Investing Your Talents (IYT) that John and some friends founded a little over a year ago has found a new Executive Director.  Joe Atkinson, a good friend from when we lived in Arizona, has “signed off” as the owner of Atkinson’s Cabinets and “signed on” as the new director.  Joe has a strong business and ministry background and felt called by God to do something radical.  He called us one afternoon and said, “John, what positions do you have open for IYT?”  Ha!  What DON’T we have open?!  IYT was getting little attention because of the many other responsibilities of the board members.  After prayerful consideration, talks with his family, and a few meetings with the board, Joe and is wife, Tina, took the leap.  Currently the Atkinson’s are selling almost everything they own and buying an RV to travel around the country raising up funds and mentors for the business as mission projects.  IYT’s first project is a car care company that will be established and run by CCCG, a Christian church in Guatemala City.  IYT funds these projects as loans so that established national ministries can support their work within their own country, thereby becoming less dependant on foreign support.  Check out the website at www.investingyourtalents.org.

I guess John thought he wasn’t busy enough so he’s started another new project… a law firm!  You can read all about it at the firm’s new website if you are interested (www.arnothaley.com), but here is a little taste of what they are offering:

John was offered the wonderful opportunity to preach at Chapel Ridge FM Church in Kanata on Sunday morning.  He spoke about the dreams God places in our hearts and the importance of overcoming the fears that prevent us from realizing those dreams.  At the end of the service several people were commissioned to the field for short-term missions with ACCI.  Praise God for the way He is raising up workers and for allowing us to be a part of the Gospel going out to the world.

John shuffles papers in preparation for the board meeting

Board members use technology to meet "face to face" via computer

John preaches Sunday morning at Chapel Ridge FM Church

Praying for ACCI missionaries at Chapel Ridge on Sunday morning

Among the Italians that work very hard during the year are Aldo, Mariela and Rebecca Cerasino (ACCI missionaries in Italy).  Aldo and Mariela have both been working full-time, while at the same time pastoring a rather successful church in Parma.  Arriving home after 6:30 most evenings and working weekends hasn’t kept them from preaching, sharing and opening their home to over 200 Latinos and Italians.

The August break brought them to the USA this year and we were blessed to have them drop into our neighborhood!  Besides the all-important excursion to “Five Guys”, we also took them out to Lake Wylie for some tubing and met with them about a Mission Training school that they are planning to open in Italy with another ACCI missionary couple, Francesco and Alessia Abortivi.  We are extremely excited about this vision to see Italian nationals bring encouragment and equipping to the Italian evangelical church and to people arriving as missionaries to Italy and going out from there to other nations.  We hope to partner with this project in the future as they seek to raise funds and get this off the ground.  Let us know if you are interested in providing scholarships or one-time gifts to see this vision become a reality.

When a church was not available, we decided to host a mission emphasis night in our home and called it, “A Night with a Mission”.   Along with Sky and Angie, we invited our good friend and neighbor, Dan, to share about his recent trip to Asia where he and his daughter brought God’s love to orphans through Bring Me Hope.   It was an encouraging time of sharing and listening and we were excited to see that many people came out for this event (about 50 people attended).  We hope to host more of these in the future if there continues to be interest.

I came across a verse the other day that I think highlights the importance of loving missionaries as they pass through:  “Dear friend, you are faithful in what you are doing for the brothers, even though they are strangers to you. They have told the church about your love. You will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God. It was for the sake of the Name that they went out, receiving no help from the pagans. We ought therefore to show hospitality to such men so that we may work together for the truth.” 3 Jn 5

Amen.

