Dear Friends of Mission Surge,
I wanted to send out a rather detailed update from one of our partners in Italy as well as to remind you that TODAY our partner work ECCI (Pastor Jerry Marcellino and his wife Dawn) will be traveling to Italy to work with Cora Deo and Andrea Artioli. He has not quite raised half of the funds needed for this trip so if you would like to help offset some of his cost, please feel free to give.
*Please visit the link below if you would like to offset some of our remaining $$ expenses:
Or you can mail a check to:
Mission Surge
1126 Tanyard Road
Crystal Springs, MS 39059
Please note in the memo that it is for ECCI or Jerry M.
Here is an update from Andrea and Coram Deo.
Dear brothers and sisters,
thanks so much for remembering us in your prayers.
Phil 1
I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
We are all well and thank God we are encouraged.
The Lord has given us to spend 2 months in USA last July and August and it has been very good for the kids and family. It was a break from ministry and church matters.
It was a re-charging time for us. Sometimes we really need to unplugged. Hope to be able to come to see you with the family sometimes.
The Family
Lisa is 15 and Tommy is 13. Doing both fine. They are in the middle of their teenagers years where they are trying to find their own ways of doing things.
We are happy to help them in this process which sometimes is not easy. Doing a hard church planting work they have no Christian friends of their age. We do pray so hard that friends may be converted to Christ Jesus. Now there is a small youth group in the church and they will meet during the weekends.
Please pray that these young people may become followers of Christ Jesus and good servants of the Lord.
Eva is 4. She is our little "monkey". She is so funny and full of life. She has brought more life in our family.
Our kids are opening big doors for the gospel with their friends and families.
It is a huge opportunity to share the gospel with people who do not know what is a Christian Gospel and a Christian Church.
Andrea's mother.
Last sunday we had the news that Adriana has a skin cancer. This is something that has come back since 1991.
She will have a surgery on December 29. Please pray for her as she will be so close with the Lord in her walk with the Lord.
Sola Grazia Church. www.chiesasolagrazia.it
We do praise God for the wonderful spirit there is in the church. Believers are united and there is a deep sense of growth due to the biblical preaching of the Word of God. God is really moving among us and people have a higher view of the Bible and of our sovereign God.
Andrea has just finished the series on the Gospel of Mark. He has started in 2008 and he has preached on it 112 times.
Now we will move for few months on WHAT IS A BIBLICAL CHURCH AND WHAT IS A BIBLICAL PASTOR AND ELDERS? Then he will start a series on ACTS.
We have several new people attending the church. Sometimes we have 70 people during the service.
Online services
There is a big move ahead for us.
Our staff has decided to broadcast our services.
This idea really came from our contacts that has suggested us to give them a chance to see in a PC what is an Evangelical Service before to come in physically.
We thought that is a good way to connect with them and new people, specially now that we are so exposed in the town of Mantova and all over Italy through the ministry of Coram Deo.
The cost of this project is about 8,000 euros or 12,000 USD.
Women's ministry
Emanuela started teaching a women monthly Bible study on Ephesians since last February.
The meeting is on Sunday afternoon at the SOLA GRAZIA church, which gives the opportunity to the women of all ages to come, have a chat and a cup of tea together then enjoy the verse by verse study .
Our aim has been to deepen our superficial knowledge of this Epistle, digging and savoring the words and expressions of the Apostle Paul to understand God's plan from eternity to eternity applying those truths to our identity as daughters of our precious Heavenly Father.
During the four weeks that follow we meet in pairs to share and help one another in this walk together.
Besides the women of our congregation, some from other churches joined and this is an opportunity for us to minister to the women of our area who seldom receive sound teaching being encouraged to walk with the Lord with other sisters in Christ.
Alan and Tracey Johnston (+ Connor, 16)
God has given to our church pastor Alan Johnston and his wife Tracey from Northern Ireland.
They just moved last June and they have their 3rd kid Connor with them.
