Carelinks | Italy

We really want to thank all who prayed and donated so that two weeks of wonderful work could take place in Italy during August with the migrants. Without the Lord’s special empowerment and your support, as ‘the backroom boys’, those of us on the ground could not have done it. It was a super team of dedicated, hard workers - Dave & Liz, Russell & Dawn, Duncan & Cindy, Steve & Robin and Roy & Jane were really all just supporting our absolutely dynamic brothers Tony and Joseph who are permanently in Italy. We taught many hours of Bible truths to attentive audiences of up to 40 migrants, as well as many one to one sessions. The teaching was very capably shared with Joseph and Tony. Joseph is so solid in the Truth and utterly dedicated to taking the true Gospel to the many migrants who have ears to hear, and benefitted much from coming to the UK for the Carelinks Conference. Tony was badly beaten as we reported in the last Gospel News and has lost most of the sight in one eye; we gave him funds to get some more attention to it.

Very many NEV Bibles and Bible Basics were distributed, and over the period there were 27 baptisms, including brothers: Destiny, Odion, Geoffrey, David, Wisdom, Frank, Philip, Peter, Sunny, Shadrack, Iyare and Edos. It’s not that we are waving some large and irresistible carrot to the migrants which makes baptism attractive. All we’re doing is giving some food and Bible literature. The food is only basic, and the only nice extra we sometimes offered was Evia pouring them a cup of cold coca cola, or yams – which were cooked by Cindy, with Dawn reading out internet recipes to her from her phone (they are rather hard to cook).

We can make no promise of helping them very much materially. They are stuck in Italy with no work and only short stay accommodation in the camps, after which they must make their own way with no further support. All of them gave the same story - of horrible experiences on the journey across the Sahara and in Libya, seeing death close up during the sea crossing, and vowing to God to give their lives to Him if they survived. And these who did survive arrive on the shores of Italy deeply impressed with God’s grace and wanting to know more about Him, and then they encounter us, with our food and free Bibles and Bible teaching sessions. It’s no wonder they are eager to join the dots and get baptized once they grasp the message, and they all say that their experience of God’s grace motivates them to return to the camps and spread the message further.

There is much anti-immigrant sentiment in Italy. They find with us that we treat them as persons and genuinely care for them:

You can see a video of our preaching, teaching, feeding and baptizing at: https://tinyurl.com/italy-feeding

And a more lengthy video of Liz and Duncan explaining the Truth, doctrine by doctrine, to a group of Muslim migrants at: https://tinyurl.com/italy-teaching

We are not Pentecostals, looking for miracles; as brother Robert Roberts put it, we look for “the ways of providence” rather than the “visible hand of God” in terms of miracles. But just consider some of their accounts of God’s hand. We put all the testimonies together in one single video at: https://tinyurl.com/testimonies-italy

Wisdom nearly died on the boat crossing. Bro Tony saved his life by heaving him up out of death, when his eyes were already rolling and very close to death. Some time later, Tony was walking along a street in Italy when a man came up to him and hugged him as his saviour. It was Wisdom, the man he had saved. And so Tony lost no time in telling him the true Gospel, introducing him to Joseph who taught him further, and then it was such a joy for Tony to help us baptize Wisdom.

Another brother spoke of how he left Libya on a boat with 440 migrants on it. Their compass broke, then their engine, and the boat started leaking. They were adrift for four days. The Libyan Arab smugglers then said that the boat was cursed because of the sins of the people on board, exactly the situation with Jonah in the storm. Over the course of two days, the smugglers threw overboard the migrants in groups of 10 or 20 to lighten the boat and because they didn’t want to have to return to Libya with them. Of the 440 migrants, only 40 remained, and our brother was amongst them Another brother speaks of being hijacked at sea by pirates, another gang of smugglers, who then put them in a prison and tried to torture them to get them to call home and get money sent by Moneygram. Another brother has a similar testimony, but explained how he was seated on a boat which was one of three boats which set off. The Arab smuggler for some reason at the last minute told him to move onto one of the other boats. He did; and the other two boats didn’t make the crossing, one they saw capsize with the loss of everyone on board, over 200 people.

And finally another brother reveals the wounds he received at the hands of the smugglers as they tortured him to get money sent to them before they would release him, and he makes a wonderful testimony to God’s grace and his commitment to it. Without doubt God is at work.

Please pray especially for those who are now out of the camps. We found brother Austin sleeping behind a railway station, very hungry, weak and with a fever. We gave funds and did what we could to help, including giving him the first hot meal he had had for a long time.