It has already almost been two weeks since I first arrived here in Rome. I can't believe how quickly time has gone. I was here in March for ten days and loved it. When I got back to Charleston I kept praying and knew that God was saying come back. I was not and still am not completely sure why but here I am. Each day God is showing me more and more of why I am here. It is amazing to be able to take a step outside of what I normally do (right now if I was at home I would be getting ready to take 40 some teenagers to the Bahamas for a week long mission) and just spend time with God in a community aspect. I feel like I am watching Acts 2 where it speaks of the fellowship of believers take place.

This week has been fantastic. 24 hours of prayer was amazing. I think that everyone felt God and heard him speak - I know that I did. And even though it is a busy week and I am getting to the point of being tired physically in other ways I feel at peace and rested for the first time in a long time. I almost feel recharged in a sense.

I am excited about the rest of my time here. I came with a lot of questions and hopes about my time here. And I know that this is the right place to be to spend time with God taking them all to Him to show the way. In the past week I have already heard Him speak so clearly and am continuing to seek His face with this community.

And for the record the heat is just rising. It is amazing. I live in a pretty hot climate (Charleston, South Carolina) where I thought was the hottest place but I have never been in heat like this. 45 degrees Monday!

Well it has been a real busy time. The prayer time went fantastic check out Matthew Rutter's blog for more in depth stuff on it (in the people section on the right of the page). God moved there in power (and in the humidity).

The Hungarians got off safely and we will be praying lots for them - they are truly amazing people!

We were in the gypsy camp yesterday for a couple of hours and it was fantastic loads of fun with the children and adults. Big respect to the guys from Oxford Vineyard (with us at the moment) who jsut got stuck straight in, making balloon animals, playing etc. We had three guys praying for us back at home and it was the easiest time that we have had there in the camp yet, We are going back in to do a puppet show, mime and have lunch with them all tomorrow - hooray!

We are alsp preparing our herats for Friday where we go and feed and pray for the homeless in Rome in the day and then go and do mimes in Frascati on the evening. Please pray for the evening as the mime is quite confrontational (God stronger than the devil) and Frascati is the centre for the occult (Satanic worship etc) for the entire region. It was also the gestapo hq during the 2nd world war and was where Hitler had his "information retrieval" chambers. Still Jesus is loads bigger than all that as long as we do things in His strength!

Saturday the Oxford guys (pix to be put in an Oxford Vineyard pix section asap) will head back in the morning. I need to go to Sicily with Marco for some meetings at midday. Jon Senior heads back to the UK saturday evening. We get back on Monday late afternoon and late night two guys from Coventry turn up - hooray! Will be a bit busy. Please pray for Andrea as she sorts the house out with Jess and looks after Cinzia.

It is chill out day today and just about time to go to the beach and prepare for the next few days with some rest.

Pray for Sicily, for it's pastors, churches, people. Pray for reconcilliation and restoration in the churches. Pray that God would break in. Pray that He would reign supreme. Pray for revival. Pray for Jesus' love to be in plain site. 

Pray for us as we prepare to move to Sicily in just a few weeks. 

Pray for Allessandro & Lidia in their running of the church in Frascati for wisdom and for provision. 

Pray for Agnese (Cinzia and Luca's sister) that she would come to know the Lord again abd that some stuff from her past would not affect her. 

Pray for Luca & Debora as they spend more time with the church in Frascati and as they seek the Lord's face. 

Pray for John & Liz as they await the safe homecoming of their daughter and for a new phase in work for John. 

Pray for John & Liz as they await the safe homecoming of their daughter and for a new phase in work for John. 

Pray for Filipo and Adele for their health and for their church in Sicily (Cinzia's parents). 

Pray for Filipo and Adele for their health and for their church in Sicily (Cinzia's parents). 

Pray for Marco, Cinzi & Sofia as they prepare to go to Sicily with us. Pray for Cinzia's sickness (since she gave birth to Sofia 8 months ago).  

