Carelinks | Italy
We continued the feeding scheme and outreach in September, supporting brother Joseph and his amazing house group of genuinely interested folks. We had a great team from the UK, and it was truly a spiritual experience to work together in catering, food and clothing distribution, as well as Bible distribution and reading those Bibles together and with others.
Baptism service at coffee shop in Italy
The migrants are kept in ‘camps’, such as disused schools. They are taken from the beaches when they arrive on to the camps where they can stay for six months. But food and clothing are not provided, although local organizations provide some camps with these things. The camps therefore vary immensely. Muslim organizations take food for the Muslims, who are the majority in the camps; some say that the Christians can also have the food, but there are complaints that this doesn’t happen, or that the rice for the Christians is urinated on by Muslim extremists. Our association with brother Joseph, who is a long term resident of Italy with a car, job and apartment, was based around his interest in our doctrinal positions; he accepted these and was baptized earlier this year. But his passion is to take both the Truth and also material aid to these camps. So we rented a house in the mountains near his town, and from there prepared hot food which we took down to the camps for breakfast and supper each day. We also fed folks in the open air on a beach, at Joseph’s house church [about 20 packed in to his apartment] and at our rental property. This property was providentially situated close to a camp in a disused school high in the mountains. The folks there are stranded as there is no bus service into town, and it will soon get quite cold. We encountered Muslim opposition at one of the camps. We wrapped our rice and stew in blankets to keep it warm and distributed from the car boot, in disposable dishes, after gathering the migrants around the car for a prayer of thanks for the food.
After feeding them they then filed back inside, as we were not allowed into the buildings because of Muslim tensions. We also distributed Bibles along with the food.
The folks have little to do all day. Some of the Muslims study the teachings of Islamist extremists all day and become radicalized by them; whereas our folks spend their days reading the Bibles and Bible Basics which Joseph has already given them. It was a pleasure to see them with those Bibles, and at the feeding sessions at our rental home and at Joseph’s place there were Bibles on the table as we fed and taught them further. It was a great mesh of providing both spiritual and physical food.
Feeding at Bro Joseph’s house church
Many thanks to those in the East Anglian ecclesias who donated clothes which Roy brought over with him. Joseph has a great pastoral responsibility now, which he takes very seriously. We would like to repeat this program, but there is real potential here for some to go live there for a few months and do great things. We are praying the Lord will raise up someone. We drove to the beach one day with our contacts, and held an open air baptism service at a cafe and then baptized Augustin, Michael, Wisdom, Victor , Terry and Peter. Bro Wisdom was a great help teaching us how to prepare and cook yams and plantain, pictured below. They all have amazing stories of their journeys across the Sahara, the nightmare of life in Libya and the migrant prisons there, and then the equally nightmare journey across the Mediterranean to Sicily or Lampedusa. Bro Wisdom’s boat capsized and he was rescued, actually by a British boat, who then passed him over to the Italian coastguard. His testimony is recorded see YouTube links opposite.
There were many genuine expressions of thanks for all the meals and support.
Thank you all so much for enabling this and for your prayers. Clearly the Lord’s hand is active in all these lives. There we were on a mountain top in rural Italy with fantastic views, cooking yams and fellowshipping together with a group of 17 or so Africans. We put together a video of the Lord’s work at the link below. We really recommend you have a look and share this and try to drum up support for what is really a very effective way of both caring and preaching.
Migrant Feeding, Italy: https://youtu.be/hgXfm_kz75Y
Bro Wisdom’s testimony: https://youtu.be/eOx3zpnco_g
