Saying goodbye

Goodbye!After hundreds of miles of blessings and smiles, the time has come for us to say our goodbyes.

Tuesday morning we fly back to Italy.

Thank you to all who have made this furlough extra special by your hospitality, your prayers, your encouragement and your gifts.

I’m sorry that we weren’t able to see everyone, but we look forward to seeing many more of you next summer, when we plan on completing the second half of our furlough.

In the meantime, please pray for us. Many challenges lie ahead, but also many opportunities to share the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Keep in touch!

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Making new friends, reconnecting with old ones

Greetings from Ohio!
This week is the halfway mark of our summer furlough.

We spent this week at the Baptist Mid-Missions annual conference in Elyria. What a great culmination to two months of blessings!

How have we been blessed?

I’m glad you asked!

1. Reconnecting

Reconnecting with all of you who are passionately praying and giving to the ministry in Italy.

The hardest part is always saying goodbye, knowing it will be a long time before we meet again.

2. Making new friends

We are always excited to see how God is working in people’s lives. This week for example we met the brother of a friend we knew from college!

Even Noah made a new BFF!

3. Sharing the spiritual need of Italy.

Ultimately we are here because of our great burden to raise awareness for the great need and harvest awaiting in Italy.

One family (you know who you are!) drove two hours to hear us share!

Tomorrow night we will be speaking to a group of concerned Christians in Columbus, OH.

We have even started scheduling for next summer!

We appreciate our prayers and your faithful giving. God is so good to us, allowing us to have a small part in His perfect plan.

The Whitmans

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Children’s worship from Easter

Enjoy!

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Happy Easter from Italy!

Greetings from the Centro Evangelico!
We had a wonderful Easter celebration with many unbelievers in attendance. 
We started with a traditional Umbrian breakfast of cheese bread and eggs. 

Then we enjoyed worship led by the choir and children’s choir. 

Finally we listened to a wonderful message on Jesus’ words on the cross. 

The Gospel was proclaimed, may Jesus Christ be praised!

The Whitmans

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A unique opportunity for you and an amazing opportunity for our church!

I don’t often forward notes from others, but I just received a note from my parents, veteran missionaries Fred and Rachel Whitman, that you do not want to miss.

First, they talk about a unique opportunity: an Italian Christian History Tour, led by my Dad.
It is unique in three ways:
1. It may be the last tour my Dad organizes
2. It would be a great opportunity for you to enjoy Italy, learn about our history and have a greater understanding of the need of the country.
3. For a tour of its kind, it is truly a great deal.  My Dad never makes any money off it…he loses money every time, but he considers it worth it because of what it does toward raising awareness in the hearts of the participants to the needs of Italy.

The second part is regarding our new deacon!  As a church body we were able to vote on a new deacon for our church body.

Soon, we will update you on our furlough plans, but this message is time sensitive, so without further ado, happy reading, and we hope to see many of you here!
(If you subscribe to both letters I apologize for the redundancy!)

Jon and Melodee  

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