Day 2 5/22/10 “I thought it was a demon.”

Day 2 5/22/10 “I thought it was a demon.”

God works in mysterious ways. I’ve known my team almost 24 hours at this point and they are not only family but some of them probably know me as well as some of my good friends. I’m so blessed that God has placed me on a team with such amazing people that bring so much to the table.

Morning Brief:

Much to my dismay, we woke up at 8:30 for breakfast. I kept reiterating that there was a typo on the schedule, but no, 8:30. So we ate then returned to the conference room for a morning brief. We brought all our checks from all of our support. (Thank you again So much!) We also had the privilege of speaking to the Milan Director John Vampatella. [I learned this yesterday, but just like Purdue is kind of taking Berlin as their main area for ministry after big break and such, the Northwest region’s main goal is Milan. So the Staff members are from Boston and Connecticut.] John was in the first group to visit Milan. They went for a week and knew there was a need for ministry there. John told us about the city and what to expect. The city of Milan has 2 million people. Milan is known as the ‘New York City’ of Italy, as well as being the fashion capital of the world. The people are predominantly catholic but have little known knowledge for the Christian faith and no understanding of a personal relationship outside of church. He also told us, the ultimate goal of this team is to do what CCC has done in Florence and other large cities, which is create a permanent team and ministry to bring people to Christ. John has steps along the way, but basically our goal is to find around 4 people who will take a year in Italy investing in launching a ministry in Milan; a ‘stint’ team. But our summer goals are to Grow in the Lord and explore campuses in Milan and challenging Milanese people to look at God without looking through the lenses of the church and possibly even raise people from this group to spend a y ear in Milan for the short term ministry.

John spoke of our project and how some people may call it a “fool’s errand”. Most mission trips focus on the physical needs and serve in third world countries, but this project is focused on spiritual need. The dire need for spirituality everywhere is often times forgotten. John went to organize more checks and such and we had a morning bible study. We studied A little in Luke. Luke 11:1-4; discussing the desire to keep God’s name holy and for us to recognize who He is, He is God. We often forget how amazing God is, and to keep him Holy. Kari made an interesting comment how we maybe spend a total of 48 hours dedicated to walking in his word. God created us- loves us -and offers us the eternal gift- and she’s right, we don’t give much time to him if any!

After the bible study (which was much longer, all of this is the condensed version) we walked to lunch. Here’s where things get interesting. The retreat center we are staying at is very, interesting. It’s the Evangelical Christian center in Ashford. It’s incredibly nice, it’s so beautiful and the housing is fantastic, but it’s not only a retreat center, but what the sign says “Home for the Aged”. Plenty of elderly are walking around everywhere, and some don’t have it all together. (NOT JUDGING) So we all walked to lunch and Ryan and Ross came in 2 minutes later. They were dying laughing. Ryan later told us they were walking and a little kid jumped out at them and tried to scare them. Ross’s first reaction was “Ahh I thought it was a demon.” Which Ryan thought was hilarious and so did we, because who thinks that? It was incredibly random. But as soon as that happened and old lady with a walker was in front of them and looked at them, Ross said hey how are you? The old woman cocked her head to the side and starting speaking in a foreign language they couldn’t understand. Very confused they quickened their pace and walked into the dining area. You might have had to be there, but the random events that happened within 2 minutes of them walking had us rolling on the ground.

Session 2 Myers-Briggs Personality Test

Cenia was in charge of the second session where we were administered the Myers personality test. I was an ENTP, Extraversion, Intuition, Thinking, and Perceiving. My description I don’t know if I quite agree with it but most is accurate. Quick, ingenious, stimulating, alert and outspoken. Resourceful in solving new and challenging problems, adept at generating conceptual possibilities and then analyzing them strategically. Good at reading other people, bored by routine will seldom do the same thing the same way apt to turn to one new interest after another and easily distracted. We then got with people who had similar personality types so we could decide what we have to offer the team and the ministry. Then (my favorite part) Cenia gave a short, kind of joking prayer about each personality type.

Mine was, “Lord help me to say more task focused.. oh a bird!” I immediately started laughing and caused a scene as usual, and they asked what was so funny and everyone who knows me, Purdue’s campus has a lot of bunnies on it and every time I see one no matter if I’m mid conversation or whatever I will stop what I’m doing yell bunny! Then chase the bunny. Especially once I was driving with Robby we were rocking out hardcore head banging and everything totally into what we were doing and I saw a bunny out of the corner of my eye and just yelled BUNNY! Stopping what we were doing. It was quite funny. See I’m getting off topic.

Session 3 Soularium

Third session we discussed the way we would be talking to others about faith. We are using what is called the Soularium. Not a solarium, but a SOUL-arium (get it). Its 50 images used in a similar way as the ink-blot test is used in psychology. Check out mysoularium.com for more. So using the soularium we ask a person if they have time for a survey then proceeds to ask 3 questions. Pick 3 images that best reflect your life, then pick 3 images that reflect what you don’t have but hope to, future aspirations, and what 1 image describes what you think God is or is your idea of God. From there sparks great conversation and we use also what’s called back-story which can help answer most questions if we can’t. We got to ‘practice’ on each other one pretending to not believe e in God and the other acting as themselves. I was partnered with Whitney and we kept running across the same problems, how do you explain God to someone who may not understand? ----Some big guy that created the world, us and everything in it, he loves us and wants us to worship him, but we can’t talk to him because sin separates us from him so he sent his son to be sacrificed so we might be able to have eternal life. By Jesus dying he took all of our sins away, but though Jesus is the son of God he is actually God in human form…..---- Whitney and I kind of stopped and laughed. Explaining God is not simple and explaining Jesus is even more impossible especially for someone who has no prior knowledge. So Ryan came and helped us, but we have a lot of work to do. Then we had a language lesson. Then unfortunately Sarah and Cenia weren’t feeling well so they went to get some medicine. We sat and talked for a while then played manhunt, sardines and all sorts of games just to get some exercise we’d been sitting too much.

The three males in my group seem impressed that I know what the world cup is, that a touch downs worth 6 points, that Brett Favre is no longer on the packers and four recent quarterbacks from the broncos. (Cutler, Plummer, Orton---- now tebow.) Pat asked me if I was a tom-boy growing up. My brother got a kick out of that one.

So we ended the night with lots of great conversation and fellowship.