The Dream Team is Coming!

23 September 2016

I had a dream about the Asheville missions team: We were walking and there was somewhere that was closed-off so we couldn’t go in.  I don’t remember how, but we were eventually able to get around the blocked opening and go in.

[When I journaled this last fall I wrote about this dream on a page that was printed in my journal with:

Never stop exploring

Enjoy every moment

I took it as a message from God, saying: never give up!]

I got some wonderful news today: Deborah[1] is going to join us as videographer.  I am so excited about this because she is insanely talented and has the sharpest wit of just about anyone I know.  At the same time, she’s not above cracking corny jokes and puns.  I laugh at it all, and Deborah keeps me in stitches.

Deborah called me the other morning and told me that she’d had a job lined up with a ministry in southern Italy, so she had given notice on her apartment and packed up her things.  Just before she was supposed to arrive there, they told her that they had decided to go in another direction.  Her apartment had already been rented to someone else, so she had nowhere to turn, but to me.  That was when she called me to ask if she could stay here until she finds another apartment and another job.

This is what I love about my ministry because often something that looks like a disaster at first glance turns out to be an opportunity.  In fact, I told Deborah that I need somebody I can trust to look after the apartment while I’m in the US (usually about three months).  Being that she’s already here, she seems like the perfect candidate.  She was very happy for the opportunity, since she has lots of friends here in Milan, having lived here for several years, starting in 2002 when we first met.

Deborah had brought me a couple of Italian flags, and suggested them as keepsakes for the team to sign and put up: one here and one in the church building in Asheville.  Brilliant idea!  You can tell that she’s a creative type.  This is going to be great!  God is good!

[1] Normally, I change all the names of people in my blog and in my books.  But since Deborah is a public figure here in Italy (at least within the Christian community), I have not changed her name.