Shawn and Laura Green (Lucas, Emmanuel, Matteo, Isabella)
Serving in: Termoli, Italy
Program name: transForm (long-term)
- Serving since:
- 2014
Shawn and Laura and their children and their three boys, Lucas, Emmanual, Matteo, and Isabella serve with a church-planting team in Termoli, assisting with worship and discipleship, reaching out through home Bible studies, and developing relationships to expand the work into new areas.
The Greens see their mission “to be examples of redemption and relationship with Jesus Christ, in a culturally relevant way. Our vision is to see the Italian people engage in a meaningful relationship with Christ, and to restore the hope of the gospel that has been lost throughout the generations, not only for them, but for those who will follow.”
Shawn and Laura also see their role as “connectors” with believers in Sicily where they served under the tranSend program several years ago. Fostering those relationships helps shorten the gap between Sicily and the Bari/Puglia-Molisse regions. The Greens’ gifts of worship, outreach and hospitality are opening new doors for the Gospel in Italy.
From their featured Worker Profile in the Summer 2015 issue of Transforming:
Assignment:
We are in the town of Termoli, Italy, on the Adriatic coast. Our goal is to assist the church at Vasto in forming a sister church in Termoli. There is already a home group community of believers that meets during the week, but we are still in the discipleship/spiritual growth stage so currently we are meeting together with the church in Vasto. We assist where needed at the church in Vasto on the weekends, while building relationships with both the believers in the the Vasto/Termoli areas and also in our community and daily routine.
Biggest challenges:
Challenges include balancing our relationships and responsibilities between the two communities of believers, working within a local culture that equates the state religion with the corruption in government and sees no use for either, and balancing ministry life with raising small children.
Biggest joys:
Seeing six people complete the discipleship course this past spring and follow in believers baptism, seeing our children becoming more acclimated to the culture, and being able to live life and be an example and encouragement to the believers here, especially the first generation that don’t know what growing up in a believing family looks like.
A typical day:
Laura has language lessons several mornings a week or shops the local vendors to buy food for the day. Late morning and afternoons are set aside for Shawn to study and prepare for Bible studies or worship responsibilities. We are then either at Bible study, youth group, or prayer meeting in the evening. If we don’t have an event in the evening, we try to either host friends or neighbors or go down into the town square to make connections and build relationships.