It took months – but the most intense stuff took the last few days.  So many wonderful friends with hearts for Jesus helped us pack and take care of all the final details to get us on the road. Thank you to everyone who helped in some way. We love you all.

Our Schedule

*Friday March 27 Depart FL 
*March 28 Arrive Charlotte NC visit with daughter and son-in-law
*April 3 Depart Charlotte NC
*April 3 Arrive Westbury NY  visit with Joe’s mom and family
*April 15 Probable departure Kennedy Airport to Rome, Italy
*April 16 Arrival in Rome, Italy

Mary, Joe and son Chris left our home in Baker, FL on Friday March 27 at 5:05pm after a long day of final packing and headed north to Charlotte NC to spend Saturday Mar 28 with Kaitlyn and David (daughter and son-in-law). It was Kaitlyn’s birthday. We made it to Charlotte NC at 5:30am.

Our plan is spend a few days in Charlotte with Kait and David, then to Westbury Long Island to spend a few days with my (Joe’s) mom before we fly out to Rome, Italy.

If all goes well, we’ll be flying out of Kennedy Airport in NYC sometime around April 15th. Our tickets are standby compliments to Dan Gus a Delta Pilot, so because of the Easter Holiday we might have trouble finding vacant seats before Easter. So, we’ll just have to chill in NYC for a few days.

God Provides

Amazing things continue to happen in preparation for our travel to Rome.  Who said there’s an economic downturn? We’ve had heavy equipment to sell and it looked like we’d have to leave without selling it, but, once again God provides.  About a week ago I got a call from a guy in Arkansas interested in buying my tractor and all the implements. Upon further discussion he decided to buy one of my dump trucks too. He flew down and drove it all back to Arkansas on Saturday Mar 28. What a blessing! Then a friend of ours, Paul Hinton the music minister at Crestview FUMC brought a friend by our house for lunch and his friend bought my dumpster business. So, in just a few days we were able to sell almost all of the equipment. There is just one tandem axle dump truck left and I’ll sell it cheap to the first bidder.

The house and mobile home we have for rent have rented as well. At least the house has a signed lease and the new tenant takes occupancy on April 1. Oh, and our good friend Stephanie Harms and her fiance’ Richard have offered to be our property managers for the properties. We know that will be in excellent hands.

Apartamento Per Favore

We came really close to securing a beautiful apartment in Rome. Another missionary couple is leaving and tried to set us up with their landlord, but he rented it to someone else. So, we’re back to square one of trying to find a place to live in Rome. If nothing happens before we get there we’ll just have to pound the pavement looking for an apartment. We’re confident God will provide. Please keep this in your prayers.

Prayer Requests
-We stay in God’s will
-Safe journey to NYC then Rome
-Soften the Italian’s hearts ready to hear the gospel.
-An apartment in Rome.
-Safe journey back to Florida for our son Chris
-A place for Chris to call home

We have uploaded our message from Sunday, February 22, 2009 at First United Methodist Church of Niceville, Florida!  Simply CLICK HERE or on the “audio” link at the very top navigation bar to listen!

Christmas in Florida is wonderful especially when the kids are home with us. We just spent a wonderful week of enjoying family and friends for the Holiday. David and Kaitlyn came in from North Carolina and Christopher is home from his fund raising tour of the Southeast for the “Invisible Children” of Uganda.  We spent Christmas eve with Jeff and Susan Simmers our good friends and the in-laws of our daughter.  We slept over their house and had a big Christmas morning in our pajamas with the kids. Then more friends and family came over for dinner and we had a wonderful day of fellowship. The food was good too!  Praise the Lord who blesses us all so abundantly!

Yes, we’re back from training in North Carolina and we’re in a holding pattern waiting for the various bits and pieces of paperwork to come together so that we can get our visas. If all moves along swiftly we could be in Italy as soon as March this year.

In order to get our Italian visas we must be sponsored by a church in Italy. Our team leader in Italy is working with a Baptist Church in Rome who will sponsor us. In return we will provide assistance in their youth program for 4-5 hours per week while we are in language school. At this point we are waiting for the letter of support from this church so that we can apply for our visas with the Italian consulate in Miami.

