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| Working hard and always smiling |
As we did last year, Traveling Light again organized a work week in Italy. Offering practical help with a group of volunteers in Communita Brezzano, a Christian Therapeutic community in beautiful Tuscany.
[click on the pictures for an enlargement]
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| Camfire |
Communita Brezzano consists of three old Tuscan homes in the mountains. Maria Meier (a German widow who has been in charge of the community for many years) lives in one of the houses and receives women with emotional, psychological or addiction problems.
Her long-time helper Boris lives in one of the other houses and receives men with similar problems. The third house, Casa Shalom, is being rented out as vacation or groups home, which brings in some income to keep the work going. We rented Casa Shalom for a week.
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| pizza from the wood oven |
Each day the guys disappeared into the woods to cut trees and chop wood. They did a tremendous amount of work and stacked enough wood for the upcoming winter in the cellar of the men's home. A very labor intensive job, that would cost Boris weeks and weeks to accomplish.
All three houses are being heated through wood heaters, and so they need a huge supply to survive the cold months. Thanks to the help of David, Jan, Menno, Nick and Teun this job was done in several days. Thumbs up for our faithful volunteers!
The theme for this week was 'spiritual warfare', we did Bible studies on this subject every night. Those were precious evenings, sitting together talking, praying, discussing, and singing songs. Teun brought his guitar and was leading the group each night in worship. He did an awesome job!
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| Sunday brunch with Maria and Boris |
Thank you very much David, Menno, Nick and Teun for your endless energy, humor and enthusiasm. Together we were able to let our light shine in Italy and it is our prayer that our time given will bring forth much fruit in the lives of the people there, as well as in our own lives.
It is indeed so much better to give than to receive.
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