The long summer break is coming to an end here – although once everybody else has returned and everything gets back to normal, I will be going away for holidays with my parents for a couple of weeks. On my return I will enter into one of my main travelling periods, which will make up for the last three months in which I have mostly stayed at Trento. The details are below.
Even though I have not had my regular commitments in the last couple of months, I have kept busy with other projects. At the end of the week there will be the release of a major new version of my computer program to study the Bible – I have been able to do more programming in this period than in the rest of the year put together. I have given my personal site (http://richardwilson.interfree.it/) and my Bible site (http://www.laparola.net/) a facelift. I have also created an Italian site for ECM, although before going on-line I am waiting for the other ECM missionaries to return in order to get their comments. I have enjoyed studying 1Thessalonians in more depth than I usually read the Bible; I will not finish the book before the end of the summer, but I will not mind at all continuing that during the autumn. I have also been able to do a lot more reading than I usually do – fiction, Christian and other non fiction books. There have also been a few visitors passing through, and more opportunities to spend time with friends. Despite the fact that officially we were having a summer break, a few times people in the church met informally to read the Bible together, so there were a few studies to prepare as well.
I think that, although busy, not having deadlines like studies to regularly prepare made me more relaxed, and able more to enjoying my relationship with God than when I am constantly have to think about what I will do tomorrow. Reading a biography of George Müller was helpful too in encouraging me to constantly pray in total dependence on God. I pray that I will be able to keep up this communion, now that holidays and activities come back into my schedule.
At the university
Keep praying that there will be students interested in reading the Bible this year. I should start looking and doing some advertising towards the end of September, but with other commitments and trips away in that period I suspect that I will not be doing much until October. The only person that I know of at the moment is James, who should arrive in March. On the other hand, there is an English student arriving at Verona next month to study for a year (and who was on the summer mission at Perugia last year). Since he is the third contact at Verona in the past year, we will be trying to get them together to form a GBU group there. So I might be making a few trips to Verona this year to help them (it is about 100 kilometres from here).
Upcoming events
Sept 1-15: On holidays with my parents
Sept 27-29: ECM-Italy committee meetings
Sept 30-Oct 2: Conference at Rimini on "The use of media in churchplanting" organised by ECM (which means I have some work to do to help prepare for it), which will bring together various media providers and church planting ministries in Italy
Oct 2-4: GBU Staff meeting at Florence
Oct 11-13 and 18-20: GBU student training weekends for south and then for central/north Italy; I will be going to the second
Oct 22: Prayer meeting for north Italy at Venice