multiplication
Last night I had a really amazing student meeting. I met an Italian girl named Annalisa at the beginning of the year. She is the best friend of Federica, one of our only involved walking believers. I didn't really think too much about Annalisa, she was pretty distant and not too talkative and it seemed like she barely understood any english. To add to that she didn't respond to any of my texts after our first meeting. I mentally had put her on the back burner.
Last week we did an outreach called "Dov 'e L'amore?". It was really similar to a campaign we did at U of I called "Where's the Love?". As part of this outreach I text messaged all of the contacts that I had, including Annalisa. Annalisa was one of the few people to respond. She said that she was sorry that she couldn't make it to the meeting, but she hoped that she would see me soon.
I hadn't really planned on pursuing her much, but I texted her back to see if she wanted to get coffee sometime. She responded quickly, saying that she and Federica would meet me at Termini (the train station) at 5 and we could get coffee.
I brought Lauren with me and we waited for them. As Fede and Annalisa approached I noticed something clearly different about her. She smiled as she walked up and was really friendly. Amazingly, her English was INCREDIBLE. (Now, I'm thinking she was just not wanting to talk at all at the first meeting, and so she pretended not to understand.) We went up to a cafe to get espresso and began to talk. At first she was really quiet, even when we tried to draw her out. We ended up mostly talking to Fede about her new boyfriend. Later in the conversation Fede was talking about praying for a friend to come to Christ and said, "I know it will happen, like it happened to her", as she gestured to Annalisa. We quickly found out that Annalisa had prayed to receive Christ a week prior to our meeting!! She is excited to meet with us to follow up her new decision and begin a discipleship relationship!
I'm still not sure if the full importance of what happened has hit me. An Italian in our movement shared the Gospel with another Italian who came to Christ. That makes her our very first multiplying disciple. Praise the Lord :)
Last week we did an outreach called "Dov 'e L'amore?". It was really similar to a campaign we did at U of I called "Where's the Love?". As part of this outreach I text messaged all of the contacts that I had, including Annalisa. Annalisa was one of the few people to respond. She said that she was sorry that she couldn't make it to the meeting, but she hoped that she would see me soon.
I hadn't really planned on pursuing her much, but I texted her back to see if she wanted to get coffee sometime. She responded quickly, saying that she and Federica would meet me at Termini (the train station) at 5 and we could get coffee.
I brought Lauren with me and we waited for them. As Fede and Annalisa approached I noticed something clearly different about her. She smiled as she walked up and was really friendly. Amazingly, her English was INCREDIBLE. (Now, I'm thinking she was just not wanting to talk at all at the first meeting, and so she pretended not to understand.) We went up to a cafe to get espresso and began to talk. At first she was really quiet, even when we tried to draw her out. We ended up mostly talking to Fede about her new boyfriend. Later in the conversation Fede was talking about praying for a friend to come to Christ and said, "I know it will happen, like it happened to her", as she gestured to Annalisa. We quickly found out that Annalisa had prayed to receive Christ a week prior to our meeting!! She is excited to meet with us to follow up her new decision and begin a discipleship relationship!
I'm still not sure if the full importance of what happened has hit me. An Italian in our movement shared the Gospel with another Italian who came to Christ. That makes her our very first multiplying disciple. Praise the Lord :)
posted by holly at 2:59 PM
1 Comments:
i totally just left a comment but it didnt' show up! anyway, i loved this story! You did a great job of telling it...it was so exciting to see how God has been working in her all along! And it gave me several things to pray about. It's awesome to hear those kind of STINT stories...and to think there's so many more ways God is using you that you'll never get to hear about!...maybe in heaven though! I hope so! Anyway...have you thought about ICS? I was just thinking about Rome and how awesome it is and how it would be sweet to be on ICS staff there...well, talk to you later :)!
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