CIAO TUTTI,
Blessings in Jesus! We hope this letter finds you all fighting the luke-warm disease that infected the Laodicean church in the book of Revelation and rendered it useless. As we study Revelation on Sundays we have most certainly been challenged and convicted as the Lord dealt with and still deals with HIS church. Though we all would like to think that we are Philadelphian, both as individuals and as churches, we do feel that the Lord has spoken to us in Rome concerning “an open door”. May God give us all strength, grace, and passion to step into the open doors of these last days prior to the Rapture!!

CHURCH STATUS
After two years of prayer by everybody, and hard work on the part of our home church, we finally received our association papers that we will be filing before long to the Italian government in order to become a legal and recognnized church in Italy. Thank you God and thank you CC Boise and Jerry Devore for your diligence and everybodies gracious work. Now we will get it to our attorney here for review, have it legally translated, send it to a notary here (which is way more costly and complicated than in America) and then to the Italian legal system for reveiw and approval. I can't explain it all but basically we can get recognition based on Calvary's status in the states because of a friendship clause between Italy and America. It has been a long time coming and we would ask you to continue to pray with us on it until it is complete and over. May God also provide the funds for the rest of the process (translation, processing, notary, attorney fees etc..). Prasie God for another victory.

BODY
Praise God as he blesses CC Roma, yet, there is a lot of work to be done as things still remain fragile in individual lives and as a collected body of believers. We need to mature more in so many ways. Thank you for your prayers for Ester. She continues to come back each Sunday and really seems to be drinking it in. She has come off of a long relationship that was pretty worldly so pray for healing and spiritual growth. Pray for her ex-boyfriend’s (Roberto) salvation. Lidia has a potential job situation that she will be exploring this week. Praise God as she has not had steady work since her bout with cancer in 2001. It has been a hard road with no husband and two rebellious teenage boys. May we pray for Lidia’s strength and faith to be strong and may God provide for her and save her sons. Robert still awaits work and now his wife will be off work for the summer since she works for the public schools. Here you don’t get paid for the summer. Pray for their provision as living here is not cheap. To give you an idea, gas is about $4.50 a gallon and milk is $1.60 or so just for a liter. Paola is finishing up more schooling and is kicking some medication that she was taking connected to her situation a couple of years ago. Lift her up and pray for total healing. Amy is good, working and teaching lots of English lessons. Pray for God to bring these ladies some godly husbands!! Vlady is struggling a bit and could use prayer. His work and boss are very demanding so he works constantly. He is always tired and on the go. He took his driver’s test last month and failed so is up for another try soon. Keep in mind that he only had driven a tractor back in the Ukraine before and now had to learn to drive in the city of crazy Roma. Pray for a new lady coming around named Maria Jese from India. She is really hungry for God and asks lots of questions. Thanks for your payers for the ladies bible study that Hope is doing Saturday nights. God is really blessing their time together. Children’s, youth, and worship ministry need workers and development still.

