December 2019
Dear friends in Christ,
Janie, Iain and I want to wish you a Merry Christmas from cold and rainy Milan!
We have now been in the country for a little over a year. By God’s grace, we are adjusting well. The transition was not easy, and a took a while to settle in and find a place to live, but now Milan is starting to feel like home to us. Iain is doing well in school and has made some friends. He is hard-working student and his Italian is outstanding. THANK YOU for all who pray for him!
Janie enjoys getting out into the community, meeting our neighbors, and learning the history of Milan. She is also a tremendous help with the ministry, doing all of the sermon video-editing, social media for the mission, and opening our home to our church-family and neighbors. I am so grateful for her!
I stay busy writing sermons, catechism material, and preaching and teaching in Italian. It is the most challenging thing I have ever done in my life, but I am both and humbled and thrilled to serve here. There is such a great need in Milan.
To give you an idea of what life is like here, Milan is considered to be the NYC of Italy, excelling in fashion, design, education, biotechnology, commerce, finance, and entertainment. The metropolitan area has 8.2 million inhabitants. It is also the world’s 7thmost expensive city. With low wages, high unemployment, and astronomical taxes (40-50% of one’s income), most Milanese people live with a sense of anxiety and hopelessness. The city is rife with drugs, prostitution, and corruption. Sadly, the city is host to almost no gospel witness. There are very few Christ-proclaiming churches here. Less than 1% of the population identifies as Protestant.
These characteristics make Milan a spiritually dark place to live. But it also provides a marvelous opportunity for making disciples of Jesus Christ. As we have reached our one-year anniversary of laboring as a missionary family, we give thanks to God that Christ is caring for this little flock and causing it to grow spiritually and numerically. Our membership now consists of 11 families (47 souls), with another family (4 souls) in the new members’ course, and yet another scheduled to take the class in January. In addition, we have 10-15 people who attend the church regularly, but have not yet committed to membership. There are also frequent walk-in visitors. We are overjoyed to see our tiny church building full of people every week, eager to Christ proclaimed and grow in their faith!
All of this is to say that the investments and sacrifices made to send a missionary to Milan is producing fruit in the lives of people. I am and forever will be grateful to all those who have supported this mission with their prayers and finances. We love you and we are thankful for you.
May the Lord richly bless you this Christmas as you reflect on thegreatest event of human history and all that it means for us: the coming of the Son of God into the world to accomplish redemption on our behalf!
Merry Christmas and a blessed 2020!
The Browns
