Been a chilled few days in the sense of physical labour. It has been the worst storm in memory here a few days ago. Rain by the bathtub load and a wind like we had in the UK in ’87. It’s been good to rest up for what God is going to do next. Raul and I managed to watch the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (extended editions) in a day and a half which was fantastic and amazing considering how many times we were without electricity. We have also watched “20, 30, 40” A Chinese award winning film. We watched it dubbed in Italian with Italian subtitles (out of sync big time) I had a hard time following the story. To be fair if it was in English I think it would be a bit difficult to follow. However, it is a strangely compelling film.

Thought I’d bore people by telling them what books I’ve been reading in the last couple of months. I read a few autobiographies: John Simpson’s A Mad World, Michael J Fox’s Lucky Man, John Sergeant’s Give Me Ten Seconds, Martin Bell’s In Harm’s Way, Lance Armstrong’s It’s Not About The Bike, Danny Wallace’s Yes Man, Stephen Clarke’s A Year In The Merde and I’m currently reading Mediterranean – Portrait of a Sea by Ernle Bradford which is fascinating. Probably because it mentions Sicily so much (lots of invasions – Greeks, Phoenicians, Persians etc).

Our Christmas tree is up and decorated courtesy of Andrea – it is fantastic and has a whole load of pressies under it. Very exciting! Andrea and I have got Sofia a kitchen bin among other things as she has an incredible curiosity about going inside and rummaging in the one in the kitchen. Hopefully, if she has one in her room it will satisfy her curiosity (probably not).

At church on Sunday, Marco and I were two of the kings taking gifts to Jesus in the nativity play. Scripted by Andrea and Cinzia (who cunningly left themselves out) it was a lot of fun. I was the English king that it famous in the nativity play, whilst Marco was the African king. So only a little bizarre. The church was packed which was fantastic. If I can find any photos I’ll post them with this when I post this online.

Cluster on Saturday was fun – we had a grand total of nine of us for our penultimate one of the year. We are having Christmas Eve off, as here it is the family time and it seems like the real celebration time of Christmas, and we will have a fun New Year’s Eve get together again. The tradition among the evangelical churches here is to pray for an hour before the New Year starts and we’ll do the same, probably.

Having used some candles outside the church for a prayer time a week ago, somebody remarked to Cinzia as to whether we were moving towards Catholicism (undoubtedly said with scorn and distaste).

Tomorrow we are concluding our lifeshapes teaching with the Pentagon and on Friday we will have our last "official" prayer time for a week. As we will (probably at time of going to print) take the week off between Christmas and New Year. Church here will be on Saturday as Italians don't go to church on Christmas Day (which is on Sunday this year).

We are all quite worn out it is amazing how busy we have been! Please pray for us over this Christmas season.