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.
