With the help of another missionary couple, Brian and Sarah Bennetch we have started a prayer dinner for Christian believers here in Rome.  We meet every Friday night and share fellowship, food, prayer, singing and the scripture.  Our hope is that this small group will spawn into other small groups, including non-believers who can be introduced to the gospel.  In our meeting there have been three Italians, one Finn, two New Zealanders, a Moldavian, a gal from Poland and an Albanian. We pray that these young people will become disciples to bring others to the gospel. In the book of Isaiah, Isaiah the prophet , predicts the destruction of Israel because of its pride that they could live without the one God, in Isaiah 11:1 “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse, from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.” Isaiah predicts that from a humble chopped down tree will come a branch, a “shoot”, that will bring God back to the hearts of His people.  Of course this shoot that Isaiah predicted was Jesus the Messiah.  That is the vision that God has given us here in Rome, a vision of a shoot growing from the stump.  The stump is the remnant of a Christian era here in Rome and the “shoot” is the resurgence of Jesus through the believers that still exist in this long forgotten heritage of Jesus Christ.  Mary and I are seeing believers, some Italian, many from other countries, just as was the case with the Jews who returned to Israel from other countries.  We see God moving these believers to be the “shoot” the branch that grows and “will bear fruit”.  Our hope and prayer is that these handfuls of believers scattered around Rome and other parts of Italy will come together to realize the power that God can have through them to reach all of Italy and probably some of the foreigners returning to their home lands to share the gospel in other parts of Europe.

In a hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina at 10:54pm on November 3, 2009, just a few days ago, God created another miracle, a baby boy was born to Kaitlyn and David Simmers.  His name is Liam Simmers.  Liam is spending the first few days of his life in neonatal intensive care because he has some fluid in his lungs and he was given antibiotics to prevent a pneumonia infection.  We hope Liam can be released from NIC soon.  His mom, our daughter Kaitlyn is doing fine after his birth but she and David would love to have their baby home.  We ask for your prayers for his recovery.  We’ve been able to enjoy some time with them thanks to modern technology, Skype, to communicate with them and see their faces.  We still haven’t had an opportunity to visit with Liam over Skype yet, but we hope that will happen soon.  We thank many of you who have congratulated us and wished God’s blessings on our family.  We love you all.

Because of the birth of our new grandson, Liam, we will be heading to the States for a brief visit to spend some time with Liam and his mom and dad, Kaitlyn and David.  We leave Rome, Italy and arrive in Charlotte NC on some time in November, our dates aren’t set yet.  We will be staying with our daughter and son-in-law at their home in Charlotte NC. I (Joe) will be taking a 4 day trip to New York to visit my 93 year old mom (who is doing very well) and also visit the New York City office of records so that I can find the remaining records I need to apply for dual citizenship here in Italy.  Having citizenship in Italy will make our stay here much easier and open many more doors to us. Then we will head down to Niceville, FL our “home town” on Friday, Dec. 11^th and we’ll be staying in Niceville until Tues, Dec. 15^th.  We’ll probably return to Charlotte for a few days and then leave for Rome shortly after. We would love to visit with as many friends as possible during that time.

Our Friday night prayer group was a wonderful night of fellowship, prayer and singing and the hour was late, so I offered to drive home four gals who had long bus rides home.  It turned out to be a crazy trip to say the least. We set out for the first girl’s home and I misunderstood where she lived so I started out in the wrong direction. After getting the GPS programmed it took us back to where I needed to go. We had only lost about 10 minutes. We headed to the next stop, only to find the main road closed, so we resorted to a detour that took us in the right direction, but one of my passengers insisted she knew a better route. 20 minutes later we were right back where we started from and in the process I had been rear ended at an intersection (fortunately there was no damage done) and stopped for going the wrong way on a one way street by the Carabinieri (the national police force). I had caught the mistake and the Carabinieri let me go without a ticket. At 1:30am I finally got everyone safely home including myself thanks to our Lord and our car, a 2000 Fiat Marea station wagon, the pre-dented model which was funded by FUMC Niceville’s Bargain Box. In all it was a wonderful night.