Festivale Casoria
It’s the end of an eventful day in Italy. My band, Seven Flags is a part of an enormous community outreach in a neighborhood of Naples called Casoria.
Our job is to play uplifting music to the festival goers and model the love of Christ to everyone we encounter. The music is to draw people in. Everything at the festival is free, face painting, jump houses, English lessons, hair and makeup, all kinds of fun things for kids and adults, but most importantly the information about a relationship with the Living God. There’s a large group from the States here, called Delta Ministries to work alongside the local folks. There’s a prayer tent and a message from Pastor Douglas at the close of each evening.
So far the journey has been wonderful, stressful, exciting, exhausting, joyful, taxing and worthwhile.
We had a bit of a trial just getting to Italy. On our first lay over in Phoenix, the airlines had overbooked the flight. I don’t understand how, but they didn’t have enough seats for a plane full of paid customers. After standing in the jetway until 30 minutes after our flight should have left, a party of four gave up their seats for a $300 voucher to let us sit down and continue our journey. When we landed in Philadelphia for our second lay over, we barely got to our connection on time that was two terminals away in order to find that they didn’t issue us boarding passes and nearly missed our transatlantic flight.
In Rome, we spent about 3 hours trying to find our first night’s accomodations, only to be locked out of our room. Our proprieter explained to us on the phone in broken English how to negotiate the lock. On the train to Naples we were confused about our station to exit the train and almost unintentionally made a trip to Sicily, but the Lord directed us to jump off of the train about a minute before it left the station.
The other side of the trip is we met Christians on the plane, one who proved very helpful in our efforts to minister in Italy. We have been meeting great people at the festival, at the Casoria church, in town and on the train as well.
Tonight during Pastor Douglas’ message he showed a video of Jesus carrying the cross to Calvary to be crucified. It looked like a video of their Easter play, it reminded me of Picture of Jesus a little bit. I looked over the audience watching the video and listening to Pastor Douglas speaking to them in Italian and my heart was moved. I felt the Spirit of the Lord moving tonight; that is what this is all about.
One of Bob Kilpatrick’s songs is called; “God is Good.” I have had that one on my mind all week and am so thankful that the words are so true.
“God is good, God is good…all the plans He has for us are good. God is good, always good; we can trust His love for us, ’cause God is good.
jebby .. long time brother.. voice from the past here.. remember a guy from horizon… lets just say galt… the two brians that handeled the board on sundays… not caneppa… this is brian kelley… know you know alot of faces.. hope mine still rings a bell… been along and winding road for me brother… in and out of faith.. in and out of love/ one marriage… in and out of jail/prison. BUT all things for a reason.. long story short.. back in christ.. lil church in stockton.. fellowship church on cherokee.. pastor dave hanley.. livin in stockton too.. found out where you lead from lady named linda cal trans inspector talked about the worship leader bein so full of emotion and love, and has a cool way of talkin.. said you soumd like lennon…i knew it was you… she said thhink his names is jefferey… man, still believe you have one of the most beautiful hearts in the world my friend… oh yeah i have a union job now.. highwayman…. like waylon & willie. no. traffic safety signs and cones all that. see all things for a reason…. italy huh awesome.. enjoy see you when ya get back to cali, amd yes back into ministry myself.. homeless,addicts,criminals,jail ministry,all the least of these.. love ya 209-263-9015 or e mail highwayman7369@yahoo.com ps.. helo rhonda !