Ok, after way too long, we’ve put some photos up of us over here! To make a long story short, I, Matt, the server monkey, spent way to long putting off setting up a photo sharing web app. In the end, we got a flickr account. Visit it here. I also put a link up in the sidebar to the right for easy reference.
Archive for June, 2007
Well, we in Italy are coming up on one of the strangest seasons of all in the country: Summer. In case you didn’t know, most Italians are appalled when they hear about American vacation for the first time. To them, the US is a country full of workaholics and Italy is much more sensible. Italian vacations and holidays include the following:
10 to 20 state holidays a year.
the ponte or “bridge” between a holiday and the closest weekend if said holiday does not fall on a monday or friday.
the week around easter.
the week or two around christmas
ferragosto, the two week span in August that is more exciting than Christmas to some Italians. Though officially about two weeks, this effectively includes the entire month of August, and perhaps some of July, too.
Weekends are out too once the weather turns nice in May. (There’s one family who attends the church that hasn’t been here in about a month because they have been at their mountain cabin most of the time.) And all in all it’s a bit silly–and a bit frustrating–as suddenly everyone who was very dedicatedly coming to bible studies or meetings from January to May suddenly turns into a flake.
Still, it has its perks, as we will be able to have much more time with the youth. They all about disappeared mid-May to be very studious only to show up again this last week, as say, about 100% of the evaluation of students in the Italian school system is final exams which are notoriously difficult (blech!). Because they are all done and don’t have anything to do until September, we will have fun with them.
Really, summer has the potential to be great, as everyone has a lot more free time. The biggest hurdle is to convince people that the church is worth spending time with. For various reasons, be it family, a lack of normal work hours (the normal work week is 36-40 hours, but free days aren’t necessarily Saturdays), or culture in general, we have trouble as a church having a sense of community.
The church has a hard time creating a more effective community because most people within it don’t see the point of it. Effectively, while the Sunday morning service is big enough to fill our small meeting space, the attendance of activites outside of the worship service is made up of a dedicated few.
Hopefully this summer will prove more fruitful. With the youth we are trying to provide a more welcoming environment for them to make their own.
So, we hope that summer is off to a great start back in the States, and we ask that you pray for us and the church here, especially for help in being a Christian body in more than just the abstract!
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