Andiamo!

I'm here! Finally arrived in Italy one week ago. It's been a little crazy so far, but everything is working out amazingly. I'm in Torre Pellice, living with an amazing family. I felt like I belonged on the first day, and I think this is going to be a great year. I'm still getting basic things taken care of like a phone, bank account, and registering for various things, and I still have to work on my visa, but it's all going very smoothly so far.

So. A little introduction to my situation now: We live in a great villa on the hill at the end of town:

We are on the ground level and basement floors. Elena is the mother, and she's Supermom. This family is very well known in town, and she especially is friends with everyone and organizes a lot. Jean is the father, and is a doctor in Torre. He is very busy some days, and others he can be around a lot. He is also the doctor for the local hockey team, which is more important than life itself. This means we have season tickets, and we know all the players and their families. There are a good amount of Canadians and Americans. Right now a lot of the wives don't have much to do, so a few of us are going to take language classes together in a nearby town. I'm learning a lot of Italian already, although sometimes I get Spanish and Italian words confused. I think a class will help, and it will be great to know the hockey families better.

Elsa, a girl from Cameroon, also lives here and studies languages in Torino. We share a room and it's been great getting to know her and having someone who speaks Italian help me out with a lot of things. The kids are Rebecca, Zoe, and Jacopo.

They're a lot of fun, and a lot of chaos at times. So my days will consist of helping them before/after school, thinking up new ways to teach them English, and helping around the house. Different people are always over here, and every day is a bit different. Besides that I'm free to travel a bit and work out things with other children and teams in the valley. As soon as my shoulder is recuperated I really want to try to play again, and Jean knows an orthopedic doctor here who used to work for the Italian national soccer team, so I think I have a good shot at playing again! Right now I'm still just working on getting situated here and learning the language, but there's a lot that can happen in the future. So, to be continued..........

Life Plans

Oh, flowers. I haven't updated in a long time. I didn't do so because I was going through a lot of ups and downs and never could really tell where things would land. They finally have, as much as my life can "land", and I actually have a plan for once! There were times when I thought I would never get back, and that I might have to stay in Indiana forever, or come up with a completely new career. These kind of times can take a real toll on my spirits and idealism, but things are getting a lot better.

I'm currently working in fiber optics engineering where I used to help out during a few summers. The work itself I'm not really a big fan of, but the environment is great, I'm friends with the guys who work in our tiny cubicle quad in the basement, and I actually have something to do every day instead of sitting at home wondering what I'm doing with my life. And this allows me to make enough money for the next stage in my life.

This all came about in a very crazy way. Before I started working I was looking into other options. I thought if I couldn't get on the original plan I might as well try to make a difference somehow. So I was looking into trying to get back to Europe in other ways to try to hook up with OM, even if it couldn't be in Italy. I looked into being an au pair, and had things set up to try this in Spain. Sidestep to Rebecca, one of the little girls who was at the volleyball camp, who I have been emailing with every once in a while. I let her know that I might be going to Spain, and she told me that I should do the same with her family! This actually works out ridiculously perfectly. They live in the same valley in Italy where I was last summer and where our ministry is based, they don't need me until September so that gives me time to raise the money to pay off my student loans for a year, and living with this family will be the perfect way to get involved in the community.

It almost seems too good to be true, and after going through a rough time being stuck at home I can see how this was the best plan all along. So I'm working with the family to get the visa, and saving money. Also, due to the fact that I'm graduated, roughly 87% of the people I know are getting married this summer. So if I work constantly I would have enough money to go back to Italy in July, but I wouldn't be of as much use then. So in order to go to all the weddings I'm going to take a vacation earlier and then work longer into August. I have my tickets to go to Spain June 11 - July 11, and for the first two weeks my mom, Molly, Doyle, and her mom are will be with me just traveling around Spain. After they leave I get to spend some time in Madrid with some great friends and going to a wedding. I'll also be going back to Italy for a week to help out with this summer's Impact interns. I'll come back to the states just in time for a few more weddings, and I'll continue working until I fly to Italy sometime in August.

I'm still looking for people who would like to support me, even though I don't need financial support for the first year. If anyone knows of anyone else who's interested, please pass on my blog and/or email address.

So excite!

Let's Limbo!

So I haven't updated in a long time because I was hoping to give some sort of actual news. But that has not really happened. I returned to the States as soon as my tourist visa was up, and it's been a series of ups and downs ever since then. I've really enjoyed spending time with friends and family, but I really don't feel like my place is here and I want to get back. I just have to keep in mind that it's not in my time or in my hands.

