Recent blunders in la citta bella... :)

Ciao ciao my dear friends! :)

Hello from Rome! I pray with all my heart that things are going well for you wherever you are. I pray the Lord is working in your life and you feel known and loved by Him---- cause you are! :)

Things are going well in Rome -- ministry is really taking off. I have met a few sweet Italian girls who have been really welcoming and kind to me. It's REALLY great to see that God loves these Italians so much and that He has been working in Rome for a long, long time.... That ministry here isn't something I'm inventing or creating or starting, but yet, something I'm stepping into and get to be part of. Praise the Lord for this privilege! :)

Here's a picture of the street I live on from our tiny balcony:


Also, when you move to a foreign country, you tend to need things like beds, desks, chairs, a dining room table, etc. so you can fill your house with "normal" house things so you can function and do life. :) Therefore, we have made a few trips to Ikea to purchase cheap, Swedish home accessories that require self-assembly. While at Ikea, I got to eat a delicious dinner of Swedish meatballs, boiled potatoes, and Swedish lingonberry sauce. AND-- to top it all off, we definitely heard an "Abba" song blasting on the in-store radio.... hahaha.... That was seriously the cherry on the sundae for my Swedish warehouse experience. :)

Here are some of the guys on our team, having quite the time in the moving van we rented:


And here we are, on Ikea trip #2... When all was fine, until we walked out of the store with all of our bags, into the rain. Not just little rain, or sprinkles, or a mist..... but buckets... cats and dogs... POURING... haha however you say it, we walked for a long, long time with all of our stuff, using public transportation, in the rain. BUT -- Thanks to God's grace, we were able to still have a good time and praise Him even in the storm. :)

This captures the point in the evening when the one brown paper bag had just about had it:


Andd.... to give you one more blunder... Our beautiful, palace of an apartment (Palazzo in Italian)... has had some... problems? to say the least... with its water. We got a note from a very frustrated downstairs neighbor, telling us that because of our water usage, that it was "literally raining" in her apartment. Ahh!! Since then, it's been about a week and a half/2 weeks... and we've had floors ripped up, showers ripped out, water shut off, washing machine/kitchen sink back up... etc. etc. etc.... Hahaha... Life in a new country, in a new apartment, always has its hard times, even in Rome! :)

Here's what one of our showers looks like:

And here is the other one (since this picture has been taken, we DO have a new shower installed! Praise God! But we just can't use it yet).

And... for my favorite picture..... You can see what they pulled out of our drain. No wonder it was raining in that poor woman's apartment--- GOLLY whatever that huge nasty hairball is... that was the problem (I think?). :) We have deliberated in our apartment to decide what it was, and here have been some of the guesses so far:
A) Someone's toupee
B) Someone's old pet squirrel/guinea pig
C) Someone's pet lion's hairball
D) ???

:) Maybe you can come up with a great answer. Whatever it is----- I'm just glad it's out of our shower pipes and out of our apartment.


Praise GOD in the midst for His provision----- I've been learning a lot lately that sometimes I'm only satisfied in the THINGS that God provides (showers, food, money, relationships, etc.)... and while I thank and praise God for those things that He provides... I totally miss the point and forget that the ULTIMATE provision is in HIM --- In the person of Jesus Christ. HE is our ultimate provision! Praise Him for that, and I pray I continue to grasp this more and more!

With lots of love,
Ella :)