Hello and greetings from Italy!

I’m still catching my breath, and I’m so sorry to all of you who’ve been trying to keep up with my mission that you so graciously helped make possible. Also, I hope you like the photo I used for this one! It is a picture of all the guys on my team when we were invited to be on live TV! That was a crazy day, but anyways--- life:

Let me give you a quick update on the remaining couple of weeks in Albania.

First of all, the camp went amazing. Albania is a tough country, especially where we were. Some of the teens talked about gangs and what they call the “mafia.” The religion is primarily Muslim, and other than us in the church, I hadn’t met another Christian the whole two months we had been there. So getting our message into the area itself was a huge challenge, but with time, we were able to witness the smallest amount of fruit from our labor.

The church camp we held on our final weekend went amazing. We went out into the town and handed out flyers to all the kids coming out of school. We wanted as many people as possible to make it. Our goal was to get ten kids into the camp for the weekend. The previous year, our host told us they had managed to get only one kid to show up for the camp, so ten honestly felt like a pretty hefty goal. Regardless, we handed out those flyers and invited everyone.

The first day of camp was incredible. We had hoped and prayed for ten kids to show up to camp and, to our surprise, we had a whole forty-something kids show up. I can remember the excitement of my team as our faces were beaming, just thanking God for putting it on these kids’ hearts to show up.

During the camp, I gave a couple messages for the kids---super short sermons, and it was my job to talk about Jesus’ love and sin. I did my best to explain those concepts to these kids who understood the ideas but, for many of them, had never heard what Jesus had actually done for them. After the messages, we played a bunch of games with the kids. Our goal was to introduce these topics so they would become curious. Because of the culture, we couldn’t just rain Bible stories on them; we knew that wouldn’t be effective and might even prevent kids from considering Christianity in the future. So we kept it light, with the goal to make memories that last so they would always remember those “crazy Christians from America.”

I think we crushed that goal. These kids grew close with us from day one. I had a line of kids afterward trying to take pictures with me for the memories which was awesome, not because I was “famous,” but because I could see the impact we made in so many lives through just one afternoon.

The next day, my team was lit up with excitement to do it again. We got everything set up, and when we opened the doors, the kids started piling in. We were so happy to see them, but something was different the second day. We saw the whole room fill up with kids. All the seats were full and they kept coming in through the door. We were all a little bit in shock, but our hearts were jumping with joy and excitement. Day two we had over sixty kids piled into a tiny room and did it all over again.

Later on, we had a couple days before we were all leaving for Italy, and we were able to meet some of the kids from camp just walking in town. They saw us and ran to greet us and just wanted to hang out. One of them brought a framed picture of us, which honestly made my heart melt. It made my goodbye to Albania so much more painful. To this day, some of those kids are continuing to go to the church now, which is such a blessing and an answer to our prayers.

Now Italy, oh Italy.

Immediately after getting off the flight to Italy, and then a nice long bus ride, we met our hosts. In Albania we were all living together, but here we had been split into different homes and would meet at the church every day after ministry.

For two weeks our schedule looked like this: we were broken into ministry groups, assigned to different schools and different classes. We were up and at it to be at several schools around the town we were staying in. We would go to school and tell the kids in each class about what we believe, with our central message being Jesus’ love. Don’t get me wrong, we debated a lot, we answered a lot of questions too, and we asked the students questions. It was so beautiful. We met atheists, many who believe in “fate,” Catholics, and people who were genuinely interested in what we had to say.

We came to realize the vast differences of belief we held with the majority of Italy. The key theme was that many people are born into religion; nearly all of the people we met didn’t believe or understand the concept of a personal relationship with Jesus, and that’s where a lot of our conversations focused.

This wasn’t easy. We went into schools every weekday for the entire school day and told these kids our testimonies and answered questions. A lot of people on my team found this truly beautiful and pivotal in their faith because, like many, we not only had to answer questions about why we believe what we believe, but it made us ask these questions for ourselves which led to deeper faith in nearly my whole team.

We talked to so many kids, and many of them came to us asking for prayer or crying and telling us they wanted the joy that they see in us. We were able to shape so many perspectives about what following Jesus actually looks like and point so many people to truth.

At the end of our two weeks, we did a couple big events in different cities (the main cities with the schools we were going to). Having no idea what to expect, the events went well. To my surprise, so many more people showed up than I thought would, all curious to learn more about what we believed. We led some worship songs, and our leader told her testimony. After that, we broke into small groups where we got to ask meaningful questions about faith, which led to some truly beautiful conversations.

We were all heartbroken for our couple weeks in Italy to be over, but our mission had been completed. Watching kids come to their own faith has been one of the most beautiful and inspiring things I have seen yet. But as everything comes to an end, so did the first semester.

We had one week glamping in Sorrento doing debrief over the last three months and just going over what we learned and where we saw God moving. After that, most of our crew left for the holidays and will be back for next semester. However, some of our people won’t be returning, which was honestly heartbreaking for many of us.

Now, the thirteen of us (or something like that) who stayed for the winter are looking forward to this next season. Now that there aren’t thirty of us, we are spending intentional time with each other, doing devotionals and team time every day, deepening our relationships with each other and with God.

A little something for you: The all-too-familiar goodbye

When you know time is coming to a close and you look back, reminiscing on the past. The memories aren’t distant but play like vivid scenes in your mind, moments that led you to where you are now.

You remember the lessons you’ve learned and the things that have been said.

You remember the intimate moments you have shared with others.

And the mistakes you have made along the way.

You feel the joy that was beaming from you after a special moment,

and the sorrow and pain from the moments you wish you could take back.

Looking back now, you can truly ask yourself: did you do your best?

Did you live up to the version of yourself you swore you would be?

Did you love others as you have been called?

Without these moments of paradox—living in the present and simultaneously in the past—who would we truly be?

These moments aren’t always fun. They often bring a bittersweet feeling.

Sometimes we look back at our season of life to learn and grow, while other times we try to bury it.

In these moments we look to the future to reconcile the past, making more goals and more promises to be broken.

We swear we will change, do our best, or move on, but just like the moments that came before, we leave it in the past.

Your introspection becomes inspiration, lost in a sea of waves.

Your reflection becomes a whisper in a world that screams in all directions.

Your plans to change become a habit to be upheld or forgotten.

But when we bury these moments when we bury our past, our memories, we do our dang best to make sure they stay six feet under.

But like everything, the wave that finds its way back to shore, or the whisper that reflects off the walls, the dead will come to life at some point.

We often look back to remember the pain.

This leads us to shut ourselves off to the future. It causes us to live in fear of the unknown or the predictable. It causes us to build walls that only God can tear down.

But in that fear, in that burrowing and hiding, you lose your light. You lose your joy. Instead of living to enjoy the moments you have, you begin living in a world of prediction and outcomes. You search for the inevitable pain to be felt. You live in the future rather than the present.

So, rather than spending these last few moments trying to bury our past mistakes and the people we have lost, let us spend this time remembering the moments,

remember the joy we had for a time, and the smiles we shared.

For we all die someday and will have to look back eventually. The only question will be: did you live your life and use the gifts you have been given, or did you hide them from the world out of fear?

Prayer & Next Steps

• Strength, unity, and rest for our smaller winter team

• Continued growth for the students who started attending church in Albania and in Italy

• Wisdom for what’s next this winter

Funding update: I’m currently at 61% of my support. If you’d like to help me keep going, I’d really appreciate any further donations, please click the donate button on the site. Thank you!