If all goes well it should take 2 1/2 to 3 months for the visa process to reach fruition. We also need to find 20 or so more folks to help us with financial support. Please pray to see if God is calling you to join us in our mission to reach those who haven’t heard the gospel in Italy.

Traveling Light. We have stuff to sell!!!!!

We feel called to sell our possessions, give to the poor and follow Jesus, just like Jesus suggested of the rich young ruler. 

We’ve already begun the selling process and we’ve had great success using “Craigslist.com”. People are very willing to buy our stuff. We’ll continue to list items on craigslist but, we would love to have our friends benefit if they have a need.  A portion of the proceeds is being donated to the various charitable ministries that our church is encouraging us to support.

In order to lighten our load we are selling most of our possessions prior to leaving for the mission field. If you’re interested or know anyone who can use any of the following items please give us a call.

-A leather couch with two reclining seats
-film cameras
-computer printers
-wireless telephones
-large cherry computer cabinets
-televisions, end tables, mattresses
-book cabinet
-airless paint sprayer (commercial quality)
-push lawn mower
-hand tools
-Kubota M4900 (50HP) 4wheel drive tractor with frontend loader plus 16′ flatbed trailer, root rake with hydraulic grapple, 6′ bush hog, backhoe attachment, box blade
-1989 Ford F700 dump truck with 16′ dump bed
-1993 Ford L8000 twin axle dump truck with 14′ dump bed
-U-dump trailer with 4 12 cu yd roll off dumpsters
and more

Please call us for more details at  850-685-0877 

Prayer RequestsThat:
-We would be open to the leading of the Holy Spirit in all that we do and say.
-The people of Italy would be made ready to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ
-20-25 of God’s people will come forward to financially support us in this ministry to reach the people of Italy and Europe.
-Our visas will be granted quickly
-We may touch the hearts of many people for Jesus here in Florida and Alabama before we leave for Italy.

Just wanted to share the great news that after many delays over the past two months, we’ve finally closed the sale on our house in Niceville. It was a friendly and holy moment as one of our closest Christian brothers, Skip Weyrauch, was the buyer and another close Christian friend, Steve Hall presided over the closing as the attorney and another brother in Christ, John Recher our realtor, enjoyed the moment at closing. We celebrated with dinner afterwards. One more step closer to Italy

Good-bye Old Friend

I write this with a tear in my eye. While Mary and I were at training in North Carolina, not thinking about anything but the mounds of work they piled on us, I received a call from a nice lady in New Jersey who saw our ad on the internet for my old buddy, Sandman (the horse). She was interested in buying him. To make a long story short, sight unseen, working via emails and phone calls, Sandy in New Jersey, bought Sandy from Florida. I was able to arrange a shipper to pick him up and drop him off. All this was handled from the backwoods of North Carolina. God is amazing on so many levels. This minor miracle is convincing enough for me, then couple it with all the many other provisions He has made for us on our journey. God is good, all the time.

  The training experience has been a great one, and 12 weeks later we’ve made it back home to Florida a little bit wiser and more excited to head to the mission field. Our trip home was enjoyable, with visits to our daughter and son-in-law in Charlotte, NC, a quick stop to visit my uncle Joe and aunt Barbara Sirico 91 and 88 and going strong, in Greer, SC, then an overnight with the Guss’ who moved from Niceville, FL to the beautiful mountains of Hiawassee, GA. Then  another quick stop in the Atlanta area to visit Matt and Andrew Ausley and Jeff and Laura French and their beautiful new baby, Rachel. Finally, on Monday night, Nov. 24 we made it home to our little cottage in Baker, FL.  It’s taking a little work to get settled in.  This week, after Thanksgiving we can be found milling around the Niceville and Destin areas visiting with our old friends and attending our wonderful church. We hope to be leaving for Italy sometime in February, but, first we must get our visas and finish building our supporting team. Please give us a call,                850-685-0877         Joe and                850-685-0878         Mary. We hope to see you all soon.

