How Can It Be?

For some reason it is already Wednesday!

This week has been fun so far. I have been learning a lot and most of it has been about communicating with people on the team and how I need to be sensitive to others, as well as be willing to step aside from the situation and look at things from other people's perspective. Kinda tough lessons, but thankfully, there have been some good long talks with people about these things to work stuff out.

Monday was full of meetings and we learned more about what Avant is doing over here. I hope by the time I leave to have a good grasp on what they are doing so that I can clearly communicate it all to my friends and family back home.

Tuesday was our day off. I did not see Janae until about 1 or 2 in the morning after we had done our own things! :)

I slept in and then worked on my quilt (yes, I brought my quilt to Italy... just in case I had a chance to chill and work on it). I watched part of a movie, did some laundry and just chilled in the morning. Then around lunch time, I realized that with the little food we do have in our apartment, it was not going to be fun to cook for myself, and Dustin and I were planning on hanging out at some point anyways, so we just went to lunch. I had some french fries, first time since the airport in Chicago on our way to Italy that I had had fries. They weren't American french fries at all, but wow, they were amazing!

I hung out with Dustin all afternoon. Played some Wii, cleaned the coffee maker, went to the store to buy sugar for Jacob's Well, brushed up on the Italian with our pal Francesco, and caught up with the world on Facebook.

Then I got to tag along with Dustin, Andrew and Natalie to one of their weekly events with Italians who speak English. We had some refreshments and light snacks and good conversation. This time that we had is very typical for Italians, it happens everyday about 6 pm until whenever. They go out for drinks and light snacks and then go home for dinner. Very interesting! I met some amazing people.

So after that we were suppose to go watch a friend do some Tango, but we missed his dance, but Dustin and I sat in on some of the other acts... which was rather interesting! I could not believe I was sitting in an opera house in Italy watching ballet and other dancing I have no clue what it is!

Then we met up with Andrew and Natalie again as well as one of the ladies from the previous time with light snacks. We went to another restaurant and talked with her for a very long time. She had some insightful things for us to learn about the culture.

We all took a cab back and Janae had been watching the Debelak boys, so she joined me in the cab once we got to the Debelak's. After we caught up on each other's days, I did my journaling, and took care of all the other things to end the day, I fell into bed around 3:30 am!

Today we had a meeting with team leader Tim at 10:30. So we stumbled down to Jacob's Well and heard more about the team dynamics and about Tim's story of how he got to be a missionary!

For lunch we were at Tim and Amee's. She made the most amazing dish I've had yet in Italy. I don't know the name of it, but it has raw eggs and bacon in the sauce over pasta. AMAZING! So now I can say that I have had raw eggs and bacon and I do not feel sick and I am not worried about getting sick. It was incredibly delicious! :)

After lunch was the team meeting. That went well, just talked more about all we went over in our meetings on Monday with Tim, Andrew and Dustin. We also spent some time in prayer for each other. The big thing this week is that Andrew and Dustin are going to Prague tomorrow until Sunday. So life will be different without them here! I plan to hang out with our friend Gabriela some tomorrow, enjoy a birthday with Katja Kroeker tomorrow, and sometime this week talk more with Amee and Natalie about their stories and how they got to the mission field and what God has done in their lives.

Again I find myself not too excited to leave. I really love this place.

I received an email last week about my Moody school bill for the fall semester. Even though I have received a much needed scholarship, there is still a good amount that I need to pay for, but honestly do not know where the money will come from because I do not have a solid job lined up for when I return to Chicago after Italy. If you could just be praying for all of those details, I would appreciate it. I am not worried, but I wanted my prayer warriors to be aware of a need. Thank you all for being so faithful in bringing things before God. I thank Him every time I think of you!