Pray for Brent & Hope as Brent leads a church in the centre of Rome 

Pray for Jack & Dianne as they lead a new church. Pray that they would seek the Lord's face in their ministry. 

Pray for Dan & Iara's ministry in church planting here in Rome. 

Pray for Dan & Iara's ministry in church planting here in Rome. 

Pray for Jansci & Melinda's (back 2) ministry in leadership in a church in Hungary and Christian (front) & Betti's ministry into the gypsy camp near them in Hungary. 

Please pray that Roberto & Nadile come to know Jesus and that God blsses them in a situation they have with a tenant. 

Please pray that Roberto & Nadile come to know Jesus and that God blsses them in a situation they have with a tenant. 

Below are some of the people and places that we prayed for for 24 hours. Please pray for them yourselves.

The prayer time was awesome - feel like God has moved things on in the things we were praying for even if there hasn't been time to see anything.

Will post more (prob 2morrow) as off to refugee camp in a bit and v tired. Marco and I need to fly to Sicily over the weekend for meetings - please start praying for us - this is an important time. Pray for Andrea and Cinzia here in Rome too.

Sunday almost coming to an end been to the church twice today. Some of the team helped with some sanding for the church in Frascati and some did some prayer walking. The team have prepared a mime to do in Frascati but during practice Paul (leader) did his toe in soo prayer really needed on this asap.

Starting the 24 hours of prayer tomorow at noon (11am UK time) please pray with us for Frascati, Sicily and the leaders. Will put specific prayers on here as we get them.

Please pray for Cinzia - sick again. Pretty tired please pray for us.

Sophie and the balloon 

Jessica is now 24! 

John chilling on the porch 

Well the woes of missionaries coming have struck again. Matthew and the Oxford team missed their early morning flights and will be now arriving on two seperate flights this evening. A slight amount of rescheduling has been done but all is okay. Feel quite sorry for the team who will be absolutely knackered when they get here (they set off at 4:30 am!).

Our schedule (subject to change) over this next week for the Oxford guys.

Sun - Church in Frascati am (English) painting, cleaning, blessing church building all day followed by church pm (Italian). Haven't let Matthew know yet that he is leading worship at the am service - lol.

Mon - 12 noon - Tue 12 noon 24hrs of praying.

Tue pm - refugee camp

Wed - day off

Thu all day - Refugee camp 7:30 pm small group

Fri - am Homeless ministry pm - Frascati outreach

Please pray for these things on their days.

Hmm very hot today was 42 degrees at the Spanish Steps yesterday when Jess was there (108.6 F). Very very humid.

Pushed John in the way of The Heavenly Man a fantastic book.

It's Friday 4pm and it is 39 degrees outside (102.2F) and humidity is v high - am sweating just typing in dark room! I realised it was hot when I broke into a sweat eating a cherry tomatoe! 6 punnits of cherry tomatoes and 28 fresh peaches off our friendly wine seller after I bought 5 litres of fresh wine and 10 eggs (for 8 euros - £5.30 - $9.66).

Jon has gone into Rome to search out the more spiritual aspects of it (probably staying in cool church buildings). Andrea and Emma went to the Sistine Chapel this morning but are now back. It looks like God has sorted out our house in Sheffield, despite rumours being circulated that we were selling/having problems renting it out. God has taken the load off us and done all the work in getting the people He wants in the house - just like in this past year - hooray for God!

Jancsi & Melinda and Christian & Betti have gone off into Rome again they are really getting their mileage. They went to a free concert last night and I picked them up at the metro (underground) station at half twelve. They had planned to go to the Sistine chapel today and they asked me how much it was. I told them, errenously, that it was 16 euros (it's actually 12) which is the same as Christian earns as a 3 year qualified doctor in a day! Made us really appreciate how rich we are. Going to try and bless them as much as possible now.