Graduating from CIT

 It took 11 weeks, but we finally made it through our training. They worked us hard. We read several books, wrote a 45 page paper and got hands on experience interacting with strangers as if we were in our mission field. In all, the experience was highly enlightening and made us more aware of what we will encounter in our mission field of Italy.  The topics studied included “culture shock”, “understanding culture”, “building effective teams”, “language acquisition”, “spiritual warfare“, “church planting” just to name a few. If I had to say one thing that stood out through all of this training it is the fact that we as Christians are on the mission field every minute of every day whether we are home or abroad.

New Friends

The Center for Interculture Training (CIT) was a great experience for us. We learned so much and made some wonderful relationships that we hope will last for life. The other students were from all across the U.S. (California, Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Jersey, Florida, North Carolina, Washington State, Texas and more) and are heading to all points across the world (Africa, the Arab nations, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Central and South America). Everyone’s situation was so diverse. There were families with one kid to 6 kids, single people, married couples without kids and others who had a baby on the way. It seems it doesn’t matter what a person’s situation when God calls, the obedient follow. We plan on keeping in touch with all of these folks as we head out to the field. We’ve already begun to network, sharing photos and stories and prayers across the miles thanks to the internet. It has been a blessing to become friends with so many folks with a heart for Jesus. That list includes you too, if you’re reading this.  Thank God for all the blessings He sends us.

Prayer Requests
-that the people of Italy will be softened to receive the word of God.
-that Mary and I will let ourselves be led by the Holy Spirit in all of our work.
-that our visa process will go smoothly.
-that the Lord will awaken hearts to pray and give financially to the building of His kingdom in Europe.
-that we can sell, give away, dispose of all the “stuff” we have accumulated over our many years.

Saying Good-bye (Farewell Party)

Getting Moved Out of Our House

It has been a whirlwind getting ready to head to our cross cultural training in North Carolina. After all the house renovations, garage sale and accepting a purchase offer for our house we decided we should move out before we left for training. We had a whopping 4 days to get that job done. Thanks again to the help from our many wonderful Christian friends the job went so well. We loaded up a huge U-haul truck and three pickup trucks on Friday and moved it all up to our little house in Baker, FL on Saturday. Our helpers were so eager-beaver that they even set up our house in Baker ready to start living in when we get back from training in November. Thank you to all who gave their time and backs to help get us another step closer to serving God in Italy.

Center for Intercultural Training
Union Mills, North Carolina

So many of you have asked us what this training is all about. Well, now that we’re here we can answer a little more intelligently. It seems that it makes no sense for us to head overseas to present ourselves as the “Ugly Americans”. That is, people who think that their way of life is superior to all others. In the short time we’ve been here and the two books we’ve read and the class time we’ve had we have come to realize that not everyone thinks or acts like us Americans. And, when we get into the field we need, as the saying says to, “do as the Romans do”. For us that is very literal.

So, the first 4 weeks of our training is called “equipping” which reinforces why we are headed overseas (to introduce our foriegn brothers and sisters to the gospel). And, to do it in a way that will make them receptive to what we have to offer. So, “old dogs” like me have to learn how to be slow to speak, quick to listen and gentle in what I do and say. Please pray for us, that we will be convicted of our short comings in these areas and give it up to the Holy Spirit to guide us.

Missionaries- Giving their lives to Jesus
The Wilson Family headed to Equador

One of the greatest blessings of this training for us is that we get to hang out with missionaries. We have been finding them to be wonderful people and they have such a heart for Jesus. How can you go wrong when you are making friends with such fine folks.

What is truly amazing is how willing these people are to head to far away lands to spread the gospel. Most of them are young couples with young children. Several have one or two kids, a couple of them have 6 and 8 kids. Seven of them are single folks. Can you imagine the logistics of relocating your whole family of as many as 10 with little ones as young as 1 month old to the likes of Yemen, Guatemala, Ecuador, Sierra Leone, Kazakstan, Uganda, Ukraine, North Africa, China, Germany, Belgium, Japan, Thailand and Italy? That’s what this group is up to.

My heart goes out to these wonderful people with hearts for God and His people. They could have a million excuses why they shouldn’t go and yet they are leaving everything behind and moving where they feel God’s call for them. Please keep missionaries in your prayers every day.

