Greetings from hot, hot Roma!  Hopefully all of you are staying cool.  We can't complain.  Forgive us for our lack of correspondence in all the busy-ness.  We know that you desire to be kept up to date on the ministry here and rightly so.  Do know that we love and appreciate all of you and depend greatly upon your prayers, encouragement and support.

Family:
At home things are good, at times challenging, and consistently crazy.  We are in those phases of child rearing where the demands are great and our strength and abilities are not so great.  The constant barrage of the enemy doesn't help either!!  Praise God for His amazing grace that allows us to find ourselves waking up to start another day with all 5 of us alive and healthy still!!

The girls are finished with school and wanting to live at the sea understandably. True Romans!  Brayden is teething like a maniac, crawling, and wanting to walk all at once.  Unfortunately, his head looks like he has been training for Ultimate Fighting.  Tile floors and coffee tables just aren't very forgiving unfortunately.  They are all cute and sweet and naturally have their own personalities and passions.  Livy is our nature child wanting to bring snails and flowers home all the time.  Isy is our artist always drawing or coloring.  Braydy Boy is ... well, he is all boy.  He likes to splash in the water, slam things and throw things down. They are a great blessing

Hope is good, at times perhaps, surviving.  There is somehow always lots of laundry minus the automatic dryer.  Interestingly, it seems to be the same amount daily despite all her hard work. KIDS! Hope teaches the kids in the church on Sunday morning too.  She actually may be praying for the new building more than any of us since Sunday school in our current building is down in what we call the dungeon.  No windows... or air for that matter.  It will be awesome to have our own building where we can create the proper space for children, or youth and so forth.

On a super personal note, please be in prayer for Hope's brother's marriage.  His name is David.  They are both Christians but have been distant from the Lord for some time now and are in the beginning processes of divorce.  They also have two young children.  We ask God's divine intervention and know that it is never too late with Jesus at the center.

On a more positive note, we were blessed with opportunities to change the scenery in the last couple of months traveling for an Italian Calvary's leadership retreat on the Adriatic coast first.  A couple of weeks later some precious friends and supporters of ours from Boise came through and treated us to several nights on the southern coast of Italy.  Rough I know!  Then my folks were here spoiling us, and the grandkids a bit by renting a villa with a pool in the north (in the Dolomite Mountains) for a few days. I also had the privilege of sharing at the Calvary there in Treviso.

Church:
To make sure everybody is caught up on what is going on with the Church here we will recap a bit.  A while back we were notified by the church that we sub-lease from that they would be terminating their lease and leaving the building.  With the rent there grossly out of our potential and the interest to move on, we took the news as a fresh opportunity to look for our own building, pray and seek God's will as a fellowship.  To sum it up, we have a fresh vision and are moving the church to the periphery of Rome to focus our attentions on reaching a particular zone.  Our ministry in the center has been blessed and foundational but, in many ways, has been limited for various reasons.  It just hasn't been conducive to what we know the church is to be in a community.  Just the exact opposite is the case on the periphery.  These zones are still built around community living with markets, schools, churches, shops, and services all within walking distance or close proximity.  There is great excitement in our hearts for this new opportunity.  Currently, we have our sites set on two buildings that are side-by-side.  We would like to BUY them both and make them one building by tearing down the wall separating them.  Obviously, we don't have a dime, but, God does and God has certainly done greater things.  If we can’t buy, then we will proceed and follow our vision by leasing a place in the same vicinity.  This too will require plenty of faith and miraculous provision!

The amount of money we bring in on a monthly basis, as a small fellowship, is about half of what we would need in order to lease our own commercial space. We would like to ask you to pray and consider how, if in any way, God might have you get involved.  Faithful, fervent prayer would be the one way in which everyone could help.  Then of course there is giving financially.  Financial donations would help us with the purchase or leasing of a building, or go towards remodeling and furnishing expenses.  If you would like to know more about this, or are open to suggestions as to how you might help, please contact us, or John White, our stateside administrator in Boise.  If you know you would like to give, then make out a check to CM with Italy in the memo, attach a sticky note specifically stating it is for the building or remodel or etc.... and send it to CC Boise. We will have a special fund set up so that the money goes to exactly what it was intended for. This is a step that will take the ministry here to the next level and we believe good fruit will result.  Though we are not sufficient or able for these things, with the help of the body, and the enabling of the Holy Spirit, we look forward to what God wants to accomplish.

The fellowship itself is good.  Some are being renewed while others are struggling.  A  normal church I guess.  A few new people are attending which is a great blessing.  Pray that they might feel the love of God, be blessed by the teaching, and get plugged in.  Last Saturday we braved the heat and did some evangelism in the market place and zone (Tor Bella Monaca) where we are moving the Church.  It was a lot of fun and new relationships were birthed.  Please pray for the seed that was planted.

Please pray for our upcoming Married Couples fellowship, a special weekend of teaching the second week in July (encouraging leadership, laying foundational and practical teaching for daily life for the believer), and our joint Italian conference in Austria mid-August.

We'll leave it at that for now.  We would to hear from more of you... what God is doing in your lives or a simple hello.  Thank you again for always being there to lift up our arms and see us through so many battles.  Your love, friendship, and support are unspeakably valuable and vital to us.

May God be our strength.

By Grace,

Brent Harrell, CC Rome