We all went to the beach yesterday by public transport and we can do it in under 2 hours so we really can get all of the Oxford team there for their day off if they would like to go.

Well we now have Emma here (Andrea's sister) until Saturday evening. She, Andrea, Jess, John & the Hungarians have headed into Rome whilst I rest my foot (really need to be able to walk okay by Saturday - please pray), and try and get our car fixed. The exhaust broke on Saturday - a clean break right in the middle - and it makes a racket! It's quite fun really but think that Andrea and the neighbours would prefer it back to normal.

Andrea took Jess and John to expereience the Italian post office system yesterday to send about 10 postcards to the States, Hungary and Slovakia. The worker there weighed each postcard individually and then put large barcode stamps over the writing and it took ages, oh yeah and they were all the same price. Italy is currently doing away with stamps in favour of tracking barcodes. I think that they were only there for about 45 mins, one time I spent 2 hours queuing to post a letter! It really is a joke especially when you see people reading papers and chatting whilst you queue up with 100 other people for an hour. There are probably about 20 or so people who work (or at least should work when they aren't laying around) there and I've never seen more than 6 working at any one time. One of the quaint things about this neck of the woods :-) Oh yeah and they didn't know where Slovakia was. Most amusing

We went to a birthday party at the church in Frascati last night for one of the girls there and took our TV and playstation and played on a kareoke game, un(fortunatly) I didn't take a camera. John was very good though as was Andrea - I was awful, but hey at least I know it :-)

I posted some more pictures yesterday - Vatican, Florence, Time of Pope's death, Viterbo and Tivoli sections. As well as putting on a video section - currently only an amazing coule of minutes before a footy game kicks off in this section.

Liz Lovell has sent me an email taking me through the learning circle regarding my foot injury:

How are your feet Tchad? Have you gone round the learning circle? - ie
observe - feet raw and hurting
reflect - why? because I was stupid trying to play footie without shoes
discuss - yes this was a silly thing to do
plan - don't do it again
account - I will not do this again
act - don't do it again

:-)

Please pray for our continued preparation for the team from Oxford Vineyard coming to serve us from Sat for a week.

Just adding a Sicily phot section from when Andrea, Cinzia, Sofia and I went for a few days in April 05 to see if it was right for us all to go there next. Check out the Mount Etna pictures and the engulfed buildings also the Andrea trying to fly in 90 mile an hour winds over one of the craters. Sam Lovell your rocks came from where Andrea is standing!

Two new photo sections of games that we saw this season :-)

My foot :-) Minging 

Cinzia (her food is the bowl which isn't the nice melon!) 

Well Jansci & Melinda and Christain & Betti have arrived from Hungary to chill here for a little while. Melinda is an Italy nut so they are currently pounding the streets of Rome. Jon Curtis is back in Sheffield at work bless him, and life here carries on as we are preparing our hearts for the team coming from Oxford Vineyard led by Paul Granger and Matthew Rutter (of St Tom's and TT fame http://matthewjohnrutter.blogspot.com/ ).

New pix are in the Rome Visitors section including Dianne, Sharon, Ruth, Jon C, Jon S, Jess and the Hungarians.

Please pray for Cinzia who is still really bad we have been around praying for her for the last couple of days and really want God to sort this out! Picture (hopefully below). Also prayer for foot appreciated as has cracked slightly open after loads of healing and want to play footy again soon. :-)

Hello all. Jess Kravitz arrived from the States last night via 6 hours at the Gibson household in Sheffield. She arrived an hour late.

Some interesting (to me anyway) stats:

Been to the airport 38 times to pick peple up since we got here. The 1st 34 times were fine airplane always early (from 30 mins to 5 mins) then we realised that things were going to change here from when we returned from the TOM weekend in Sheffield. We were moving from a time of visitors (generally) coming for breaks/trips/to see us to a time of people coming here to do missional work for us.

