Traveling Freels

My family came to visit us about a week ago! It was fantastic, though now our 2 person apartment seem quite a bit quieter after being inundated with 4 more people for a week and a half. It was very fun though because we had saved up all these things to do with them. You know when you don’t go do the things that there are to do in the town you live in until people come to visit. Well that is what we did and it turned out great. First there was a flurry of food….there are so many good cheeses and wines and salami objects that are to expensive and heavy for everyday that are perfect to eat when there is company and no one is thinking about dieting or staying in shape.

Good food you need to try if you come to the Veneto:

Sopresa di Schio with or without garlic

Asiago cheese…all types very old to very young

Seafood if you are by the sea

and white sparkling wines!

The biggest food hit though was chocolates from our local chocolate store where they make them in the back and sell them with coffee out front….passion fruit chocolate is the best ever!

Besides the food we went to see a lot of the things we’d saved up, wanting to go see them but, putting it off based on we live here laziness. It was good to see the places, it was good to be a tourist for a week but, in some ways it drove home the fact that we are only in Italy for two more months.

While seeing Soave castle with it’s perfectly kept ramparts that give you a sweeping view of the valley, (a castle we pass every time we get on the highway and that I’ve been wanting to go see since April) was amazing it also meant that that untied up end wasn’t loose any more it was done. In some ways it felt like the store of undone things was part of our reassurance that we actually lived here and as people that live here we can always go look at it later. Soave and the museums in Vicenza itself were more like that for me. Riva del Garda and Sirmione and Aquileia were less so because they are further away I think.

So now we’ve showed off our church and our life to someone else outside of ourselves that will be apart of our life after we leave Vicenza. That part of it was really satisfying because without it when you get back you have this uncanny feeling that in everyone elses eyes you were just missing for 2 years not actually living a real life while you were gone, just gone, dormant somehow. Now that my family has seen my life I feel less like leaving is an approaching doom for my memories of being here though I do feel like it is more certain that we are leaving now.

The church is doing well. There was a baptism during the Ghanaian service this Sunday and about 3 weeks ago there was another in the Italian service. Which is something to praise God about….I’m specifically excited about them because it also is an answer to prayers that Matt and I have been praying since we got here. It is just really good to see the church grow, I do pray though that the church will be capable of supporting the new christians that have entered it, I worry about that one.

In the next couple weeks we’re really busy (by our standards) one last schebang I guess before we wind down toward packing. There is a conference, a women’s day (yay! the women are actually doing it and they are actually coming and people are actually invited from all over north italy and yay! in general) and then starting the same day as the women’s day there is a youth retreat. Pray that we get through it ok!