So much has happened over the last couple of months. We were notified by the landlord of the rooms we have rented for almost twelve years that our church would have to find another place to meet; he had put the space up for sale. After looking for several weeks and being denied by all of the places within our budget, location, and size (often they would say that the neighbors would not permit a church to be there), we made arrangements to put all of our things in the basement storage of a couple of our members. We rented a van and held our last services. We had 5 visitors on our last day. One young man testified that he had accepted Christ when reading John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Afterwards, everyone pitched in, including visitors, and we moved everything out of the rooms and into storage. As the first Sunday in January was approaching, we still did not have a place to meet. A couple of years ago, my wife had taught English for a few months in a room around the corner from our apartment. We called the owner, and she was happy for us to rent the space and had no problem with a church meeting there. We have been there every Sunday this year. So far, although at times it is a bit cold, it seems to be accessible, and for the time being, it has served us well. This last Sunday, we had 2 visitors: a young man and his mother. He had called our church phone number a bit more than a week previously at about 11:00 p.m. looking for a church that wasn’t Calvinistic. While we would love to see more fruit in our soul winning, we are happy to be available to encourage the saints as well.
On the family side of things, our mortgage took longer than expected to be approved, and since the realtor wouldn’t talk to the broker, the broker wouldn’t talk to the realtor. So, the realtor sold the house which we had made an offer on before the bank finished the process of considering our request for the mortgage. That put us in a difficult situation. Our apartment landlord allowed us to stay a few more weeks but could not extend the rental period any further because of contracts he had made with contractors to come do work on the apartment. We had to rush to find a place to rent. This again was full of obstacles since we do not have Italian work contracts, and all of our financial information is from the U.S. The Lord again provided for us. The last of about a dozen apartments we looked at accepted us, and we sign the contract today. It has been very busy for us, and things currently do not look like we thought they would; but the Lord has provided in His timing, and we praise Him for it!
As for our request for prayer for our situation regarding a vehicle, God again has been gracious to us. Within a week of sending out our last prayer letter, we sold some things which we put on eBay and a local site like Craigslist and made a nice profit on them. The details are too much to put here, but to us, it is evident that God was moving in this too. We were also surprised at the number of our churches who donated to the cause. We had no expectations except that some would pray. To be honest, at times we have wondered how many people read our updates. Our email service shows that 72% of those who financially support us opened the email containing our last prayer letter, and half of them interacted with it (possibly to download the letter to print it or share it with their church). Again, God has humbled us, and we are grateful for so much of your clear love for our family and the ministry here in Italy. While we haven’t purchased a vehicle yet, we believe we have enough money to do so. After our move, we will start looking for a vehicle. Thank you to everyone who sacrificed and gave for this purpose. We will send the new address in the next letter.
Missionaries to the people of Italy,
Christopher, Amy, William, AnnMarie, and Charlotte Yetzer