sooner or later love is gonna getcha.

a flock of sheep i stopped and watched one day

i am tired of my boring blog post names, so from now on the title will be a lyric from a song that i hear while i'm writing the post, deal?

anyway, 2 saturdays ago angela and i went with the HUF kids to stia, where we learned to weave, just to visit our weaving teacher and spend a relaxing saturday in that wonderful town.

ang and i on our way to stia

the next day we participated in the corri la vita which is kind of like the race for the cure in the states. there were over 20,000 people in piazza signoria that morning, some to run a marathon and some to walk a 5k. which group do you think i was in?

that evening we went to the bible school and had 30 HUF students over for taco salad and a devotional, led by ryan. after the devo we presented them with info about "avanti italia" and what we do here and they asked us questions. i got to show a few of the videos i have made over the months. the kids were sweet.

stretching before the walk

that next day began our second week of classes, i have 5 on mondays, 2 on tuesdays and 5 on wednesdays. mondays, like last semester, are spent at the bible school from morning to night. ryan starts with a student at 9:30 monday mornings and since we have the scooter now, we have to go together. i use the morning to prepare my lessons for the week, we have lunch with the other avanti members and, spend the afternoon in classes. every monday evening, remember, we have our men's and womens's bible studies and a simple supper together. i so look forward to that study.

"flipper"

besides regular our classes last week, ryan and i re-did all the bulliten boards in our church "fellowship hall", we tried to organize/crammed 3 huge boxes worth of clothes into our already crowded church clothes closet, we had our weaving class, ryan was sick, we went to our italian bible study on thursday night, we went to a mexican restaurant with some friends friday night, i went to the saturday market in scandicci, we went to a neopolitano pizza place in piazza santo spirito and went out for gelato saturday night for ermenita's birthday.

ermenita's birthday celebration

we are also trying to eat healthier...that is fun.
                                                             
                                                     
this sunday was a day as busy as they get. that morning we had church as usual, which included ryan leading singing in english and italian, and then we had our monthly potluck meal together. after that we split up into groups and went all over different parts of the city. sunday was the national day of evangelism in italy so we talked to people and handed out information about what we believe. that evening we returned back to the church and sang together. then us avanti members headed over to one of the dorms at the university of florence where we had our first "gathering" (our effort to spread the gospel to college students here) of the fall semester. we had a small turnout but it was great. we discussed our goals and how to get people interested so we'll see how it goes. we are praying that this group is spirit led, not us led. i'm just grateful to be an instrument He is using to plant a jesus seed in someone's heart.