Various Pictures Around Our New Apartment

I couldn't help taking this picture. This bicycle is just sitting outside the door of our apartment.

This is the tree lined street that takes you to many local stores , including our grocery store.

Here's our puppy, Brinkley, sitting in our new apartment buildings' private courtyard.

And here is a picture of our local grocery store. It's called MiGross. It basically translates "Give it to me in bulk!"

This is the walkway on the backside of our building. This covered walkway leads to each of the four stairwells that make up our building.

How God Takes Care of Us

So....these last couple of weeks, we are constantly reminded of how God is there taking care of us, when we ask and even when we don't.

For instance, two days ago I was out for a meeting and was returning home. I had just talked with Angie and told her I could stop by our favorite pizza by the slice place and pick up some pizza for lunch, when she asked if I had been able to pick up some dishwasher calcium cleaner. I hadn't and she said not to worry about it that she would get it later in the day. I decided to go ahead and go by the store to pick it up to help her out. As I was walking I thought of the two air conditioner holes in our windows and how I needed to call the glass guy (in Italy you have a glass guy) to replace the panes before we moved. I thought of how difficult it can be to get ahold of this guy and kind of started to worry (my bad). You see we don't have much time left. So, I got to the street where our grocery store is (in Italy you have a grocery store - it's one block from our house) and I walked right by a guy carrying a pane of glass. Funny, I didn't think a thing of it...yet. I looked in at the grocery store at the line was extremely long...I thought about it and didn't think that Angie would want me to wait in the line that long just for the cleaner, so I turned around and headed home. Then I passed the guy carrying another pane of glass. I walked right by him and then stopped dead in my tracks. At first I just thought he was putting up some glass shelving in the store he was going in, but the panes were big....was he a glass guy? Could this be God's way of setting something up with some other glass guy so that we could get things moving in the glass department? I turned around and he was bringing another pane of glass up and I asked him, "do you work for this store or do you work with glass?" He said, "he was a glass guy." I said, "Good because I have two windows with holes that I need to get replaced before we leave." He said, "You'll have to ask the boss," then pointed behind me. When I turned around, there standing before me was our glass guy! I explained what we needed and that we were moving and he said he would come over right after that and measure them. He came and the next day they came and installed the new panes of glass. It was only 60 euro!

Then today, I planned on solving our moving problem. You see living in an apartment has some problems when you have large furniture. In Italy, they have these elevated platforms that you can rent that come up to your balcony and you put your stuff on it. You can also put smaller stuff on it and it saves you from using the elevator or going down the five flights of stairs (we're on the fifth floor). So, Angie helped me find some numbers and I started calling. We had a friend who had told us he knew someone who did moving and he would try to get some information for us. He didn't come through. So that's how we found ourselves four days before our moving date looking through the yellow pages. After calling a few places, it looked bleak. Many couldn't do it that soon because they were booked. And the prices for renting the elevated platform, moving van and having them help move was looking to be too expensive. The average move has a cost of 2,000 euro or more. Just the platform has a cost of 450 euro for a five hours. Remember we take even our kitchen with us, that means it needs to be taken down and then moved to storage as well as the rest of our furnishings. So, I finally called one guy by the name of Pino and he said the elevated platform was available for Tuesday, but we still needed a rental van. He graciously said he could be over in thirty minutes to give us a precise estimate for everything. He came and fifteen minutes later we had hired three movers, the moving van and the elevated platform. The Ancona team is going to be helping us that day too and he took that into account for how many other men he needed to bring. It is going to cost 600 euro for everything. God is awesome and he always takes good care of us.

In Times Like These

Today Angie went out to run some errands. We got back to the house and were pulling into our downstairs shared garage. [You first go down a ramped drive into a automatic garage door. Then once inside there are about 20 individual garages with their own doors and locks. We have one of those, it is situated directly underneath our building. So if our building ever comes down in an earthquake our car is going to be a pancake, although we may have other things on our mind at that point. ] Anyway, as we pulled to the outside of the automatic door, our remote wouldn't work. Apparently the battery is low. So, Angie got out to use the key in the key access opener on her side. While she was doing that another car pulled up, waiting to go down too. She got back in and we started to pull forward. But then we different have enough room, as we were backing up the car died and rolled back forward. We restarted and backed up, just as the car honked. We pulled inside as my head started getting hot with frustration. "Who was that guy to be so impatient?" "What's his problem?" "Couldn't he see we were having problems?"

Then I started cooling off, remember to be a good example and give him the evil eye as he pulled in behind us. My expectation was a little high for him. In fact, I had broken one of my life's guidelines. It is that... "You can't expect a non-christian to act like a christian." Not that christians act perfect, but they do have the Holy Spirit within them for guidance. In other words, I should give the world grace because they don't have the same counselor that I do. That doesn't mean that I can be less gracious to christians because, well, they know better. Because another 'life guideline" of mine is that "You can't expect all christians to act alike." For starters, some christians have been christians that long, they are still learning how to yield to the Spirit in their lives. Other christians may just be weak in another area where I am strong, whereas they may be strong in an area where I am weak.

Just thoughts that roll around in my head.