Our first class was group dynamics with Carl Michell. Carl and his wife Frankie were missionaries in Italy with Howard and Doris Bybee. On Monday and Tuesday, we talked with L.V. Pfeifer on the doctrines of Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, both of which are apparently very active in Italy. The rest of training, we spent time with Howard Bybee talking about Catholic doctrines. Then we had a VERY BRIEF overview of church history, from the time of the Apostles to the Stone-Campbell movement, with Allen Diles and Fred Jewell. After the church history lesson, we had singing/Italian lessons with Jolie and Paul Love. Paul and Jolie also fed us authentic Italian food for lunch everyday, and it was SO good. We sang songs in Italian that the churches in Italy like to sing and they were teaching us to sing in parts. In the afternoons during the first week, we had cross cultural communication with Howard Norton, Getting to Know Jesus with Jim Woodroof, and Faith and Evidences with Don England.
Here is a picture of Jim (above) about to teach class and a picture of one of Jim's classes (below):
The second week of training we had some of the same classes like Group Dynamics with Carl, Catholic Doctrine with Howard, and Faith and Evidences with Don, but we didn't have the singing lessons or church history. But we still had great classes like The Beatitudes with Jim, where we looked at the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 and how they are guidelines for Christian living; Gordon Hogan gave us brief looks at Islam, Buddhist, and Hindu doctrines; Bruce McLarty had a class on post-modernism and pluralism; Dan and Suzanne Reed, former missionaries in Venice, talked about their work in Vince with the church and the children's ministry they started there; and then Noel Whitlock, the preacher at College church talked to us about the importance of the church.
