Stories & Updates

We add new stories and updates every few weeks. This is where you can find what we have been learning and doing.

The adventure continues as we spend time with family, serve at our local church in Arizona, and work on our visas. We recently celebrated our youngest's 4th birthday, and it is wild to watch how quickly our kids grow from little babies to fully communicating little humans. We love watching how each of their personalities are so different from each other. 

We finally heard back from the consulate in Los Angeles, and they requested even more documents. They sent us to the consulate representative in Phoenix to get our signatures verified on our applications, and that process took us about two weeks to even get an appointment. Thankfully, we were able to send all the required documents off this last week and now we resume the waiting. 

I, (V), was really encouraged when I went to the post office to mail the documents. The lady who helped me at the post office saw the address of the consulate on my package and told me that she was from Italy! She then started speaking to me in Italian and telling me how excited she was that we were moving there. Who would have expected to meet someone born and raised in Italy to be living in Kingman, Arizona?   :)  

Our lives have been in a season of transition. In the middle of this, we have been praying about becoming missionaries for a few years now, and after visiting our close friends Landon and Rachel Rogers* who moved to Italy as missionaries six years ago, we felt it was the right move for us too. Our three-month visit to Feltre last year confirmed that calling, and we began the process to move our family there to serve.

The visa application process has been quite the adventure, starting with the challenge of even getting an appointment with the Italian Consulate. When we finally had our appointment in early July, they handed us a list of additional documents we needed. After some effort, we gathered everything and mailed it off. We're excited and a bit nervous, but we trust this journey is where we're meant to be.

Our next step is waiting. If we get our visas back in time, we will leave for Italy in October of this year. If we encounter more setbacks, then we will have to reschedule our flights.

*To learn more about the Rogers' ministry in Feltre, Italy, you can check out their website here: https://www.landonandrachel.com/about

This church is made up of such a sweet group of believers. When we visisted for three months, they welcomed us into their lives wholeheartedly. This church is full of people who are passionate about Jesus, and want to honor Him with their lives. They are involved in outreach in the community, serving one another, and even helping start a church plant in a mountain town 40 minutes away. 

While we were there, Joe was able to teach a few times with the help of the best translator ever, Jonathan. We were so thankful to get to know Jonathan and his wife Eunice and many other wonderful couples at the church. Eunice, her dad, and her sisters are all part of the worship team at the church. I (V) was able to join them on the worship team a few times, and they were so patient and helpful when I did not quite get the pronunciations correct. There was one line that I was supposed to sing "pesi miei" - (my burdens), but was instead pronouncing it "pesci miei" - (my fish!!) We have a long way to go with our language learning!

The kids loved being a part of the church life. They loved being in the main service for worship and then going to their Sunday school classes afterwards. Their classes are all in Italian for the most part, but their teachers help them with a little translation here and there. They have been learning how to play games with the other kids in Italian.