the great support of our Lord), we can happily say that a FGEI group is finally
alive and kicking in Palermo.
Pastor Peter Ciaccio, Palermo
From La Noce, Marsala and Trapani
This morning my eldest daughter and I drove to the questura to retrieve our
permessi di soggiorno (our ‘stay permit’). We have lived in Italy for about two-
and-a-half years and today is the first day everyone in our family has a valid
and accurate permesso. My wife says that we have three full-time jobs: hers,
mine, and documents. She’s not exaggerating.
Living in Italy is – in many ways – harder than we expected, but we are
blessed to minister with, worship among and work alongside colleagues and
church members who are profoundly committed to their vocations and deeply
engaged in seeking justice, proclaiming grace and extending hospitality to
those who – all too often – experience the world as harsh and unsympathetic.
We are in Italy through a partnership between the Waldensian/Meth-
odist Church and the Reformed Church in America. My wife JJ (a master’s
level social worker with almost 20 years of experience in clinical, practical
and supervisory work) was chosen as a mother-tongue English-speaker to
help respond to the current ‘migration crisis’. She is particularly involved at
Pellegrino della Terra, serving women who have been victims of trafficking
and sexual exploitation, and at the Waldensian Diaconal Center of la Noce as
one of the coordinators of the Humanitarian Corridors project. [This initia-
tive, founded mainly by the Waldensian Church, aims to provide flights to
refugees in crisis, in order to avoid them falling into the hands of traffickers
and risking drownings at sea. Editor]
The Waldensian Church of La Noce in Palermo.
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