Our House May Be Sold

Prayer is a powerful thing. Many of our friends have been praying for our house to be sold. In this slow real estate market it takes an act of God to get a house to sell. Well, God is faithful. Once again we are confirmed that God wants us to keep moving toward Italy.

After only about 45 days on the market a close friend and supporter, Skip Weyrauch, called and said that he felt called by God to buy our house. After a brief tour of the house and the property he felt convinced it would be the right thing to do.

Mary and I feel so good about our house going to Skip. We and many of you have spent so much time and energy remodeling this great homestead. Everything is near perfect for someone to enjoy. And we know that Skip will use it to bring glory to God. And Skip is just a great guy with a big heart and we are so pleased that he might get as much joy from our home as we have over the past 10 years.

Please pray blessings on this home for Skip and pray for a smooth closing. That God’s will be done.

One of Our Horses has Sold

One piece at a time, that’s how this adventure is coming together. We have so many pieces to have happen that we sometimes think it’s not possible, but, God always provides the HOW. We’ve been finding out that it just takes a little patience and a lot of faith on our part. Before we can leave for Italy we have to get rid of most of our “stuff”. And part of that “stuff” are horses. Well, the one horse I’ve been trying to sell for two years has finally sold. And the wonderful part of it, she’ll become partners with a young girl who will grow and learn with her on a 120 acre farm.

Desdemona, a 12 year old mare that Kaitlyn (our daughter) and I bought in Ocala as a father/daughter project has finally moved on to greener pastures.

Now we have two more horses to go. Please pray that we see God’s plan for them as well.

Off to Training

Mary and I will be leaving for cross cultural training on Sept 6. Our first stop will be at the Resurgent Church in Newnan Georgia. Jeff French, past associate pastor at FUMC Niceville is the Pastor of this young and growing church plant. Jeff has asked us to meet with his congregation and explain how God has called us into the mission field. Then we’ll have a brief visit with our daughter and son-in-law (Kaitlyn and David) and then on to CIT (Center for Intercultural Training) in Union Mills, NC.

Our home and remaining horses will be in capable hands while we’re gone. We have a friend house sitting for us.

Please pray for Mary and me to hear God speaking to us and for our minds and hearts to be open to absorb the knowledge He wants to share with us.

Email Joe  |  Email Mary

Much has happened in a short time:
In the past 2 months God has been moving us rapidly toward Italy. Amazing progress has taken place. God has called many to join us in winning Italy for Jesus. We have been overwhelmed by the support of our church family.

Garage sale and home fix up: Mary and I would like to say, “THANK YOU” to all who have been such a great help in getting us ever closer to Italy.Thanks to the crew who helped make our garage sale a great success, especially Sharon Embry and Maria Hernandez. And thank you to all who helped us get our home ready for sale. So many came and cleaned, organized, painted, remodeled and landscaped.

We have left our careers: In a pure act of obedience we have left our jobs and committed to move forward in faith towards the mission God has for us in Italy. On July 31, 2008 both of us resigned our jobs, Mary as middle school youth minister and Joe as a financial advisor with Northwestern Mutual.

FUMC Niceville throws a farewell celebration for Mary: On July 20th FUMC Niceville put on a major production to celebrate the years of faithful service Mary gave to the youth of Niceville, FL. So many grateful friends came out to show their love and appreciation to Mary. The church asked folks to contribute to our mission fund and over $20,000 was raised. Praise God and all those who love Him.

Team building: Mary got the ball rolling and praise the Lord for His presence in so many hearts. To date we have received commitments for over 75% of our monthly financial need and more than half of ouroutgoing expenses.

Our schedule: Greater Europe Mission (GEM) requires that we spend about 10 weeks in training here in the States before we head to Italy. From September 10 through Novermber 19, 2008 we will be at the Center for Intercultural Training (CIT). Our courses will include cultural understanding, ministry and work related issues, team issues, language acquisition training and personal struggle awareness. We’ll be in Niceville for the holidays the we’ll go to Rome in the beginning of 2009.

