March Report 2018 English

For everyone who asks, receives.

Everyone who seeks, finds.

And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

Luke 11:10 (NLT)

SOMETHING IS DEFINITELY GOING ON

It's a strange thing. We have been in Italy a little over a year and in this year things have happened in this region that either have never happened before or it has been over 40 years since the last time it took place. Among these are:

• Lucifer's week. Last summer there was a week that was so hot they called it Lucifer's week. They say it hasn't been in those tempetures in more than 40 years. The temperature was more than 105 degrees F. I know that might not sound like a lot for some places in the states but over here many people including ourselves do not have air conditioning. So, you can imagine a little how it was for us.

• Hail the size of golf balls. When the summer was almost over, we started to get heavy rain. On one night it started to hail, but this was no ordinary hail. The hail was around 4-5 cm in diamiter that would distroy sun roofs, cars, among all sorts of other things. The next town over from ours was hit the most. Hundreds of windshields from the cars were broken, even the metal part of cars were destroyed. The next day everything seemed like a war zone, but at least, all the car body shop owners were very happy.

• Snow. When winter started something else altogether happened, after exactly 38 years except worse. We got snow! This might not sound like any sort of phenomenon but for southern Italy, as the airport manager said, "this has never happened before". All the cities in the south stopped all activity. Schools closed down, most people did not go to work and even the international airport canceled all flights in and out. The people from the North were laughing at the south because they are obviously used to the snow. But in the south many people were seeing it for the first time.

• Tornado. With all these climate changes something even less expected happened. On March, 13 at 8PM a tornado fell on one of the most important streets in Caserta. The city where our main church is. The tornado pulled trees straight from its roots, turned over large trucks and ripped off roofs. Thank God the place were it landed was pretty open and there weren't any injured.

• New Political Party. Something that hasn't anything to do with climate or our region but that I would like to mention is a new political party called 5 stars. This political party is about to win elecciones. The group is made of very young people and the person who would end up as president is my age, 34. I don't want to get in to political discussions. My only point is that for the younger generation in Italy this has been very important and is bringing hope for the youth and mentality of change.

I don't think these things have any kind of spiritual significance, but I do take them as signs that Italy is changing and we want to see these kinds of great changes in the spiritual environment as-well.

BEING HONEST

We like to be honest and transparent and to say the truth, it took us a while to write this report. The reason being was because these last Months we have felt somewhat downhearted. It was a time where many different difficult situations hit us at the same time. Things like health issues, very cold weather which we are not used to, financial and ministry challenges.

We believe our enemy used those times to try and discourage us and place doubt in our minds by making it difficult to imagine what our next steps and future should look like. None the less, we took advantage to ask, seek and knock at the Lords door and miraculously through dreams and visions He spoke to us and gave us a new breath and a clear vision. We can now say that we are renewed and that our motivation to keep on ministering is as strong as ever. We have had good meetings with the pastors from the churches here. We are just now starting to implement things from our experience to promote growth. This is very exciting to us because we feel that for the first time we can actually start seeing change that will produce fruit that can endure.

ACTIVITIES

Despite any discouragement we have never stopped ministering full time. Among some of the activities that we have done are:

The best Easter ever: In Italy there are actually two Easters. The fist is Easter Sunday that you would celebrate with your family. Than on Monday comes (Little Easter), which usually ends up being larger because you celebrate it with all your friends. This year for "little Easter" we had a mega party at our house with more than 70 youth and young adults. Is was a great time to bring some many youth together, a lot of which invited friends that haven't been to home group yet so that they can integrate and make friends.

POLARIOD - Karina and I were both invited on behalf of the Caserta youth group to share at an event organized by them called Polaroid. It was a great time where we saw God's presence move powerfully. Many young people were receiving words and visions from God and sharing them with the group. We are sure that God wants to use this new generation and that is why it is so important to create this type of space where youth can connect with God in this manner.

Lots of preaching and a new Sunday evening service: Now that we have the language we/they have taken advantage to put us to work and preach in many diferentes places and services. I am remembering the good old times in back in Cuenca with long days of preachings. I don't believe that this is the most important part of our ministry but it is nice to be able to transmit the word of God in this way. We have also opened the new evening Sunday service which has had great results. We have around 70 people in the evening, a number that is always growing, and the morning service is still full.

Among some other activities that are worth mentioning:

• Project Timothy: This is a large meeting that we do three times a year with all the churches in our regions to help promote and raise up the leadership for the next generation.

• Biblical Faculty: This is faculty to learn more in depth the Bible and theology. It has been created by the church we support. The program is all online with a once a month meeting. I am following the program besucase it helps my italian and also because I am going to mentor and group of young adults that are also following the program.

• Pastor retreat: Every year there is a pastors retreat for all the pastors in the church's network of which I also participated this year.

Lets talk.- I have mentioned this group before. It is the group we helped create some months ago to evangelize through practicing languages by conversations and games. Surprisingly this has had a great response. Many people have already come to the Lord and now participate in home churches and on Sundays. Now, at every event we have more than 40 people that fill the tables. The interesting thing that we didn't expect is that most of the people who come are very influential. Doctors, university teachers and business owners. People who other wise would usually be more difficult to engage.

TIMES OF REFRESHMENT

• Just when we felt like we needed it the most Karina's parents came to visit. It was a great time for them and for us. They had the opportunity to see the work they we are doing and the community that we are with. This brought peace to them because they saw how we are involved in Gods work and surrounded by good people.

NEW CONVERTS IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD

During the time that we have been here we have purposely waited before we starting to evangelizing people in our neighborhood and city. We felt that we really wanted to know the language better so that we could express correctly the gospel. Instead, we simple were friendly to people and kept a good testimony. Now that we feel more secure with the language we have started to evangelize. I must say our idea worked. Last week we invited some of our neighbors over for dinner. We had the chance to talk to them and share the love of God. Both of them came to the Lord and gave there lives to Jesus.

With thus success we have now started dedicating every Wednesday to our city with objective to one day start a homegroup here.

PLANES FOR THE NEXT TRIMESTER

As we advance in every aspect it seems like everything is accelerating including our influence in the ministry. Besides all that we are doing now we have other projects that we are going to start that we really think will help for growth.

• Youth service once a month • A special church event with the objective that everyone brings a friend. • Using our experience little by little we are changing and modernizing the Sunday services and homegroups.

- For this coming May I have been invited once again to be a translator for AFI (Apostolic Fellowship International) in the Canary Islands. It is a great honor and privilege to meet, learn from and create networks with great men of God with out being an apostle.

OUR ECONOMY

A strong Euro is bad news for us.

Between a strong Euro, transfer costs and taxes for money transfers we basically lose 30% of our income. On top of that, in our budget, there are always things that are hard to foresee. Things like car crashes, tickets, medical exams and visits, necessary house maintenance, etc. What I what to express with this is simple that we are thankful for all your support which is very necessary so that we can continue the work that we have began.

Parallel to everything, applying the Apostle Paul's principle of tent making for financial support, I am starting a business that will not take away from my time to minister. For this I ask for your prayers for wisdom and blessing.

Blessings,

Capaldi Family

Italy