Full February

Howdy y'all! As always, the work here has been busy, emotional, and rewarding. I wrote down all the things I need to write about and there is a list of about 14 things! In order to not bore you with one really long post I'll break it up into several smaller posts. Here it goes...

To start off, pretty much right after the newbies, Peter and Melissa, arrived, we had a Cooking School on Friday and a Ping Pong Tournament on Saturday.

Cooking School, one of our usual Friday night events, was the night before the Ping Pong tournament and as always we had a great turn out. We served: Potato Soup, Cheddar Garlic Biscuits, and lemon cheese cake bars...delicious.

The guys chopping away.

Homemade rolls in the works...6 batches...yikes

The Ping Pong Tournament was for our students and members of the church and really anyone else who wanted to come. Besides having a great time, we got 3 new students. Sad to say, I did not win but I did make it past the first round. A man from the church in Prato won, Luciano,  and I'm sure he will be back March 24 to defend his spot at the top. It was such a big hit, everyone wanted to do it again so this time we will have it at the church building and use 2 tables (if we can get another one there).  We had a chili supper and I got to make the chili. Since we didn't know how many people were coming, I made enough for about 30ish people...lots of chili.(Don't be too disappointed, but yes, there were beans in the chili.) We did end up having a little bit left over but we like leftovers.

Pre-game warm ups

The next Saturday was "Women's Day" for the women of the churches in Tuscany. It was Florence's turn to host the event so we hosted it at the Bible School. The topic for the day was "Fratellanza" or Community and we all watched a video done by Francis Chan under this title. The 15 or so women that came seemed to enjoy the day and the conversation. Before we got started on the discussion, we had prepared an American breakfast: biscuits and gravy, breakfast casserole, muffins, yogurt, juice, hard boiled eggs, fruit and coffee. All of the women that came were told in the invitation bring the name of a lady who needed encouragement so, after the discussion, we wrote letters of encouragement to all of these ladies and signed and mailed these letters.


One of our "old" students, Clizia, who is not old but is going to college now so she doesn't have time to study English with us on a regular basis, was at the cooking school and she invited us all to her new apartment for lunch one day. It's awesome and I know she really enjoys having the place to herself. Her apartment is actually her dad's art studio but he is graciously allowing her to use it as an apartment while she goes to school. One Saturday in February, we went there for lunch and had crostini(bread/toast with stuff on it), spaghetti, and rotisserie chicken. Clizia and her family are a very special part of the Bible School and I know it wouldn't be the same without them. I am currently studying with her mother, Monica, and while my parents were here, they invited us over to there house for dinner, which is a real honor.

piano time

some of the girls...clizia is the one on the right

Leg wrestling demonstration...I'm pretty sure laura won

After I got over losing, we all stood around talking and appreciating the art in Clizia's apartment. I'm really glad she invited us over and that we got to share the afternoon with her, her mom and sister.

More to come soon:)