Newsletter from the DeMarcos
May 18, 2007
Dear co-workers in Christ,
Much love and peace to you all in the name of the Lord. As always, my prayer is that this letter
finds you well in the Lord. It has been
a month and a half since my last letter but I feel as if I just wrote you all
yesterday. This, like Christmas, is a
crazy time of year with all the end-of-the-year activities, etc. The Italian calendar has 3 different holidays
starting with Easter and the the kids seem to always be out of school as
well. The excitement is brewing about
our trip to the U.S. in just a little over a month and so sleep is a commodity
in the DeMarco household at this time.
I pray that your lives are full of the joy of the Lord whatever might be
happening in your own lives. I hope to
write one more time before we leave, Lord willing, the 26th of June
so I can leave any contact information in case any of your would like to ring
us!
We have had the great pleasure of having a young man stay with us for what will be a total of 8 weeks. Jeremy Daggett, whose family were missionaries in Italy 11 years ago, is doing a missionary internship with the church in Naples. He has been a tremendous blessing and example to our children and we are thankful to God for his time here. He is “shadowing” Giuseppe, Lino, and Bruce in their various activities and studies, and an occasional soccer game of course!
Studies are going well and recently Sabatino, whom Giuseppe had been studying with for some months now, was baptized. Studies continue with Giovanni, whose wife Anna died recently. Giovanni is having a truly difficult time not turning to alcohol to soothe his pain. Please pray for this dear brother and his great battle. Weekly studies continue in the Sanita’ and Salvatore, who is Tina’s father and who was baptized a year ago, has recently learned of some serious health problems with his lungs. Please keep him and his family in your prayers. Studies continue with many others, Maria Rosa and Claudio, Patti and her family, Gennaro and Anna, and studies on Wednesday evening.
I am afraid my personal paragraph keeps getting bigger and bigger each newsletter and I apologize for the space taken away from report on the work. Unfortunately, more time than I would have liked has been spent on my health this past month.
For two weeks I had to go to a bizarre therapy for my ears. I have what is hoped to be just temporary deafness in both ears. My therapy consisted of inhaling sulfur spring fumes then having a long, thin needle-like object inserted in each nostril with mineral water rinsing. This therapy was used in ancient Roman times in the exact place where I was with the same sulfur spring! There are even the Roman ruins and statues around us! Pretty interesting stuff, but the degree of my deafness is still to be determined. I also saw a neurosurgeon about my back pain with an MRI that he ordered and I have been informed that I have the bones of a 65 year-old woman, a month other things! The joy of the Lord is my strength and I have been counting on that promise, needless to say! Rachel had a birthday party in April and is now 6 years old. We had a birthday for her cousin, Jonathan, born on the same day with over 60 people attending! Luca was in the soccer finalists games at his school and came in 2nd place! I thought it was like watching the World Cup games last summer with all the cheering and booing from the crowd! Giuseppe had a birthday in May and is now 42 years old. He is not slowing down one bit and still has more energy than all of us put together. I had a brief trip to Dublin, Ireland the first of this month to visit one of the member’s daughters who is attending Trinity College. It was a quick but lovely weekend and Ireland is beautiful and green! Please continue to pray for Giuseppe’s father who is starting to have a bout with depression. He is going into the hospital today to have surgery on his one good eye. He lost vision in one eye due to diabetes and they are operating on his other eye for cataracts.
We are looking forward to being with you all, Lord willing, in a short while. God has truly blessed us with the opportunity to return this summer and we are thankful for this blessing. May He be with you always in all your plans and work for Him. Much love from all of us,
Giuseppe, Jennifer, Lorenzo, Luca, David, and Rachel DeMarco