John and his friends (Dan Gray, Justin Arnot and Jeff Whittle) have finally put the last piece in place for “Investing Your Talents” (IYT), a non-profit designed to provide funds and business expertise to non-American Christian ministries wanting to set up businesses that will support the work of the Gospel in their community.  The idea of IYT came out of a mission trip to Guatemala where the guys observed that while there was manpower and vision, more funds were needed to serve the needs of the poor.  The concept of Business-As-Mission reached further than simply providing North American sponsors.  A business would mean jobs, long-term funding, local ownership and remove reliance on foreign on-going support.  Please check out IYT’s website if you get a moment and see if there might be a way that you can get involved.  IYT’s current project is to help fund a car care business in Guatemala.

www.investingyourtalents.org.

Because we are leaving in two short days I can’t help but evaluate how I feel about what we have accomplished in the 3 months we have spent overseas. There are just a few regrets (John says I wouldn’t be a Hedrick if I didn’t have some sort of guilt).  For example, I wish that I had tried a little harder at learning Italian.  I have every excuse in the world why I didn’t get very far, but the fact is that I could have made more of an effort.  I also feel a little sad that I didn’t get to every family’s house who asked us to come for dinner.  There were just so many invitations and we were gone so much of the time.  And, I wonder if I had shifted things around a bit if I could have seen ALL of the European Union in 3 months.  However, when I think about the things that really mattered to us as we set off on this journey, I feel that nothing was wasted and God made every minute count.  We enjoyed incredible family time and met some incredible people.  We also caught the vision for what ACCI missionaries are doing in the world.  I believe that it was particularly important to spend time here in Italy and to understand in a personal way how difficult the spiritual work is here and the need for us as a mission agencies to lend all the support we can to the Italians trying to make a difference for the Kingdom of God in this country.

We just returned from our last family sightseeing excursion.  We traveled to Greece and Turkey for a few days, hopping from Mykonos to Ephesus to Patmos to Rhodes to Crete to Santorini and finally, to Athens.  It was Easter week for the Greek Orthodox population that surrounded us and everyone was excitedly making preparations for the upcoming weekend.  It was a spiritually significant week for me as well.  I cannot describe how it felt to stand in the Ephesus theater where the people were rioting on account of Paul’s preaching (Acts 19), or to look out over Mars Hill from the Acropolis and imagine Paul walking along the same road looking at the same structures erected to the false gods and where he declared, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples made with hands” (Acts 17), or to enter into the tiny cave where John recorded the words, “Behold I am coming soon!  My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done.  I am the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” (Revelation 22:12-13)  

We knew we wanted to see a lot of Greece in a short period of time and so to move around from place to place efficiently we decided to take a cruise.  It meant that we could do most of our traveling at night… go to sleep in one port and wake up at another port by morning.  This was our first cruise and although the more experienced cruisers were grumpy about the quality of food and rooms, we were unspoiled and thought everything was comfortable.  We chose the ship because it was port intensive and we preferred to spend our time on the islands than to spend it in the ship.  The kids, it seemed, did not have the same ambition — they preferred to spend all of their time onboard and were only mildly interested in the awesome archeological attractions we carted them off to.  I guess it is hard for 2,500 year old artifacts to compete for the attention of kids when there are buffets of hot dogs and jello and TV in English.

Jacob and Joel also made a couple of friends on the cruise.  They were two little boys whose father was American and mother was Canadian.  The family is stationed in Norway for three years and were in the middle of year two.  I think all four of the boys were eager to play with someone who spoke their language.   They spent hours on the top deck of the ship using their coats for sails in the assaulting winds.  Fortunately John agreed to be the chaperone for this activity.  His hair is much better suited for it.  The boys also managed to get in the small hot tub one afternoon.  There were three teens in there when they arrived, but they managed to quickly drive them out with the help of their buddies.  I guess they drowned the romantic mood with their screaming, spitting water and wrestling.  It works every time

Well, it is getting late and John has managed to reach packing perfection here.  Everything is fitting and the weight is perfectly balanced.  I guess we can sleep well tonight.  I love that man!  Please pray for the rest of our journey.  We look forward to seeing many of you very soon.

Arrivederci, Italia.  We will miss you.

