It is slowly sinking in.

I think it can be hard for people to know what it is like to pack up and move to a foreign country. My first few days in Italy, well it was a vacation, and it did not really sink into me what it meant to be across an ocean, away from much of what I consider to be familiar, and comfortable. I have now been settled into Verbania for two weeks, and this is the longest I have stayed in any place in Italy so far. It is starting to sink in. It is starting to become real. I don't want people to think that I regret coming, I don't. It is just a surreal reality. I am starting to become uncomfortable, starting to realize what it is like to not be able to come home due to the immense geographic distances. I am encountering people very different then what I am used to. I am encountered prejudices within myself that I did not even know I have. By all worldly standards I should be scared -- I am outside of my comfort zone. But....

But God did not build us for this world, but for the world to come. At times, yes I am scared, and sad, but this passes. What does not pass is that I can kneel down and pray. Encounter Him who does not change. To experience His Spirit dwelling in me, and through what I do experience and will experience, know that he is forming me. I know now at times it will hurt, but I remember what C.S. Lewis says about a sculpture. Each blow of the chisel causes it dear pain, but in the end it is a shining masterpiece. It will hurt, it will involve self sacrifice, it will mean renouncing, and mean leaving and even being forced from my comfort zone. In the end I am Christian though, and this means I am part of the people of Hope. I remember the last line of "Amazing Grace": "When we'd been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the Sun..." It is through this all that He, the one who loves me, Jesus, polishes me so that yes, one day I will be bright shining as the sun.

Still need to up-date much with pictures:
1) Siena
2) Volterra
3) Verbania
4) Switzerland