Rome

We arrived in Rome on a really late night bus ride to a house that a local Korean Church provided for us........The very next day we performed our show to bless the people that blessed us so much......First Korean service I have ever sat in on and it was neat to see how another culture worships the same God.........We had no shows booked for the rest of the time so we did three days of touring historical places.......

Our first day we went downtown Rome and visited the collosseum where the Christians we fed to the Lions and the gladiators competed against each other, seeing the Roman historical city surrounding the collosium was amazing I felt like my eyes were too small to take it all in......Then we headed to the famous water fountain that was in the movie with Audrey Hepburn.....there I had my first Gelato......yummyness :) Then we headed over to the Spanish Steps and a Old Opera house with amazing paintings.........

The second day was probably the most humbling expirence I have ever been through as a Christian....our first stop was the water channels where they first built the water system to supply Rome and also the house that BBC films their T.V series Rome.......We went to the road Paul walked on to enter Rome where he would later be captured and beheaded because he was preaching the Gospel........It was a walk to always remember....... how a road could change the course of Christianity......Then we headed over to the actual jail cell where Paul wrote Second Timothy......Then we walked the walk where Paul was beheaded and historians tell us that when he was beheaed water sprang up from the ground and they built a church as a memorial for Paul's life and their is actual water still coming up from the ground then I went and read Second Timothy and was very humbled by Paul's life and how he risked everything to share the gospel with people and how in his last moments of his life he still was praising God and making sure Timothy knew His heartbeat sitting in that jail knowing that it was going to be the end of his life..........then we went to the place that changed my perception of what it means to loose your life for your faith.....This place we got the oppurtunity to see this very old burial site that was used as a underground refuge for Christians to preserve their faith.....If the tunnels were stretched out straight they would be 500 miles...someone could easily get lost and never come out again.....Christians were living in this place for over 300 years families were being made in these tunnels they lived in close to no light(when people came out of tunnels they were blind) or food the only thing that was keeping them alive was their faith.....

The third day we all had the chance to see the Vatican....Which a friend provided the funding to bless me......The paintings and sculpture were pretty stunning and my eyes could never take everything in.....Crazy to think that these painting and sculptures have been preserved for thousands of years........It was really cool to think about how people view Christ so differently....Some think of him dying nailed on a cross.....some think of him as a loving father.....some view him as a gentle man holding a baby lamb.....some view him just a face with a beard.....the one thing that brings all of us together Catholic,Methodist or Protestant is that we all believe in Jesus..........

Being in downtown Rome walking around was really awesome as well.....Passing little alley ways......little houses right by the Vatican with grape vines coming out of the wall......However the bigger picture of Rome is that it really reminded me of Mexico...There was a lot trash in the alley ways and grafiti everywhere........The city itself has a lot of needs their is also a lot of corruption in the Catholic Church in Rome..........Their city has a lot of Potential to be a vibrant awesome place but it is a city in deep need.......

The rest of the week was time we spent growing together as a team where we all took turns organizing the schedule for the day.........It was a lot of fun to be so united together as a team.........We also got a great chance to perform a couple pieces of the show at a local Catholic Church parking lot where we got to connect with a lot of the youth in the neighborhood where we were staying....It was awesome to love on a young group of people that were in so need of attention and someone to care about them...they hung out with us for the following 3 days after we performed and ended up doing the full show for them...part of me wish I could of stayed and started a youth group because they were so curious about our faith.........

All in all Rome was more than I could ever thought he would be for me........