Sunday, October 24, 2010

Hallelujah!

Literally, hallelujah! One of the biggest challenges we have faced as we've moved all over the U.S., and now around the world, is finding a home church. In our 14 years of marriage and eight cities, we've only had two churches that we felt were true home churches. We've always managed to find a place where we liked the preaching, but in many places, we've just never felt welcomed into congregations. We came here with a small list of potential churches here (one of which, coincidentally, is pastored by missionaries supported by my aunt/uncle's home church in Alabama). A friend in my language class mentioned her church one day, and it was one on my list, so we made it our first visit to a church off base. Thankfully, we both really enjoyed it. A band provides music in the form of contemporary songs that we like. In addition, both the singing and the sermon are dual language. We sang one verse in English, then repeated in Italian, and so on. Same for the sermon. There are several preachers who take turns. Today, one of the Italian preachers gave the sermon (a good one) while an American preacher translated. As it turns out, we knew several people in the church, three or four of whom work with Nathan, as well as a lady I've befriended who is moving (with her family) to a house that is just up the street from ours. We felt very welcomed, loved the music, and heard a great sermon, so...hallelujah!

2 comments:

  1. Halleluah indeed! I am so glad there were no drive by churchings this time. Sounds like it will be great for your Italian too.
    Mom

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  2. Oh my gosh, I was going to say the same thing as your mom about the drive-by churchings. :-) I'm so glad that you found a church so quickly this time. I don't know what I would do without my church family, even though I have family close by. I really would need that support if I were so far away from my biological family. Praying you find solid, lasting friendships there.

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