OUTREACH
We just sent home a team from O.R.U. which had been with us for a whole month doing outreach. God really used this group of young people in many different ways. Everyday they did ministry on the main university campus in Rome. Many relationships were built and we even had a young man named Alessio visit the church. Pray for him as the Lord seems to have touched him. Each Friday evening we went to a certain piazza here in Rome that is quite popular among the young party crowd. We hadn’t been in this piazza for a couple of years and to our surprise there were hundreds of young people drinking, drugging, and looking for love as it were. God gave us great opportunities to talk to many Italians and some foreigners as well. There is a great harvest field there. Lastly, we took the group out of town about 250 miles northeast of Rome on the Adriatic coast to a town called Recanati where we have been helping a married couple, Luigi and Giovanna, get a church started. This is a typical Italian village, or small city, with virtually no evangelical church. God was very gracious as Luigi and Giovanna, pizza shop owners, paid for our lodging and graciously fed us at their pizzeria. As we only had one full day to be with them, we went out in the day, talked to folks, handed out gospel’s of John, and invited them to an evening service where Luigi had rented a restaurant’s outdoor patio which was connected to the city park in the center of town. By God’s grace, a couple of girls from the team and myself had the privilege of talking to and leading to the Lord two Italian teenagers named Caterina and Sara. Please pray for them. Something most striking from our conversation keeping in mind that these girls are 15 years old. After sharing the love of Jesus for a while with them, Sara turned to me and said, “can I ask you a question”. I said, “of course”. She responded, “are you happy”? “You bed” I told her! As I explained to her a bit on the JOY of the Lord exceeding any common happiness that can come and go at the change of circumstances etc… I then asked her, “what about you, are you happy”! In unison, they both responded, “NO”! This really struck my heart. This is the reality of the world around us but most unfortunately, the young generation here in Italy has no hope. One girl in another situation had written on her bag, in English, “I hate myself and I want to die”. May God give us a fire and a passion to win these young hurting souls!! When evening came, to our surprise and perhaps unbelief, there were about 10 young people who showed up. The team did a skit, one girl shared her testimony, and then I shared our of Jeremiah 29:10-14 on how the God of the universe loves sinners and has a plan and a purpose for each one. God touched several hearts and not only did one girl in particular accept Jesus, Lilliana, but a young Muslim guy named Unice (Jonah) prayed to receive Christ as well. The few believers that were there were greatly encouraged and it was a great blessing for us all. Please pray for Luigi and Giovanna as they seek to remain faithful to Jesus and a new work there in Recanati. Our prayer is that God would raise up some full time workers who are called and mature, to go and assist in the work there.

…coming outreach and conferences
The first Sunday of July we will have musical guest Timothy James Meaney out of Seattle visiting our church. Pray for new visitors, invited friends and family to come. Pray for all to be encouraged and edified. May anyone lost be saved. In the end of July we are having a leadership conference with Pastor Bob from CC Boise. We should be a group of 4 or 5 pastors and various leaders from each church including folks from CC Rome that want to attend. Pray for the organization, accommodations, and each person coming to be blessed and better equipped for ministry. A reminder also of our two conferences coming in August. One is our Italian conference with CC Montebelluna and the second is our Missions conference a couple of weeks later. Be in prayer for the Italians attending to be blessed, encouraged, challenged, refreshed, etc…

BUILDING
We have seen great progress made on our potential situation. This past week we met with engineers and contractors to get some new bids for reconstruction. Once these come in we would in theory need to decide on the contractor we want to go with and then based on the total price projected, make a proposal for work and turn it in to the city. From the total over-all costs, 20% go to the contractor and 4 engineers responsible for inspections of various kinds (civil, security, electrical etc…). Please pray that God would give us wisdom as to how to approach this whole project. It is one thing to never have done such a thing, but it is a whole other thing to be doing it in a foreign country and most particularly, in Italy. Things can change from day to day and person to person. Sometimes it seems no matter who you talk to, you can never quite pin point the truth or the facts or the exact process to be followed. The system is corrupt and once you get into its web, anything can happen. We pray for divine protection and guidance. Also, pray for Leon’s salvation. Leon has been utmost valuable and helpful to us and hasn’t charged us a dime. God has moved on his heart as he realizes that what we are doing is sincerely about hearts and lives, and not business or money. By God’s grace, we should know something in the next couple of weeks. The final step would be negotiating a contract with the owner. Pray that she begs us to buy it!

PERSONAL
The four of us are well but could use a break. I would like to get away with Hope for a day or two so please pray with us on that. With my step-dad battling cancer and my mom being wore out we pray that we could get back to visit soon. A miracle would certainly be required! We are trying to enroll Isabella in pre-school for the fall. In January they were already full but God is God! She turned 3 and is potty trained and all. Livy is now crawling, trying to walk, and getting some hair finally. They are both hard work, but great fun and precious as can be.

Thank all of you again so much for your love, support and prayers. We are privileged and grateful to have so many who care about us and the work in Italy. May God bless you sincerely.

