Ciao from Italy!
It’s been a minute since you’ve gotten an update and wow has a lot happened. Here’s the short version:
We left Sorrento and traveled to Sicily where we stayed at an incredible villa at an “only-God could do it” price. (Fun fact, I also had a dream about this before I even decided to come here!) One of our students organized a ministry outing where we got to pour into and pray over a group of men from Nigeria who had escaped the brutal murders happening there right now.
We traveled north to Peschiera del Garda where we met with the head of Alpha ministry in the entire country of Italy. (Alpha was what we were working on beginning in Isernia in early November) and we celebrated Christmas as a team. Now we’ve traveled south east to Riccione for a few days before we head to Rome to celebrate the new year and head to Mexico.
The month of December has been an ATL or Ask The Lord month. And we have seen God move in some crazy ways. We started having prayer meetings at 7am and the amount of times we all come in with the same heart, or word, or passage from the Word is actually crazy. Or when we would ask our students to pray for direction and they all ended up with the exact same answer. God was speaking and moving and He still is!
This has been my first Christmas without my family, and even though that was a new kind of hard, I also got to celebrate with people that feel like family. The joy of the season and the reason for why we celebrate remains the same even across the globe. We celebrated by reading the Christmas story, taking communion, and exchanging thoughtful gifts that were mostly crafted by hand. It was incredible to see how these students love each other.
We’ve had the most incredible time here in Italy, but our team is ready for Mexico. We are ready to meet with the half of our team that departed in November. We are ready to work with the orphanage in Chiapas, and we are ready to see how the Lord wants to use us in the months of January and February.
God is so good. He is so faithful and I feel so blessed to be able to love on these students and walk through the trials of life with them. They’re growing, learning, and pressing into Jesus.
Thank you for everyone at home supporting me. Thank you to everyone who is helping me fundraise for the spring semester. Thank you for your continued prayers. I love you all.
God bless you and see you in 2026!
-Amanda
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