POGGIO RUSCOE OUTREACH '96

by Rob Davis

On the 26th August we set out for a three-week mission in Poggio Ruscoe, a rural town near Verona, Italy, accompanied by Kevin and Kathrin Skillings, also of OAC Nottingham. Meanwhile, the other ten team members were making their own way to Poggio for Europe Now's second outreach in the town. While most of the team were from the UK, people also joined us from France, Germany and elsewhere in Italy.

We arrived safely, and were greeted warmly by the pastor and his wife. We spent the first night preparing for the campaign over a pizza at a local restaurant. The schedule was not as full as we had hoped, as the church had felt it best to apply for permission for all the open-air meetings. Unfortunately, this had not been granted for everything, so we ended up booking extra meetings with contacts made during the mission.

As well as the open-airs, which were primarily a combination of puppet shows and sketchboard messages, we organised a training seminar, which was attended by three people from the Poggio Ruscoe church. When we return next year, we should be able to see how well they picked things up.

On the final Sunday of the mission, there were three newcomers at the church's morning service, with another couple spending the whole service walking up and down outside, trying to summon up the courage to go in. A Colombian, who we met at an open-air in Sermide, subsequently made a decision to follow Christ.

We really appreciated having Trevor Rowe - a Baptist pastor from near Nottingham - on the team. He took on the role of assistant leader and also made contact with several other churches in the vicinity. One of those churches, in Desenzano, invited the team to come and preach in their town. This was probably the most successful open-air we conducted during this outreach. Following one of Rob's messages, one man, who was in tears, promised to come to the church the next Sunday. The church in Desenzano said they had done open-airs before, but had stopped for various reasons. This meeting has given them the encouragement to persevere.

After the three weeks in Poggio Ruscoe, some of the team went to work with Kurt Jost, who has recently left OM. Kurt is very well known in Brethren circles in Italy and organised several meetings with different churches around Piacenza. At one open-air meeting in Piacenza, a Canadian missionary told us that he had tried all sorts of evangelistic methods, none of which worked, shortly before a crowd of fifty people stopped. Not surprisingly, he expressed interest in any courses that we may run in the future!

We could easily spend a whole year in Italy working alongside churches and training them in evangelism, but it would be preferable to have Italians doing the work. We are looking for Italians to train and support in full-time work in their own country. The evangelical church is small, but the opportunities are plentiful. Please pray that we would find the workers to bring in the harvest.