Love
Brent, Hope, Isy and Livy

Friday May 27, 2005

Carissimi Fratelli e Sorelle,

“…and Jehovah caused the sea to recede…” (Ex 14:21)

Praise God from whom all blessings flow as today he surely did bless us with good news!! This past week, Leon, one of the architects who has been helping us all this time, took it upon himself to really pursue things with the zoning issue and the city’s 20 year threat of sequester against the property. Praise God!! The Lord really put a seeming fire in Leon’s heart to get on board after a discussion we had with him and Gino about God’s sovereignty and our desire to get this place, not just to have a building, but to help change lives, rebuild broken families and marriages, etc… Leon went out there and got, not only all of the answers that he needed to be sure that we could meet in there as a church after it is finished, but he met with the architect in the city who manages that zone and the cities projected plans. He said to go for it! Since it has been nearly 20 years and nothing has progressed on the city’s supposed plan to build this road etc… , not to mention that the city and country of Italy are in a recession, have no money, and will allocate zero for projects for a while, the guy said, do what you want to do! Leon was saying, as a distant Catholic and builder who works with the Italian bureaucracy, that this was a miracle of God in his eyes.

Praise God. Thank you for your prayers. Now we have a green light. Next on the to do/prayer list, is to get another couple of bids and trying to minimize projected costs before we talk to and negotiate further with the owner. That meeting should be a week or two out. It still would be great to have the owner insist on selling to us so continue to pray in this direction as well. Another thing we discussed with Leon was the possibility of using volunteers from the states to help build and restore. He is open and understands our position, but needs to look into this as far as the laws are concerned. Bathe that in prayer please. We are very encouraged, yet know that there is still much to do and many battles to fight!

Concerning the body, we have also been blessed to have quite a few new visitors in the past several weeks. Please pray for Nidia, Silvia, Ester, Maria, Paul and his wife Sherry that they all would be loved, blessed, edified, and led on in maturity in Jesus and finding their place in the body. There is quite an abundance of infants around lately too. Looking forward to more space someday!! Continue to pray for Lidia’s son Davide as things are on a down swing with him. Lidia is extra burned out. May the Lord do what is necessary to deliver this kid into the kingdom of light and strengthen Lidia to endure until then. Robert still searches for a part time job. The Lord has led us to some interesting contacts in a place where he was seeking work so we pray for positive results soon. May God’s will be done. Today we had an interesting conversation with a guy named Agostino whose wife is going to an evangelical church and since he is Catholic he is very bitter about this. We challenged him in the Word a bit and arranged to try to get together again another time. Pray for Agostino to be softened, pride broken, and a hunger for truth created.

A team just left that was here for a month and another team is here now. Pray for unity, fruit, perseverance, and the joy of seeing a harvest. On July 3rd we will have a musical guest for a Sunday morning. Pray for people to invite their families and friends. May the Holy Spirit really minister to everyone’s hearts in a deep way. Later in July we will be doing a leadership conference with some of our home church missionaries and leaders in all of our churches when Pastor Bob comes from Idaho. Pray for me as I try to find a place, organize, etc… This will also be open to the body here at CC Roma as we desire to give everybody the chance to grow in servant-hood, in their gifts, etc...

On a personal note… Hope and I were blessed by the YWAM team last week with an expensive/romantic dinner out without the kids!! WOW! Thank you Jesus. If you ever come to Rome, I know just the place. Isabella is coming up on her 3rd birthday May 30th so mommy is planning. We did three Monday’s in a row at the dentist for sweet tooth Isy getting 3 fillings. She was great by God’s grace. Pray for provision with bills. Little Livy started crawling in the last couple of weeks and is getting a bit more mobile and independent. She is quite the mommies girl but sweet and lovely.

