Stefano and Jenny Mariotti: an encouraging few days of outreach
'From the 9th to the 12th of March we hosted in Budrio a team from The Baptist Preparatory School in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA. In collaboration with YfC Italia, we have partnered with this school since 2013, hosting mission teams for schools and outreach projects.
On Friday and Saturday morning we were able to engage with about 300 students from both the middle and high schools in Budrio.
We ran baseball and line dancing clinics, and American students were able to share the Good News of the Gospel at the end of each lesson!
Friday afternoon we held our weekly MySpace after school Club and we were encouraged by having a great turnout of kids, including 12 middle schoolers who came from the morning outreach!
We organize this club for local kids in partnership with Budrio Town Hall; we've been given a room in Budrio's Library, and social workers are sending some of the kids they follow, as part of their after-school programme; as part of our club, we also offer help with their English home-work; we had with us our friends from Arkansas Baptist Prep. High School. Together we engaged with the YfC Rock Solid material, interacting with the theme: WorldView + Arkansas!
We played lots of fun games like: Can I borrow that?, 10 Facts about Arkansas, Spot the difference, Trashed, Landfill Pictionary, FairShare, FairPlay – Baseball, Can You Change Your WorldView?, which served as illustrations to Coach Billy's Talk from 1 Corinthians 9:24-25.
Life is not a game with no lasting consequences. The way we live our lives has eternal consequences. Life is a proving ground where we prove who we are, whom we trust, and what we cherish. The race of life has eternal consequences, not because we are saved by works, but because Christ has saved us from dead works to serve the living and true God with Olympic fair play passion!
On Sunday morning the Lord blessed our service when we had the joy to see some teenagers from the local school to join us (some of them muslims), listening to a full Gospel proclamation! We are glad for the Lord's provision of the meeting room at the social center Magnolia, a well known cultural meeting point right at the centre of Budrio.
Billy Goss, team leader of the students' mission team from The Baptist Preparatory School from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA, preached on "Train to win the prize" from 1 Corinthians 9:24-27. Just as the athlete prepares with perseverance and runs for a prize, we run in Christ to see the gospel win, as Paul states: "I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings" 1 Corinthians 9:23
During the service there was a children's talk in which the children engaged with the same Bible passage.
After the service, a Fellowship Lunch and a family time took place, in which there was a chance to get to know Bailey, Carson, Abby, Hannah, Trey, Logan, Shepherd, Emma, Abby, listening to their testimonies, and praying for the outreach in Italy!
Sunday evening we held our monthly Seekers Club in partnership with 5 churches from the Bologna area, and again we had some of the teenagers whom we invited during the school outreach, who joined us for the whole evening, engaging with the goal and meaning of Jesus' Resurrection!'
Here's a video summary of these days:
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