Baptisms

One month ago, we had the awesome privilege of celebrating our first baptisms here in our church plant "Insieme". It was with great joy when Beppe approached us in early September saying he was ready to follow Christ in obedience and be baptised. All of our children have made professions of faith, Luca being the most recent to put his faith in Jesus just this past July. We were excited that Beppe's decision provided an opportunity for our kids to also participate in baptism. We can't begin to express the emotion of the thought that our kids would be the first ones baptised into the community being established here in Caselle AND that Jonathan would have the honor to perform his first baptisms with our children.

As a team we had much to plan and organize: from where to even host a service, to what to baptise people in, to food, service structure, invites, powerpoint, music etc. You get the picture. It was a lot to work through this being our first service ever on top of it being such a huge event. It's not like it was our first service with 10 people, but rather an evangelistic outreach to 70+ people. It was an overwhelming thought at times to our team of 3, but God provided wisdom, courage, stamina and team unity as we prepared. 

We missed taking a group picture on baptism day, but this is one from just a few weeks prior.

We gave ourselves a good laugh and brief panic attack when we tested the inflatable pool only one week prior. The kids could not get over the advertisement on the box that said "Giant Family Pool" but was actually only big enough for a baby. They laughed so hard! We immediately ordered 2 larger pools of varying sizes from Amazon in hopes that one of them was good enough to dunk an adult sized male. It was with great relief that we didn't have to come up with a backup plan to the backup plan.

We were so thankful to find a local multipurpose facility room to rent for the day. It was absolutely ideal for our needs. We arrived a little before 8am to set up but underestimated the time it would take to unload cars make multiple trips home and fill the pool one bucket at a time. We were racing around all morning trying to set up chairs, food, pool, projector, video cameras and greet early guest arrivals. I did not get as many pictures as I wanted to and it was very disappointing that our video filming was a fail. But I am glad to share what we did get.

We were very excited about the number of people that came. It was a beautiful service and testimony of God's saving grace and new life found in him. We continue to receive comments from people about how touching everything was. Jonathan preached a short sermon outlining the significance of baptism and explaining the reason why we as evangelicals wait until after a profession of faith to baptise. We had a couple of friends from the Torino church come and help lead worship which was encouraging to have their participation and help so it wasn't a one man show.

Samuel and Emma were very nervous about reading their testimonies. Poor Samuel planned to go first but then got total stage fright and couldn't pull it together. Emma quickly declined going first so the number one spot was left to Luca who jumped (just about literally) to take the stage first. That gave courage to Samuel who was then able to go second followed by Emma. 

The water was a bit cold, try as we did to warm it with kettle after kettle of boiling water. The facilities hot water did not last long so it was fairly chilly water as you can tell from their faces as they stepped in and went under.

After the service everyone was invited for a light refreshment, but nearly half of the people went home to have lunch instead. The Italian version of "light" was more than sufficient to be called lunch in our books. Melissa made 25lbs. of cold rice salad which was equally matched if not more with my three sheet cakes! But we weren't the only ones who overshot amounts as Beppe must have brought 70 liters of drinks. Ah well, at least we didn't have to cook for a week with all the leftovers we had. 

Dio Vi Benedica: God Bless You

We had some very special guests from Ohio whose weekend travels through Italy allowed them to attend the baptismal service. Mike and Dawn are dear friends and supporters who also attend one of our supporting churches in Dayton. It was such a blessing to have them present and step in as surrogate grandparents for the day. It was a hard day not to have family present for such a milestone event in the lives of our children, but it was comforting to me to have Mike and Dawn by my side in the front row. 

When we returned home the kids were quite surprised to that they had gifts to open from us, our visitors and several people who attended the service. They totally were not expecting that as part of their special day so it was a sweet blessing to see their faces light up! Each of them got an ESV Bible upgrade, devotional books, Bible books, picture frames, mugs and more.

Certificates of Baptism! 

We wish you could have all been here to see the fruit of years and years of prayer for our family, children and the ministry here! God is so good and so faithful! To him be the glory!

For those who have not seen the video that our colleague put together, it is worth a watch!


And more pictures if you just can't get enough ;)