Thank you as always for your love, support, prayers, and emails of encouragement. A special thanks to those of you who have made it possible for us to remain here all this time. Treasures in Heaven!! It is truly humbling and we are grateful. May God lead us all back to first love and stir us up to proclaim more and more the good news found only in Jesus. Rev 22:12

• pray for Leon as he gets a hold of contractors to take more bids
• Leon’s salvation and a stronger family life
• negotiations with the owner to be peaceful and beneficial for all sides
• building permits to be finalized and accepted by the city
• God’s grace for the first hammer to be lifted on the building
• Laborers, finances, materials, etc… to be provided by God’s abundance
• Lidia’s son Davide to be broken, repentant, and changed forever
• Grace, strength, and wisdom for Lidia until that happens.
• Robert to find a part time job that pays well and is flexible for ministry.
• Agostino to be softened, hungry for truth, and born again by the Word of God.
• New comers Nidia, Silvia, Ester, Paul and Sherry to feel welcomed, be blessed, be edified, grow, and begin to plug into their role in the body.
• Outreach team to be blessed, sensitive, discerning, fruit-bearing. A harvest on Campus!
• July concert outreach to be anointed and ministry filled.
• July leadership conference preparations, logistics, those coming, Pastor Bob led in teaching, etc….
• Lastly, please pray against the devil/powers and principalities!

By Grace,
Brent and Hope Harrell, CC Rome

Friday March 1, 2005

Dear Brothers and Sisters, praying ones:
A most joyous greeting from Rome, the so-called Eternal City. It is far from that but it sure is beautiful. Spring has sprung, the world is spinning faster by the day, the Pope is in critical condition as of last night, and true Christians watch the world scene realizing more than ever that the times are upon us, our Lords call upward for the church is imminent! "As the days of Noah were, so shall be the coming of the Son of Man…" -Mt 24:37 Peoples hearts are stirred not only as they watch the ailing Pope that they love so much, even though he his one of the strongest advocates of Mariology and believes that she will usher in peace if the faithful pray to her enough, but there is a sense of confusion, wonder, and hunger I feel. People are looking for answers. Let us pray that God will pour out a Spirit of conviction and repentance that we might see the great harvest we all desire.

I would like to especially thank all of our supporters both prayer and financial before I go any further. We could never even half way express our gratitude and dependence on your prayers and giving. Thank you for caring, battling with us, and remaining so faithful. Without it all, we would have never been here this long to see God do what he has done, is doing, and will do. Blessings of every kind upon you all.

Outreach/summer events:
Recently we had a couple of teams laboring with us here in Rome. We continue to see openness and a softening in hearts as prayer goes up and the Word goes out. While a team from CC Rochester was here we had the privilege of working with a combat team that uses karate demonstrations as a platform for preaching the gospel. Many people were drawn to this man's exhibitions which opened the way for his testimony of abandonment which led to legal adoption. He likened that to the adoption that we receive from our heavenly Father through Jesus and many were touched. Thanks Bryan! The Rochester team hit the streets evangelizing, getting out literature, and spent some quality time ministering to the body through food and prayer. The team spent one day painting and cleaning up the place we meet in on Sundays which was desperately needed. Good job folks. "You're the Best"!! Thanks for your sweetness and encouragement CC Rochester.

Starting mid-April we will have many more teams coming in for outreach. By God's grace, we will have two one month teams in May. Pray for our sanity, physical endurance, team unity, divine appointments, and salvation of many. Pray for accommodations to be secured for all of our teams as well as logistics, finances, etc… All of our teams and summer outreach will culminate with a couple of conferences for us. Please be praying in advance for the planning, preparation, and secured confirmations of those attending as we work towards our joint Italian conference in Austria in August hosted by CC Montebelluna in the north of Italy. Lord willing we will have a retreat for our home church missionaries and some of each churches leaders here in Rome early August preceding our Italian retreat. Lift up Pastor Bob's schedule and the possibility of him making it to Rome. After that we will have our annual missions conference in Austria wrapping up August.

Easter:
Our Easter service was great, full with several visitors and at least one non believer praise God! That is a miracle in these parts. Pray for Vladimyr's boss who is Italian and has had lots of physical trials. This was his first time in an Evangelical church. He seemed really touched and got an ear full on the resurrection of Jesus for sure. Now we pray for life to spring up.

Building:
Letting patience have it's perfect work in us has become quite a reality with the building situation. Hope and faith have not diminished, but we continue to wait and persevere in prayer. I do believe that God has to be working and moving in hearts aligning people in accordance with his great plans for us and this building. Continue to pray with us for wisdom, discernment, and practical action only in accordance to God's plan.

