This e-mail is from my italian friend named Claúdia. Please, pray for her and also for Italy

(Esse e-mail foi enviado por minha amiga italiana chamda Cláudia. Por favor, Orem por ela e pela Itália.)

Changing direction but not the way you thought.

As Christians, how many times do we ask God for directions?How do you expect God to speak to you? Well, at times I think He is going to speak along the lines of what I'm already thinking ... well guess what? He doesn't because His thinking is higher ...PTLSince I started to work in mission in 1980 I began to have a burden for the Italian church to get involved more in World Missions. The Italian church is small and inward looking still, very much in the defending mode than on the attaching mode. So I started to translate material on Biblical Basis for Missions, write about the need of the lost world and the responsibility of the Italian church to get involved in the " Great Commission". I have kept this up until now. All along my desire to see the Italian church involved in missions become stronger and stronger.In the mean time God sent me to serve Him in Indonesia, Central Asia and lately in the UK - Bulstrode. While in Englan I decided to visit more often the Italian churches and share more information about missions..but I had little inpact because it was not a constant effort.For many years I thought and prayed that the Lord would call a non-Italian WEC worker to establish himself in Italy and mobilize young italian believer for missions and even open a base of WEC in Italy...but I have been waiting many yrs. and no body come. I decided to open the Volunteers programme also for the young italian believers...God was defenetly in this because in a little over 2 years we have now 24 italins that have gone trough the programme and onother 5 are being processed as I write, not only, but 5 out of these; have been involved in short terme mission work.The amaizing thing is that I'm not the only one speaking of missions anymore, they also share all what they have learned in Bulstrode and they get me into churches which I could neve access before.So now the question is where do we go from here. I was invited at the last EUROCON and there I understood that God wanted me to answer my own prayer, I was the one to go to Italy and get WEC registered with the Italian Govenment and open a Mobilizer base in Italy...one of the leaders said: " Claudia, you cannot do recruiting with a remote control from England, you have to go back to Italy and be visible"...I was shocked, eccited, skared...but God had spoken ...not exactly the way I wanted, better. His thoughts are higher. PTLPlease pray that God will open the doors, provide personenel, a place and money needed for this . More than anythingelse please pray that I will have a sensitive heart to his leading His way not mine.Claudia PignatelliJune 1, 2009