I'm here until I can get a visa and my full support raised. We still have to find a loophole for the visa, but that's all irrelevant unless I can get support. That's the one glaring obstacle right now. I have absolutely no idea where it's coming from or when. All I know is that I really feel like this is where I've been called to go, even when it doesn't look like that will ever happen all I can do is hold onto the hope that I have in Christ.

Long story short, if anyone knows of anyone who's super interested in sports and/or missions, send them my way! I think that after the holidays if I'm not any closer I might have to change locations. No idea really what's going on still, but Roxanne told me about an internship at her church in California that pays for housing and food, and I could do sports ministry. The only downside is that it has to be for a full year.

The saga continues. I feel like something's going to happen soon, I just have no idea what.

Crazy Travels

So I finally have internet access and a little bit o free time. The last weekish of training was crazy- we all finally ¨stormed¨ and had our breakthroughs, breakdowns, and whatnot. I realized I would actually miss this family like crazy once they´re gone, and it really has been hard being without them. Saying goodbye was rough, but we´re all working on keeping in touch and updated.

I had gotten hardly any sleep when I went to the Milan airport with a German and an Albanian to drop of a Singaporean. Due to certain (long) difficulties, we had to pick up a certain Moldovan, drive to Switzerland and then to Germany. We arrived at 3am, then I had to rush to a train in the morning and go all the way to the north to Teenstreet. This camp was insanely awesome, with like 3000 teenagers from all over Europe. This included about 1% of the population of the Faroe Islands, a ton of Dutch kids, Egyptians, and various others. I worked the sports section during the day, with a lot of beach volleyball, some dodgeball, rock climbing, and various other things.

Teenstreet was crazy intense, and amazing to see people from such different background together. I made friends with lots of people on my team from Germany, Brazil, Faroe Islands, Switzerland (the French speaking part), etc. I was lucky when it came time to leave, there was a lot of confusion, and my plan was to go to Spain. So one of my new friends offered for me to stay at his house outside of Hamburg after taking like 3 trains to get there with some other Germans and Swiss. Crazy adventure, and I actually got to see a bit of Germany. I then flew out of Hamburg the next morning, after having to buy another ticket within like 3 minutes of the train boarding because of some stupidness with the ticket booking online. But I made it, and Nacho picked me up at the airport in Madrid.

Since then I´ve been seeing old friends, experiencing real Spain and amazing Spanish food, and trying to speak Spanish. It´s been hard but I´m getting better- I think if I spent a few months here I could get close to fluent with a bit of work. Right now I´m at Jorge´s- his brother is just like him (like scary similar, but we´re both bad at each other´s language so it´s a good communication mix). It´s been really interesting to see all my friends like where they´re actually from, and seeing the Miñambres house was awesome, even though Luis wasn´t there (come on). It´s kinda weird when my Spanish friends are from a bunch of different groups or years, and so they don´t know each other and it´s more difficult getting together. Everything is just a giant adventure. I´ve really been living not knowing what the next step or location is til like the last minute. It´s difficult but kind of exciting, and I´m just trusting that it all works out. So far it´s been amazing and awesome, but still working out difficulties with money situations, getting back to the states for a visa and so on. Keep praying it all works out.

Intensionally Vague

Howdy all,

I've just returned to Italy from an amazing two weeks. Due to various factors I can't really say on here where I've been or what I've been doing. Don't you want to know now! Well good news, friends. My team and I put together a delectable little report on our time away. If I have your email address I'll send it to you very soon, if you don't get one please let me know. If you're sneaky you can look on my photostream, hopefully I'll be able to get some more up with this slow connection. Peace.

Week of Craziness

The camp ended amazingly. We had olympics on the last day, with each team representing a random country. MaryHelen and I organized the Bible story station- we had the kids act out the story of the good Samaritan, complete with donkey and violent robbers (very entertaining). The parents somehow got together and gave us the most amazing spread of food to thank us for the whole week. The Italians were amazed by this; apparently this is very uncommon. When the kids were getting their medals and singing songs in front of the whole group a lot of the parents were crying- it was hard for a lot of them to believe that the whole thing was free.

This past week had a significant amount of ridiculousness. Tuesday was supposed to be one of the roughest days; the group did the "rescue" mission, where in two teams they were left on the top of a mountain and had to carry people down on some sort of stretcher they had to build, complete with people sabotaging them the whole time. I, however, had some sort of disagreement with food/drink I put inside my body. I would have liked them to stay there; they insisted they come out. So I was up for at least 24 straight hours having fun with this, and on Wednesday I was super weak but could actually get out of bed a little.

