STORIES OF ROME

Story 3: A Dream

The third and final story in our "Stories of Rome" series, comes from our teammate Danielle:

"Inla is an Albanian woman that has lived here for 10 years.  She has been going to a local Christian church in Rome for a couple of years and just a few months ago she made a decision to follow Jesus.  As she's been discipled by a few Christian friends, she really felt God calling her to get more involved in outreach. She heard about the meal we do on Saturdays and started coming about a month ago.  She wanted to do more and asked about coming to Il Soggiorno (our refugee center).  At first she was very nervous since the center is mainly guys, but she came a couple of weeks ago and jumped right in.  She even played cards with some of the guys and another volunteer.  

'Wow,' she said, 'that was really fun and I was nervous but the guys were really nice and I'm seeing them a little differently.' 

 That night, she had a dream about starting a nonprofit organization to help refugees by placing them with families that need overnight supervision for elderly family members.  Currently, Inla works with a placement company that places American tutors with wealthy Italian families that want English tutors for their children. So, she has lots of influential contacts and already knows a lot about placement companies in Italy.  She realized that many Italians are getting older and it is a problem for families to find someone to watch over their elderly family members.  But if we can link refugees with these families, the refugees would have housing and provisions and the elderly would have help during the night.  It will be interesting to see what this vision looks like a few years down the road.  But right now it is so exciting for me to see God giving more and more people a heart for refugees, especially people in Italy because they can make a lasting impact on the situation here.  It is cool to think that we and Soggiorno play a small part in connecting people and needs to see situations, communities and lives transformed. " 

This is one of many stories that Shay and I are called to be a part of.  Our time to reach our goal is running short.  We need your help in order to join God's Kingdom work in Rome.  Please consider joining us.

To pledge or give to the Rome ministry, please click HERE.