John and Joel enjoying the buffet for the first time

John and I in front of the great theater of Ephesus

Walking down from the cave where John recorded Revelation, on the island of Patmos

Jacob and Joel (with a friend) enjoy the wind as the ship nears Santorini

The boys and I in Athens at the site of the first modern Olympic games

John makes it back to the Parthenon (28 years later)... John David is about the same age John was when he visited.

Santorini sunset (our last night in Greece)

Fortunately she is in no pain, caught the lump early and is expected to recover quite well (she is in excellent health in all other ways).  However because there is some uncertainty as to what the treatment plan will be and we conveniently live across the street from my parents, we have decided as a family to head home a month early.  We plan to fly out of Italy on April 20th and be home in time to overlap with my sister for a couple of days before she heads back to Minnesota.  

We have been on the move constantly since we decided to pack two months of travel into one.  We had to do some editing and struggled with what we would prioritize as destinations.  In the end, we decided that Paris, London and Greece were the top picks.  We said goodbye to Spain, Czech Republic and a few other dreams for this time around.  

We have already put Paris and London behind us and have our eyes set on Greece for next week.  Because we have done so much in such a short period of time, I am just going to sum up the last two weeks and hope you can imagine the pace, the fun and the excitement we’ve had.  We definitely feel very blessed and full from the experiences we’ve been able to enjoy and are most ready to return home to our family, friends and routine.  Please say a prayer for my mom when you think of it.  Thanks.

The weekend (February 27-February 30)

We spent about 3 days at “home” to do laundry, to drop Carol at the airport and to let Joel be sick with a fever and cough.  Joel’s fever was so high and had lasted for several days so we finally broke down and called Francesco for help.  He arrived the next day with a doctor from the church (and about 10 other people).  Of course, by the time the doctor arrived Joel’s fever had broken and he was like a little bird flitting about and singing his song.  I was so embarrassed because it was pouring outside and she had made a house call and there was not a thing wrong with Joel. I was also embarrassed because we had a house full of people, I hadn’t had a shower, and our house had laundry hanging from every window, chair and curtain rod.  Still, John reminded me that I should be thankful that Joel was so much better.  He’s right.  Thanks for all of you who prayed for him! 

John preached on Sunday evening at Aldo’s church.  I stayed home with Joel and didn’t get the opportunity to hear him. Carol and John David accompanied him and John David said that the sermon was great.  This analysis was an improvement from when we were in India and he was warning the pastor’s daughters about how boring his dad was when he preached.  I think his exact words were, “Prepare to be bored.  My dad’s preaching.”  I don’t think my husband thought that he would preach in his entire lifetime as many times as he has in the last two months. 

On Monday morning we said goodbye to Carol and she headed back to the US from Milan.  We planned to leave for our next excursion on Tuesday and hoped to spend the day on the Internet planning our course.  Unfortunately, our Internet connection went down.  I felt helpless without my computer and wondered how people ever managed to make trips before the invention of DSL.  We found a signal at a hotel lobby and it was enough time to book a hotel in Paris.  We packed up our still damp laundry and headed out the door for France, not yet certain how the week would unfold.

Paris (March 31-April 3)

When you have a family of five or more the list of available hotels shrinks from 985 choices to 2 (if your budget won’t allow for you to split into two rooms).  One of the choices will inevitably be $985 per night and the other will be the choice you have to take.  The hotel we were stuck with advertised that it was on a “quiet street in Paris.”  I think the street was quiet enough (relatively).  However, the hotel itself prompted me to buy my first-ever pair of earplugs.  The walls and floors were paper-thin and it became painfully apparent that people visiting Paris don’t sleep.  

