to work with youth here in Rome. We are also planning a service type mission trip to Macedonia for Italian youth. We plan on promoting it through the local private schools.