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An International Missionary Outreach Dedicated to Evangelizing the Lost By Sharing The Gospel According to the Scriptures
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Report By Larry Demejo |
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As I write this, I am finally on my way home on board a
United Airline flight from Madrid to Newark. I am so very grateful to our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for protecting me and enabling me to get on
this flight, as I tried unsuccessfully four times before today to fly out of
Rome to the US as a standby passenger. I am also particularly grateful to
my wife, Debbie, and all the other prayer warriors back home and elsewhere,
who faithfully interceded on my behalf during this trip. Finally, I thank my
son, Michael, a United Airlines pilot, who graciously and persistently kept
booking all my flight itineraries and played a major role in making this
trip possible for me.
It was almost four weeks ago, on July 3rd, when I received an
e-mail from Roger Oakland indicating his intention to travel to Rome, Italy
this July. After praying about it and consulting with my wife I realized
that the Lord wanted me to join Roger and a Christian team of Roger's
neighbors from Costa Mesa, California. I had visited Rome, my childhood home
for fifteen years, with Roger, on two previous occasions, when he was
invited to speak at a prophecy conference and a creation conference.
During this trip we visited several sites in Rome, including
St. Peter's Basilica and Square, the Roman Forum with the Arch of Titus
Vespasian, the Column of the Immaculate Conception (a statue of the Roman
Catholic Mary) near the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon, the Holy Stairs chapel
and the Basilica of St John Lateran. All of these sites, among many more in
Rome, remain vivid representations of the Babylonian influence of paganism
in the current ecumenical church. We also took a day trip to the ruins of
Pompei, where we witnessed the evidence and consequence of pervasive sexual
sin and idolatry in an ancient Roman community of about 11,000 citizens
devastated by a volcanic eruption in August of 79 A.D. All along, Roger and
the team filmed footage and interviews that Roger plans to use in future
video commentaries about the roots of apostasy in our culture and in the
post modern church.
Another significant reason why Roger visited Rome at this
particular time was to respond to an invitation to participate at an
international conference on green chemistry and sustainable engineering.
Roger had submitted an abstract of a paper entitled, "A Christian
Perspective on the Environment and How Evolution Could Unite the Religions
of the World to Save the Planet", but the conference organizers did not
respond in a timely fashion. When we arrived at the conference site in Rome
we found out that Roger's paper had been accepted only as a poster by the
program committee, so Roger requested and received permission to publish his
paper in the conference proceedings.
Our team also had an opportunity for sweet fellowship with
our brothers and sisters from Calvary Chapel Rome, where, on Wednesday
evening and Sunday morning, Roger delivered two inspiring messages from the
heart encouraging us to continue to contend for the faith with so many who
are deceived, even in the face of opposition from within the evangelical
church.
I truly believe our Lord used this trip to sow seeds in
Italy and back home in the USA and Canada (perhaps even in other places
through different channels of communication, like the Internet) that will
bear much fruit in the coming days.
I thank our
Lord Jesus again for calling us on this mission and for giving us the
opportunity and privilege to obey Him and serve Him wherever He wants us to
go.
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Understand The Times is an independent non-profit organization in
Canada and the United States.
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