We spent the first day visiting the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, the Obelisk, and the Louvre Gardens and Museum.  The boys climbed the 668 stairs of the Eiffel Tower to the second level (the highest level permitted by stairway) and then caught the elevator on up to the top.  The tower was much taller than I imagined and it was a VERY windy day.  This was Jacob’s favorite site to this point.  He likes things that are famous.  The Mona Lisa was also high on his list.  Jacob has been keeping a drawing journal and records a monument at every major city.  So far he has done some lovely detailed sketches of the Leaning Tower, the Parma square clock, the Taj Mahal, the Colosseum, the Sri Lankan elephant orphanage, the Lufthansa airplane, and the Eiffel Tower.  Next on the list is Notre Dame. 

John and I at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris

Joel makes a friend atop the Eiffel Tower

Jacob practically sprints to the Mona Lisa at the Louvre

The Louvre Museum obviously needed a second visit (2 hours just isn’t enough for 30,000 pieces of art!).  We returned to see the French and Dutch collection of paintings the second day.   We also went to Notre Dame and marveled at the stained glass and the number of gypsies with notes written in English who claimed that their husbands were dead and children were dying.  I try not to be hard-hearted, but do they honestly believe that these stories, duplicated dozens of times within the same square, work better than the truth?   

Three nights sleeping underneath the girl’s dorm room was enough for us and although we loved Paris, we were anxious to make plans to go somewhere else–but where?  We were planning on Spain, which would be a bit cheaper and easier than England, but we wanted to do some research before deciding.  We started searching on the Internet at 10:00 after we put the kids to bed.  Apparently late at night after a full day is not a good time to make decisions.  We went to bed at 12:30 with absolutely nothing booked and a little bit frustrated with each other.  A good night’s sleep, however, made things seem a little brighter.  John and I both woke up with England on our mind.  While John packed up and got the boys going, I got on the Internet and booked the Eurotunnel (the train that takes you and your car across the English Channel in only 35 minutes) and a hotel in the London area. 

London (April 3 – April 7)

We managed to make it to the train with less than 5 minutes to spare and were in England by late afternoon.  We decided to stay in a town north of London, St. Albans.  It is only about 20 minutes by train and metro to the sights of downtown.  We had had enough of driving in big cities and it was one of the two hotels offering a family room for 5.  We liked the hotel.  We were in an upstairs cottage and the only thing waking us up in the morning was the loud bird outside the window.  I was curious to know what kind of bird this might be.  Sort of annoying like a rooster, except the song was so pretty and the bird was so earnest in singing it, you feel more inclined to appreciate it.

Our kids have finally started begging to just be able to play at a park with their friends.  Jacob would like to fly home for a few hours so he can play football on the street with Dalton for the afternoon.  I guess art museums, cathedrals and monuments have a limited appeal (even if it is the Louvre, Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower).  Although we were initially quite annoyed at the complaining, with some further thought we decided that we would respond kindly to their misery and try to design a little different itinerary in London.  We took the sightseeing bus instead of making them walk the 10 miles we intended to cover.  We took in a Broadway style show (39 Steps) that they enjoyed immensely.  We ate out at the Texas Embassy, a Tex Mex restaurant that served sodas with FREE REFILLS and chips with queso dip.  We went to Legoland in Windsor and stood in line for 2 hours to take a 5 minute laser ride.  I imagine John and I felt about as thrilled about Legoland as the boys did about Notre Dame; however Legoland was Joel’s dream come true. Legos are what he spends all of his money on, and no matter how many he has, he always believes that he needs more.  In fact, when we were at the Louvre looking at famous paintings, he was laying on a center bench thumbing through a Lego magazine he found in a shop we passed by.  If he couldn’t afford to buy them, he might as well dream.  

We also took advantage of being in England where movies are not subtitled and took them to Monsters Vs Aliens 3D — this was a huge hit with all of us.  John and Inow  have the treat of getting to hear the movie lines quoted every meal time.  How on earth can they remember all of that dialogue??  Where is all that great memory skill at test time?  Maybe if I animated our social study lessons and included some strange creatures and laser guns the retention would be better… being funny would help, too. 