Personal:
On the home front, things are just as wild and crazy as the spiritual. Olivia is growing and dealing with teeth pain as well as weaning sensitivities, yet, as cute as ever. Like one friend said, that is her insurance!! Isabella is way out of control, too smart, over active, and hilarious, as well as a blessing. She is learning how to identify letters since she knew her alphabet from 1 year old. She is potty training finally and wants to go to school. Pray as we get her on a waiting list for public pre-school for the fall. She is also growing in her use of the Italian language which is cute. Hope is good. Certainly challenged as she has to spend more time with the girls. We know it is a season but man, sometimes seasons seem to drag on. She is a great mommy and works hard. For the last 6 Saturdays or so, Hope has led a woman's study which is bearing fruit. The ladies love meeting together and are growing in many ways. We praise God for the consistency and pray for it to continue. I must get my Italian driver's license soon which is somewhat difficult as well as costly. Pray for me as I face that challenge. I love my girls, enjoy watching them grow, and continue to be pruned and challenged to grow and change in so many areas. I truly am not worthy of God's grace and blessings.

It is a privilege to be doing what we are doing and we pray for much fruit and that you too might be blessed as you labor together with us for Italy and Rome. We pray that you are all well, swimming in grace, watching and praying as the Lord prepares His bride for the rapture.

Friday January 1, 2005

We were recently asked to do a simple interview for an online publication called Calvary News Network which is done by a christian journalist in Denmark. You may view it at this link: http://www.calvarychapel.dk/nyheder/2005/eng/eng050101rome.htm

Tuesday December 21, 2004

Is 61:2 …the acceptable year of the Lord (the time of God’s favor and grace)

Ciao Cari, Auguri e Buon Natale, Capodanno, e tutto il resto. (Best wishes, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and all the rest). In Italy they do celebrate the good witch that brings candy to the children on January 6th but I guess none of you will be celebrating that one!! Us either!! Greetings from the feeble flock at Rome. Praise God that we are so weak all of the time since He says that is good and that he can show how strong he is through our weakness. God is, and has been so faithful to us and his favor is surely upon us all. We don’t know where to begin since it has been several months since our last communication. Hope and I have been back to the states on the classic whirl wind tour. We can’t say enough about the special time we spent with family, friends and supporting churches. We wish we could have spent more time with all and caught some time with those we missed. Thank you CC Boise, our home church, the Sasso’s, church staff, and particularly Larry and Lorna Brown for serving us and making our coming home so smooth and organized. We had the opportunity to share there and in several churches in the surrounding areas in which we hadn’t shared before. Prayerfully some will join the work in Rome and Italy. Others do support us through prayer and giving financially and we are so grateful for all efforts! The body of Christ is amazing. Thanks tons to the CC Ontario clan for spoiling us and loving us so much. We always enjoy being a part of the family there. Thank you also to the CC Rochester family for blessing our socks off and spoiling us too. It was great to fellowship with each body and have the privilege to share the Word as well.

