"God builds His kingdom through relationships"

J.R. Young  Ministries

The New Italian Conference.

 

The organizers decided that the best time for a conference for leaders in Italy is the middle of May, so they scheduled our second "annual" Italian Leaders Conference for May 13 through May 15, 2004. It was held in a nice retreat center in the sea town of Massa, Italy, centrally located near Pisa.

 

We were expecting our eighth grandchild somewhere near the end of May, so JoAnn didn't go to Italy because she was afraid that the baby might come early. I took my friend Warren Hays with me, who pastors Source of Life Christian Church, one of our churches here in Santa Rosa. Warren was a big hit with the Italians. At one point, he called all the women up and prayed for them to come into their calling in God and to come out of the male dominated culture; it was a very touching moment.

 

We were also joined by my friend Theo Geyser, who pastors a church of 4000 in Stellenbosch, South Africa. Dr. Geyser's teaching was inspiring and he was received very well and he loved being with the Italians. Our theme was "Relationships" again and once again the leaders and pastors responded favorably.

 

My life message seems to be that God builds His Kingdom through divine gifts of friendship and so we all preached around that but more importantly, we demonstrated that in how we were with each other. We had about 50 leaders and pastors again and about half were new to our little conference. We will do the conference again next year; it is scheduled for May 12-14, 2005.

 

My friend and co-worker Davide Zaccariello, hosted us and worked with Pastor Dante Bernarducci and GianPiero Collu to organize the conference. These three Italian leaders spoke and Davide wrapped up the conference at the last session. One huge breakthrough at this conference was that we had a Roman Catholic priest attend and he enjoyed the conference. Davide works with "Don Valerio" on several projects and invited him to join us and he fit right in, even asking questions at the end of several sessions.

 

Our grand daughter, Katharine Anne Young was born June 1, 2004 a week after Warren and I returned home.