The only visits in England that centered around John’s and my taste were the Tower of London, The National Museum, St. Paul’s Cathedral and Stonehenge (yes, we drove 2 hours one way to see the boulders for five minutes).  Can you believe that we did all of this in just 3 days?!

The boys atop the London double decker bus

Joel enjoys a Texas-sized bacon cheeseburger at the Texas Embassy

Jacob and Joel take advantage of the setting (Tower of London) to do what they really want to do -- play.

Stonehenge: I know I should be impressed by the 45-ton boulders standing up before cranes were invented, but even the sheep look bored here!

John and I in Rome

When we arrived in Rome on Monday, we dropped our bags at the Hotel Italia and left almost immediately for the Colosseum, the destination that our kids were most excited about.  It was a gorgeous day — clear and relatively warm.  We were talked into a “informative and entertaining tour” led by a man with a sweater wrapped dramatically around his neck and a terrible English accent.  He took us to various stations describing (I think) the role of gladiators and wild beasts in Roman entertainment.  I always hope that the kids will pick up great history lessons when we take these tours, but I usually spend most of the time whispering in their ears, reminding them of the importance of paying attention as they wander off to reenact some mighty imaginary battle scene.  John David is finally able to appreciate tours and trivia –I like to think that this is due to my years of instruction and whispering, but it is probably just because he is almost 13 now.

After the Colosseum tour we wandered across the street to Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum.  The low season and difficult economy probably meant that there were less people in the Ancient City than usual.  We didn’t really have to wait in line or push for a view.  Still, there are plenty of tourists around who are still willing to pay to have their picture taken with Roman soldier characters dressed up in a hats with broom bristles glued on top.

The second day was spent in the Vatican, touring St. Peters and the Vatican Museum.  We also managed to squeeze in the Pantheon before sunset.  

The boys near the Vatican

Joel uses Carol's binoculars to check out the ceiling of St Peters

For the third day in Rome we split up along gender lines.  Carol and I stayed in Rome shopping, trying pastries and visiting additional sights.  The boys preferred to take the train to Pompeii to see what happened to the town when Mt. Vesuvius exploded in November of 74 AD and thousands of residents were caught off guard. It is not surprising that they would choose this activity over shopping.  

In Pompeii

On Saturday we were blessed to have Luke and Dawn Mann visit.  Luke and Dawn are serving in central Italy as missionaries and come up to the Parma area to be encouraged by the churches here and to serve as an encouragement to the Italians.  We had them to lunch and then took a walk through the incredible park system here in Collecchio.  We were joined by Francesco and Alessia for dessert and the walk.  In the evening Carol spent time with the boys making puppets with supplies she hauled from home.  The prepared a puppet show for us — a creative re-telling of the story of the Good Samaritan (the Good Samaritan was a Target employee who helps a Walmart employee).  We used modern technology to take the show to grandma and grandpa via skype.

John preached on Sunday morning at Francesco’s church.  He spoke about the importance of replacing our worries with faith, a timely message for many at the church.  We met a large party from the church for lunch at a pizza parlor before heading to downtown Parma for a stroll through Parco Ducale, the Parma Cathedral (Carol hadn’t seen it yet), and the gelato shop  The time nearly got away from us, but we managed to file into Aldo’s church just as the service was starting at 5:30.  It was Father’s Day here in Italy and so Aldo preached about the importance of fathers respecting God’s place in their children’s life and supporting HIS calling for their future.  Aldo also invited Carol to speak and she shared briefly on her vision for the family.  She spoke in Portuguese (much to the delight of the Brazilian attendees) and was translated into Italian — we never did know what she said, but believe that Lord will use her in some way in the future with the churches here.

Long day… Full weekend… off to Rome on Monday.

Our Friday night hosts looking weary at 11:00 p.m.

Walking through Collecchio's park on Saturday afternoon

John and Dawn

Luke, a master artist in wood, is inspired by all of the raw material around

Carol and the boys display their puppets