Service program: tranSend
Serving since: 2024
Assignment:
We are located in a small neighborhood community in Palermo, Italy, and we work hard to serve where there is need. Marianna serves with the Sunday kindergarten class, in the choir, and with the women’s group. Marcello’s main roles are preaching from the Bible during church services and leading the evangelization committee. He also sings in the choir.
First and foremost, we take care of what needs to be done in every aspect of our community, including cleaning. In addition, we are working to create “leisure” groups as a way of community-building, followed later by sharing the gospel and discipleship.
The groups have been good, and they work really well, because you can be together and talk about everything. Eventually you confide in and advise each other.
Biggest challenge:
Our biggest challenge is to find the right balance of time. We want to be generous in spending free time with people. In addition, we find ourselves wanting to study more and more of our culture and the ways people respond to the gospel here. It’s less effective to evangelize directly; you must first make a lot of friends and create connections to share your faith, or people often get scared off and tend not to trust the messenger.
Biggest joy:
Being able to serve in God’s mission in this way brings an indescribable joy to our hearts. It is so nice to see how, through our service, God acts and works. We especially notice this when people who showed no interest before ask you for help in knowing more about Jesus. It’s a miracle to witness and a joy to encounter hearts that are opening to the Lord.
A typical day:
On a typical day, we study. There is often preparation and work on the next sermon message. We keep in touch with the people that we are discipling or following up with.
We rehearse for the Sunday service and make some visits to friends and brothers and sisters. In addition, we often prepare Christian gadgets to donate after our meetings.
Our goal is to create groups of people who deeply love and follow Jesus, and we want to make this love known to as many people as possible.