THE BODY:
As we wait for God to move in certain areas we remain most focused and faithful to simply ministering to the body. God continues to bless us with a consistent crowd Sunday mornings as we move towards finishing the Gospel of Mark. Some new people flow in and out. I have noticed many wandering sheep from other experiences and churches passing through. It is heart breaking to see people running from sin, or discipline, or sometimes just careless churches and pastors. Pray for God’s sheep like that who just need either to repent or need lots of love, compassion, and guidance through their issues. Lidia and Robert are dealing with car and financial struggles so please lift that up. They both depend on cars in many ways. Lift up Robert and his family that God would provide finances or a part time job for Robert that would pay well and be flexible with ministry. We really don’t want to lose our focus or momentum in serving the body and evangelism, but we ask that the Lord’s will be done. Gianfranco has been struggling with taking his medication for months now and is really in bad shape mentally so please pray accordingly, mainly that he would yield to our counsel to start back up on his meds. Paola just finished her thesis after two years of work and did her final oral exam before one of the toughest professors among many and God totally blessed it. She is very content and now waiting on God for the next step. Teresa is struggling quite a bit with on and off attendance since September really. After the loss of her son this summer she just really hasn’t recovered. Pray for God to comfort her and give her rest. Amy has been through some pruning over the past few months but continues to work through the heart ache and trust the Lord. She is stateside for the holidays so pray for time with family, travel mercies, guidance for the future and work in Rome. Vladymir has been buried with work and given management responsibilities so he is exhausted and his devotion life and zeal have waned greatly to his own confession. Lift him up, may it be only a season, and may he have wisdom to balance out the demands of his boss and protecting his relationship with the Lord. Cover the body in prayer as many struggle with jobs and finances, as well as deal with great battles in warfare, marriage, family, and growing in practically living out God’s Word. We pray that God would give us grace to better develop something for the few children we have in the fellowship as well as youth and young singles. Pray for a woman’s study that Hope will begin in January. May God protect Hope, anoint her preparation time, encourage the woman, unify them, and bless them in fellowship and faith. Pray over the upcoming New Year’s Eve prayer night, and our once a month afterglow, that God would be glorified, people would be drawn and saved, and the gifts of God’s Spirit would be manifested and bring edification to the body. Can’t mention everybody but know that there are many struggles and much warfare here in the den of the devil. We pray that God would let his glory fall upon us and move among us lighting us on fire for him only to rage higher capturing others for the kingdom. Pray for the teaching to be
anointed, powerful, practical, and useful in each heart. Pray for God to stir our body to lifestyle evangelism not getting trapped in our own lives and struggles but reaching out to the sick and perishing around us.

THE BUILDING:
There have been some positive steps taken in the last couple of months but there is further to go. Right now we are in a waiting period seeking, trusting, and waiting for the Lord to bring things to pass. Everything is in the owners court, if you will. She has gone to the city and filed certain requests necessary for the process of renovation etc… The fire department had to be notified and then they are to come out and list necessary measures to be taken for safety and codes to be met. After this we can move forward with contract negotiations, applying for construction permits, hiring, working etc… Our prayer continues to be that God will move in such a way as to completely clear the building from the city situation and that the owner would be moved to sell it to us cheap. Pray for God’s perfect will to be accomplished. A sheer miracle is what we are waiting on. The Lord has spoken through a Word given at our last stop stateside and I feel confident that he in fact will do it. He has called us to trust him and to wait, so, we wait in expectation. God has moved on some hearts to be helping us with construction needs and that is humbling and exciting so we pray that people get that opportunity to bless and be blessed as they serve God.

FAMILY:
God has blessed us greatly. Olivia is growing more round daily and is quite the little charmer. Isabella loves her little sister and kisses her and coos at her all the time. Hope and I take turns running in circles and juggling all of the plates that spin. Praise God for sleepy time. About a week ago we actually left both babies with Paola and zipped off on a quick date to a movie. Pray for us as a family as we battle powers and principalities, raising little ones, our own flesh, and seek to grow in grace. Pray for Hope to be refreshed, given lots of grace, and to be settled by that peace that surpasses understanding in all areas. Pray for us to have wisdom, diligence, and grace as we teach and discipline Isabella in this sensitive “two’s” period and grow in parenting. We are all kind of sick right now so please pray for healing and health. Last week we had to renew our permits to live here. God moved mightily as we got enrolled in a language school, got an appointment at the police station (sheer miracle) and actually got our permits renewed all in one week. Hallelujah! Thank you for joining in prayer with us. Thanks to many of you for cards and gifts sent for the holidays. As Christmas comes and goes we pray that each of you will know the Joy of the Lord. For he truly did come to bring joy to mankind. Praise God for His Son, the Sacrifice he made, the promises given, and the reality of heaven fast approaching! May you enjoy Isaiah 61 this Christmas. Blessings to all and may Jesus get the glory!

By Grace,
Brent, Hope, and family and the CC Rome family

Archived Church News:

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July - Sept. '06

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Jan. - Dec. '04