Una fine settimana per i giovani(A weekend for the youth)

In September last year, the weekend after I arrived, we had a youth weekend here at the Bible School and 5 Italians were here and had a great time and so we thought we should do it again. SO, April 20-22 we had another one!

Friday night was the last Game Night of the semester for our students and the first night of our youth weekend so we did both of them together. Since it was the last one, we decided to do Real Live Clue! It was so fun(and I think the students enjoyed it as well.) The Bible School was the board and some of the Avanti workers dressed up as the characters.

It was Colonel Mustard in the Library with the Candle Stick...
somthing like that...for sure Colonel Mustard

Erme was Miss Scarlett, Andrea was Mrs. Peacock, Laura was Mrs. White, Peter was Mr. Green, Ryan was Professor Plum, David was Colonel Mustard and I was "The Nanny". I was the mediator/host so I didn't have a character from the game. Eric graciously played Mr. Body at the beginning but still got to play the game. Great fun!

After the Game night part was over, one of the Italians gave a devo thought, Joele. He did a great job and we were all so proud of him(it was his first time).

Saturday we had American Breakfast, pancakes! and then we headed off for a town in the hills called Vallombrosa about an hour away. We translated "There's a stirring" into Italian and played volleyball for a good while. It's so gorgeous up there! Saturday night was a cookout, a devo, singing, and a game.

Sunday morning we all went to church in Florence and it was an amazing Sunday. Not only were the youth from Italy there for the youth weekend but there was also the new Harding students and we had invited our English students to come so it was packed!! It was so encouraging to see everyone there. As a preface to this next part, last year at camp several people translated the song "He is faithful" and the youth really like it so...Sunday morning as one of our songs to sing for the church we sang "Lui é fedele"(He is faithful) and right as we started singing that song, our cook, Rosa, walked in with her husband. It seriously brought me to tears the combination of the words to the song and her walking in at that moment. There have been so many people praying for her and her family for the 25ish years she's worked for Avanti and I just know prayer works. Anyway, there were lots of other people there as well that we have been praying for and I got to see God working especially that day. Jim Woodroof brought the lesson to us and I heard he did a great job! I was upstairs helping with the kids class.

After church we went to lunch and everybody headed back to there own towns. But...there was a strike for the trains so everyone that was from Rome stayed an extra night and went with us to the Harding Devo at the Villa and it was such a blessing to spend that extra time with them.

Here is a video that Laura put together of the weekend. Enjoy. Thank you for reading and more to come soon. In this case, it will be a feast or famine kind of thing...you've experienced the famine of no news and now you will get to feast on everything that has been going on. Sorry for the delay.