Wednesday night David read us the passage about the disciples falling asleep in the garden while Jesus was praying. We then took one hour shifts staying up praying until 6am, when we all met. From this point until 9pm, we played sports nonstop. The entire time in Italy we've been learning that to have true strength you have to make yourself weak; this is the first time I was forced to do that. I had no strength after the first run at 7am, but all I did was pray for strength for the next activity, and each time I would get just enough to continue. It was amazing, although amazingly hard. The final task was a run up the mountain to a bridge. Along the way, Gabriel had to sit down, and all of a sudden he was on the ground and barely coherent. At this exact moment, a car came by (who happened to be our neighbor) and did everything they could to help us. This was difficult because there was no cell signal on the road, and none of us really speaks Italian. We all got in the back of the goat truck, and Austin carried Gabr in the front. He was getting worse, so we stopped on the road and called an ambulance. Clayton and Brian started sprinting down the mountain to get David and Amanda to translate; we found out later that they about died after the first turn. Somehow they were able to keep this suicide pace all the way to Forterocca, and they were running in step and even in the same breathing rhythm- when they arrived they weren't even out of breath. It was a miracle how everything worked out with timing, remembering his allergies, and a million more things. It's been amazing just to see how God takes care of us daily.

So besides that we've been doing training every day, playing whatever when we can (calcio with the local kids), and world cup-ing to the max. That's super fun in the village, and it was ridiculous when Italy got out. I think the whole country will be a little angry about that for the next few years. Anyways, I uploaded some more pics, but internet is crazy slow here so the ol blogspot doesn't really wanna cooperate. Go check em out.

Vai!

Last week was a lot of training- a Welsh and a Brit (both awesome futbol players) were here. We spent a lot of time learning Biblical basis of sports missions and other such things. They kinda boiled it down to the simplest ways to do everything, and that in itself was mindblowing. We had a lot of practical training, and that week we also got to play outside a lot. I don't actually play soccer too much, but my volleyball skills have transferred to the keeper (portillero) position surprisingly well. We've been working through a lot of issues individually and as a group; there's been so much I hardly know where to start. But the main points for me have all stemmed from "getting over myself" as David says. My theme passage lately is James 3:13-18.

This week we've been doing a sports camp for the kids in Torre. It's crazy different from any camp in the states. I'm in charge of volleyball, but they're so young a lot of times it turns into just running around, them teaching us Italian games and us teaching them American games. We have had to be cooped up in the tiny gym with everyone for most of the week because of rain, but that means we just get to see more amazing taekwondo demos by 4-time world champ Vladimir. Today I only had a couple girls, so we actually hardcore worked on some skills. Sometimes Amanda translates, but when I'm left alone it's a bad mix of Spanish/Italian and the kids throw their hands up and say NON CAPITO! when I can't understand them (in a nice way). It is really funny watching them interact- they do the stereotypical Italian yelling with the hands when they're mad, and I've heard "Mama Mia!" many times. But my girls have been opening up a lot, and some of their English is really getting better (they do English classes in the afternoon after we finish with sports and lunch). There has been an older special needs girl, and yesterday she was playing some games with a ball and cups and basically all the kids were crowding around and cheering for her- the joy on her face was unbelievable.

Most of the kids at this camp have never known someone who believes in Jesus besides a priest or someone who's over 70. So a main point is showing them that people they look up to, who are interested in sports like them, and who are "cool" young-20's Americans actually pray and read a Bible. Someone's been giving a testimony-ish every day during the break. The questions these kids ask are crazy; they really have no exposure to church or much talk about God. Yesterday when Eliseo asked someone to read a bible verse they were all fighting over it and crowding around to see what it said.

The rest of our time this week has been filled up with FCA training from Dan, getting gelato, playing basketball and/or soccer in the rain, and watching world cup games (insane to be in Europe, I'm sadly becoming a bigger soccer fan). Last night we met with some kids in Bobbio who are actually Christians, although pretty much none of them come from a Christian family. We just talked and played with them; they also asked a bunch of questions and then they all crowded around for our autographs afterwards.

I've been able to meet a lot more of the OM Italy team, and I've talked to Amanda about when she played here. I'm not sure what level I'll be at (Logan Tom played for a club here), but David has apparently been telling people I could go pro. We'll see, but I might even make money off of it some day. I'll probably be staying at Forterocca at least for a while, then who knows. Also, I found out I'm running a basketball camp for Arab kids in Bethlehem with Austin and Clayton. No big deal. Kinda stoked outta my mind. Two more weeks.