Alan will help Andrea in the ministry of the church in preaching and discipleship and he will be involved ad coach in Porto United Club.
Alan and Tracey has already started an English Class once a week to reach out our friends with the Gospel.
Pray also for the other 2 sons who are at University in Northern Ireland.
Porto United Sport Ministry
We have started this ministry last August 2013. We had a great season with 45 kids from Mantova to join our Christian Club. We made very clear that Porto United has a Christian emphasis in training the kids. We do teach the Gospel while training.
During the summer time there have been some problems and a spiritual battle was very evident. Crazy things has happened and the Enemy wanted to kill this ministry. Bad rumors were made about it like we would not have a new season and that we had a lot of debts. Really funny things that the Devil wanted to spread around.
So, when Andrea came back from US he was faced with big issues and he and the staff have spent a lot of time in prayer and in developing a new strategy to reach our kids.
It has been very hard but we did not wanted to let the Enemy to win and to put the Gospel in a bad spot.
God won. God has been so good and powerful. We had back some old kids and specially a lot of new kids have come to us.
Moms and relatives are very happy. And kids too specially!
Non Christian families are encouraging other non believers to join Porto United Club.
Isn't it amazing!!!!
We ask you to pray about it. But very hard!
If the church is growing like we are doing and Porto United is going to have a great spiritual impact in town we need to pray and think to buy a piece of land and build our church building and have our soccer\football fields near by it.
Please walk with us in this project.
Pray also for more Christian coaches joining us for this amazing ministry!!!
Last September with Coaching4Christ.
Coaching4Christ is a Northern Ireland Ministry that has come to help Porto United. We had a great camp for a week where 25 kids has joined us for a full immersion in sport activities and the Gospel.
Please pray for the kids as they have heard the voice of Jesus reading the Bible and hearing the Bible's stories they have shared.
Coram Deo Conference in Milan and Sicily
New 2 weekends will be full of sounds ministry:
Coram Deo is going to have 2 major conferences on THE CALL OF SANCTIFICATION this coming weekend in Milan and next weekend in Sciacca (Sicily).
We guess 150 people will join the Milan Conference and about 300 in Sicily.
Speakers will be pastor Jerry Marcellino from Audubon Church, Laurel Mississippi and pastor Don Currin.
Please pray for them as they deliver this important topic and for us all as we listen and people can be blessed and encouraged to live a holy life.
Family support
Some of our supporters just have told us they cannot help us anymore.
I think we are going to have some difficulties from now on.
Even before our support was quite low and very often we did not make to reach 2,000 USD monthly.
In 21 years of ministry our support did not allowed to pay any retirement or insurance. God is always faithful.
We trust in a Sovereign God who is able and our anchor is His promises of Matt 6:26 "Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?"
Pray for the Church Rent.
It is very high for us to keep it.
Prayer requests and Needs
- Pray we may walk with Christ. Always.
- Pray that the Gospel will be first in our lives and then us.
- Pray all the amazing contacts the Lord is given us. We pray for lives-transformed and servants on fire.
- Pray for the Sola Grazia Church members be filled with the Word of God and filled with His Spirit. So they can serve and lead others to Christ.
- Pray because we are not led by the numbers of people attending our church by always about the faithfulness and power of the Gospel.
- Pray we may love Christ more and more.
Last October 2 car crashes. We were quite shocked!
Both times we have been hit in 3 days. Both cars have runned away and we had to pay for the damages.
Our cars are getting quite old.
- One is 14 years old and the other is 10 old with a lot of miles\kms on them (250,000 each).
We cannot afford to buy other second hand cars which are so expensive compared to US.
So we do pray the Lord will provide.
Andrea Artioli
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Please pray for Jerry, Dawn, Andrea, and the work in Italy. If God leads you to help Andrea or Jerry, you can do so through Mission Surge. Thanks for your prayers, support, and encouragement.
In Christ,
