Up bright & early and down for our complimentary breakfast, food galore!!!!😳🙃😳 lucky we're doing heaps of walking!!!! Yoghurt, fruit, pastries, cereals, cheeses, hams, bacon, eggs, bread and fantastic coffee, no we don't have all of it each day lol 😂
Our taxi arrived to take us to the airport and I suddenly felt quite overwhelmed by the daunting task ahead, how on earth could we find an opportunity in the whole of Sicily that would suit us???
An hour late leaving Rome, we had hardly got into the air and it was time to descend into Palermo, flying over the Tyrrhenian sea - packed like sardines in the Ryanair plane!!!
The landscape of Sicily looked great, it was searing hot and it sort of looked desert like with mountains coming out of nowhere!!! It looked so much like I though it would be, it felt sort of North African.
Driving into Palermo with our mission contact and talking of life in Palermo, good & bad areas, migrants etc.
We got dropped at our apartment, down 10 small alleyways wondering where on earth we were going and suddenly we arrived at our downstairs apartment, old and ancient on the outside and inside totally refurbished and modern!!! Then just around the corner is a huge historic building and square, then the Main Street of Palermo, modern and lively. Lovely city, feeling very comfortable and at peace with being here 😊
JD returned and we went to an arranged meeting with an African pastor who is working with the migrants in the refugee camps. He has a rented room where he does bible studies with people & church on Sundays also. Pastor Daniel, it was great to hear his story - he left Seirra Leon at the age of 12 when his parents were killed in the war, his father was a policeman and they were targeted first because they were armed with guns! He went to Liberia where it was worse than the home he had escaped from, he got the boat from Tunisia to Sicily, so he knows exactly the journey today's migrants have travelled. Over 600,000 migrants have arrived in Sicily in the last 4 years!
Walking through the streets to Pastor Daniels location was just like walking through Kampala, fish markets, fruit markets, street food and African people everywhere!!!
Daniel is so desperate for help, he is overwhelmed with the needs of the migrants and can't possibly do it all by himself going forward. Daniel is picking us up at 9am and we are travelling an hour away to two refugee camps - isn't that just God being so awesome, why are we surprised, He has a plan, He has heard and answered our prayers on day one!