Just before we went back to the UK three important ladies came to visit us to help us process stuff - God clearly (to me) sent them here - and their plane was delayed. When we arrived back here on Monday last, Jon Senior's bag didn't come in the plane with us and we had to wait an hour trying to sort it out (at midnight) and then had to go and collect it at the same time the following night. The night after that Jon Curis arrived and his plane came in late at 1am. Then last night Jess' plane was an hour late and landed at 1am.

Strange.

Anyway totally forgot taht we have 2 couples coming from Hungary today and I need to help sort the rooms out for them!

Can put preeure on the bottom of my foot today! Off to the beach in a an hour for some sand and salt water followed by an evening in Frascati working with the local church there on the streets. Please pray for this.

Have posted links to the blogs i read often...if I know you and you have one send me the link :-)

Now have a Rome visitors, Rome pix, Mission pix sections but seem to be having problems with displaying them. Sometimes they just do not show :-( I'm using photopages how do other people have their pix sections?

We now have 2 John's with us. John Senior is here for three weeks and came back with us from the UK and we also have John Curtis here to tell us some stuff from God (really - how cool is that).

This Saturday we have Jess coming who has already stayed with us for 10 days in March and is coming back for 40 odd days to do mission with us. She's from Phil, Mags, mal and Chriscelle's chuch in Charleston, South Carolina.

On Sunday John Curtis will be heading back to loved ones in Sheffield and we have two Hungarian couples who are church leaders staing with us for about 10 days they kind of know Marco and Cinzia ao should be great getting to know them. The following Saturday we have Matthew Rutter (ex St Tom's boy) bringing a team from Oxford Vineyard to do mission here - very exciting and a very full house!

A couple of nights ago we went out and helped a team from Denvor do some outreach in a piazza in the centre of Rome which was fun - big student are with much drinking and drug taking going on (but all very peaceful). We started at 10pm and drove home about 12:30 ish v tired. The next day (yesterday) we went to one on the main universities in Rome (rumoured to be the biggest in Europe) and started spreading the Gospel through conversations with the same team. I foolishly played some footy in bare feet on hot concrete and 30 mins in lost the sking off a large section of one foot. I'm now feeling sorry for myself as I type this.

God wise interesting to look back and see where people's advice and words have come true - pretty amazing really. We are trying to get into a rhythm of praying twice daily so if anybody would like to send us any prayer requests we'll pray them out :-)

Please pray for us as we try to sort out the team from Oxford and get timetables sorted. Pray for them as they prepare to come and give sacrificially.

I'm also going to add more photo sections for those who have too much time on their hands.

Hmm that all - oh yeah we now have an English telephone number again - hooray! It is
020 7870 5768 You can ring us and if we are in we'll be able to answer otherwise it goes to a voicemail.

Remember we leave Rome around the 10th August so if anybody wants to come and stay - holiday or mission get in touch asap. wackymajor@hotmail.com

Tchad, Andrea 

Cinzia, Sofia, Marco 

Prologue and Present - Well Andrea and I have been here now for 8 months in Rome and it has been a strange time!

We came here after hearing God calling us to come and support Marco and Cinzia who were involved in a church plant here in Rome. After God showed us the open door with provision we came here mid October 2004 the day that the beautiful Sofia was born. It has been a tough time where God has broken us big time but has got us to a place where He can trust us and where we totally need to rely on him.

We have has stacks of visitors in our 8 months here (see the Visitors to Rome photo section apologies to those we didn't get pix of) which has been a blessing. We are thinking of leaving the city around the 10th August to head down to Sicily where we have been offered a house for a month. After that we have a mission order "retreat" in Tuscany and believe that God is calling us to then go back to Sicily but this time with Marco, Cinzia and Sofia to do community life there.

I could write stacks about our time here and may yet do retrospectively but for now I would ask you to pray for our future that we would be listening to God closely.

Till we leave this house we still have a steady stream of visitors coming mainly with a missional focus so I'll keep this blog updated with who's here and what we are upto.