Ministering in Lockdown

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I remember when we first started hearing about Coronavirus back in January.  I was one of those who made fun of it…after all, we’ve had our fair share of SARS, Mad Cow Disease, Swine Flu, Bird Flu…you name it, we’ve heard it.

Yet when the numbers of people dying started incrementing rapidly we realized this was something more than the usual.
As of this writing more than 124,000 people in the world have contracted the virus, with more than 4,600 deaths and in Italy we’ve had over 12,400 cases and over 800 deaths.

I remember when we first started hearing about Coronavirus back in January.  I was one of those who made fun of it…after all, we’ve had our fair share of SARS, Mad Cow Disease, Swine Flu, Bird Flu…you name it, we’ve heard it.

Yet when the numbers of people dying started incrementing rapidly we realized this was something more than the usual.
As of this writing more than 124,000 people in the world have contracted the virus, with more than 4,600 deaths and in Italy we’ve had over 12,400 cases and over 800 deaths.

When Saturday we announced that there would be no church Sunday we were hoping the worst would have soon been over.  Unfortunately we were wrong.

Monday night the Italian government decided to shut down the country further and again today we heard that more restrictions have come about, so that Italians are not allowed to leave their homes if not for work or basic necessities, such as groceries and pharmacy.  Everything else is closed.
Schools will be closed at least until April 3rd.

We have attempted homeschooling this week (our hats are off to all you homeschooling parents!!!).
Pray for us!

So how do we minister under such circumstances?  After all, greater the need, greater the need for the Gospel!
I thank the Lord for very capable coworkers! Yesterday Daniel, Danilo and I met at church to figure out what to do.  (I mostly sat there pretending to understand the technological gibberish).
We decided after last week’s lack of a service to look into a way to stream services.

Streaming

Praise God we were able to stream via Facebook Live. Italian Christians were hungry for fellowship and worship!  The feedback we got was overwhelming and Daniel’s brief message from Psalm 46 was exactly what the people needed.
(You can follow us here. We will be streaming again Sunday at 10 AM Italian time and again Wendesday 8:30 pm our time.). 

We look forward to ministering to people.  We know that God uses everything for His glory.

We will be praying for you, as many of you soon may be facing what we have been going through.

What joy to know that our hope is not found in this world, and that our hope is eternal in Christ!

God is good!

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