Happy Thanksgiving Early!

I know it is a little early for Thanksgiving, but we just hosted a Thanksgiving Outreach here in Ancona. It was really exciting. We had the most people ever at our facility for an event. There were thirty-nine people, including the eight of our team on the field. It was such a neat thing to see people we have been praying about for years come for the first time or once more to an event at our facility. Angie was in charge of hosting and planning the event and she did an absolutely amazing job! Our entire team and church was involved and we all put forth much hard work to see this event to fruition. Angie planned the event meticulously and our efforts were rewarded by a great turnout and opportunity to grow many of our relationships. I have heard people talk about churches focusing on numbers and I tell you the truth....I am focused on numbers. Because what better way can we determine how many souls are experiencing the Christ induced loving acts of service and sharing that are part of an event such as this. I am more than excited and I don't even really know how to write about it. God is continuing to move us, this team and this church forward, the funny thing is.....a few years ago, this church didn't exist. It is really something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

Wow look at all the people!

Matt getting ready to carve the 2nd Turkey.

Angie getting everything ready.

And then there was rejoicing in Heaven

Tonight our church (and team) reached a huge milestone, our first baptism. Agnese is a young woman who has been coming with Marta and Amedeo made the decision to be baptized tonight. We were at a restaurant called Tunital Foods (kebabs, similar to gyros -pita bread stuffed with vegetables and grilled meat) with a visiting missions group from College Heights CC when Jason received the call from Amedeo. Agnese wanted to be baptized tonight in the sea. She has a special spot that she frequents when she needs to think and pray; it was in this spot that a new sister in Christ was born. Since Marta has been the one discipling and evangelizing Agnese, it only made sense that she be the one to baptise her. We sang an Italian hymn and Amedeo asked Agnese why she was doing this. She said to have Christ as my only God and for salvation. Marta and Agnese went in the cold cold water and Marta then baptised her. After they came out of the water, we had some communion waiting for her to take her first communion as a baptized believer. We were all very excited. There is only one first baptism. As we were walking up from the beach, I thought it would be a neat idea to pick up a rock off the beach for every baptism we have. We can write their name on the rock and the date they were baptized. it will be a great reminder as we win souls for Christ, one soul of a time.

Marta and Agnese right before Agnese's baptism in the Adriatic Sea.

Google Does It Again

I love google.com. I even have it as my homepage. It is simple clean and loads fast. Google is rarely down and so if it doesn't come up, there is an instant tip that something is wrong with our internet connection. Google keeps amazing me, setting the standard for new services, like mega-space for online email storage and even ownership of blogger.com which I use for this blog. And now, they have done it again.
Today, google.com released their first beta version of a desktop search tool. It is easy to install and easy to use. If you are familiar with Google.com at all, you will be totally at home with the Google Desktop Search tool. I downloaded it on both computers and instantly was in awe of the power of this new search tool, it blows the search tool that comes with windows away! If I type in "kids time" in the Google search space in about 1 second it brings me every document, photo, video, text file, or email with those words included. It doesn't only look in the file name either, it looks in every word of every document. If you use quotes when you search it will bring back items that have the words in quotes in that exact phrase. Once you install it, it does a one time scan, which takes several hours, but only works on it when the computer is idle. After ten minutes I already found files quicker with it, than with the traditional search capabilities. You can check it out at http://desktop.google.com/. And you can see a snapshot of it below. Best of all it's free, so check it out and save yourself some time in your searching.

Google Desktop Search Screen

My new photography class

A community school here in Ancona is offering classes for a very low price. We are able to enroll in up to three classes. They are all for fun and potentially a great way to meet people. We went to a cooking class the other night (see previous entry Cooking Class). Tonight I went to the first session of a photography class. It lasted about an hour and is for the basic beginner in photography. I would not classify myself as a basic beginner normally, I take up to 1000 pictures per month and had classes in school growing up where we developed our own pictures in a dark room (the old fashioned way). However, 'basic' is great here in Italy. You see when you are learning a new language your ability in conversations is directly dependant upon vocabulary knowledge in the field of conversation. In other words, I am fluent in English, but I still may not be able to talk to someone about nuclear physics, because I am not versed in the vocabulary related to that field. Or some people may feel that way when talking to someone about sports. In this case, my vocabulary is gaining momentum everyday in Italian, but my vocabulary related to photography in Italian is still in a stage of infancy. Fortunately, he used overhead slides so that made it easier to follow. There was one point in the middle of the lecture where I had no idea what the lecturer was saying and was fighting the urge to get sleepy (for those of you wondering, I never closed my eyes - my college professors would be proud and quite possibly a little bit jealous). At the end I wasn't sure if the class was over or not, because for several minutes everyone kept sitting around not gathering their things as if in anticipation of something else. I asked the woman behind me when we were suppose to finish, she said, "about an hour." I said, "so about now?" She said, "I guess so." Apparently I wasn't the only one confused then. The teacher had stopped talking to the class, but was talking with individuals. Finally, I saw a few people get up and start for the door. Seeing my clue, I gathered my stuff and headed out of the classroom. Soon we are supposed to move from lecture into more lab photo style work. At the end of the class, we will put on a show of our work. Who knows who I will meet or what will result of the class, but at least there is much potential.

Learning photography in Italian.