Grove Hill UMC: On our first team building trip away from our home church we headed to Grove Hill UMC in Grove Hill, AL. The pastor is Rev. Dave Rhodes, our long time friend and prior associate pastor of FUMC Niceville. While Dave was on a youth mission trip he asked us to leadworship and attend Sunday schools to tell of how God has spoken to us. It was a wonderful time of fellowship with other believers. We made new friends and they made us feelat home in Grove Hill.Folks joined our team.God is amazing! We look forward to more excursions like this one.

Please pray for:
-us to stay in God’s will as we answer His call.
-many more people to join in God’s call to minister in Italy
-the hearts of Italians to turn to God
-God’s will in the sale of our home
-provision for the care of our animals

Email Joe  |  Email Mary

Hello friends,

Just wanted to give you a brief update of our progress toward Italy. Many of you may know the time line, but, for those who aren’t sure, we hope to be going to Italy some time in early 2009.

God’s amazing plan is unfolding right before our eyes. Until about 3 months ago Mary and I weren’t sure exactly where we would be in Italy. Then I received an e-mail from Peppo Biscarini, a missionary in Rome. He wanted to meet us while he was here in the States. So we met him in Atlanta and after much prayer and getting to know each it became obvious that God had given us the exact same vision and we should work together in Rome. So, Peppo and his wife Jane and Mary and myself and eventually, another young couple Anne and Andy Muller will be starting small groups using the Alpha course as well as starting up a youth soccer program using the Upward Soccer program that has been so effective in many other churches. Peppo also has a commitment from a Christian professional soccer player in Milan to help promote the soccer program for the kids.

Between now and then we have much to do.

First and foremost is to sell our house. Please keep that in your prayers. We’re confident God has that piece taken care of so give thanks for that.

Secondly, Mary and I are leaving our respective work positions. I am leaving my position as a financial adviser and Mary is stepping down from her middle school youth minister position. This is a huge leap of faith for both us as we are relying on God to provide until the third item (See below).

Thirdly, we need to raise our support (financial and prayer). That requires that we find fellow believers who wish to participate in the work God has called us to in Italy. Many people we talk with don’t realize that we will be relying on our supporters to provide the money that we’ll need to live and work our ministry in Italy. Already many people have come forward enthusiastically and offered support and we are so blessed. But, we still need more supporters to help us with all of our monthly and our outgoing costs.

Fourth, we have to attend an eight week cross cultural training program. We must have commitments for our full support need before our mission agency (Greater Europe Mission) will allow us to go to training.

Finally and most importantly, we need prayer cover over the work God has called us to. Pray to keep us and our missionary associates in God’s will and that the Italian people would be ready to feel the love of Jesus Christ. Again, we’re sure this is God’s will so pray thankfulness that He can change people’s hearts.

Thank you for your caring and support. We love you all.  In His grip,

Joe and Mary Sirico

And then we met Peppo Biscarini in March of 2008.  We thought we were just meeting a nice guy who might help us find our way around Italy. Well God had another plan.  Instead we met  a godly man who loves Jesus and shares our vision to plant churches using Alpha, Upward Soccer and youth activies like we do at FUMC.  We believe we will start in Rome but are praying for the whole country of Italy.  Only God could weave visions so tightly from across the ocean.  And if this wasn’t enough he and Joe share a business background and  a knowledge of the financial world.  We can’t wait to meet Jane.  She and I share similar interests including cooking and exercising.

Peppo and Jane have a home church and have asked for our help with this and the other pieces.  We hope to join them in the beginning of 2009.  We have to secure 80% of our funding by Aug. 1st to go to training in Sept and Oct.  ( This will be in North Carolina.)  This is no small task but, God has shown Himself faithful in providing miraculous provision to achieve His desire to reach to the people of Italy. I have been meeting with people to pray and arrange our support. (Joe has to wait until he leaves his current job to join me support raising.  That’s a whole ‘nother story)  God continues to amaze and surprise me as he reveals himself.  God is definetly growing both Joe and me through this whole process!!

Please pray for people to join us in prayer, in finances and maybe even on the soil of Italy.