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Biography I would like to tell you something about myself. I was born in Rome in 1960. My mother says that I jumped a lot in her womb while she was watching the summer Olympics in Rome that year on an old black and white TV. On November the 4th I gave the last jump that brought me into this world. I had a happy childhood, thanks to my darling parents. I have a brother, Valerio, who is three years older than me and a sister, Marina, four years younger than me. When I was fourteen years old I finally succeeded in producing some good sound, something decent (at least, it seemed so to me) from a guitar, and I thought "why not?" - (I used to pretend to play the guitar with a carpet beater) That' s the way I started to compose music. I didn't compose in order to become the center of attention, and sincerely nobody had ever heard any of my songs until I became of age. To be honest, composing was a creative way to work out my frustrations on pieces of paper, and I had to ask forgiveness of my tape recorder for the hours of torture in which I regularly submitted it every evening. The story of my teenage years and how I sought for happiness is told in two notebooks; first, I looked for it in friendship, in human love and finally - tired and disappointed - in religion and therefore in God. When I was seventeen years old, I was in a state of profound sadness, nauseated by the hypocrisies and by the insipid proposals of the world… I had my crisis. It was one day in February in 1978, that I took a Bible, from the shelf of the bookstore and I started to read it. It was the Word of God. I didn't doubt it, therefore God spoke to me through His Word. However, He spoke to me in a way that I had not foreseen. He caused me to see the diagnosis before the cure… He caused me to see that I was a sinner and that I was lost. My desperation in that moment grew! I asked myself, "How do I remove the sorrowful weight of my sin? Why can't I find relief in religious practices? Why can't I succeed in maintaining my good intentions? Who will save me?" It was my brother Valerio who lead me to Christ. In March he gave his life to the Lord, and he spoke to me about Jesus and he presented the Savior as a Person who is very interested in me. Really, interested in me! Seeing the change in his life and the light that shone in his eyes, I was challenged and I thought that he had found what I was looking for! So, after having encouraged me to read the gospel, he invited me to go to an evangelical church. I truly didn't know anything about “evangelicals”, but I thought they must be a special group. They were indeed, because they all had met Jesus. I met the Lord too, the first evening I found myself in that place; a place made of simple yet happy people. That evening - April 2nd 1978 - God directly spoke to me, and Jesus saved me, and the Holy Spirit regenerated me. I flooded the bench where we were sitting with tears of joy and repentance. I felt the sudden and instant presence of the Lord and the pardon that He assured to me - it was a work He completed in the past, the guilt of my sin was paid by Christ on a cross... and the cure was sweet in comparison to the diagnosis. I immediately started singing for Jesus together with Valerio. But, our music was always something we did among ourselves. Then we met a dear brother, Roberto. He was the program manager for the Evangelical Radio station in Rome, “Radioevangelo”. He had heard about our "talent" and wanted to record some of our compositions to give background music to some of the Radio programs which featured Bible studies. We were so excited and worried about this proposal that we prayed whole days asking the Lord to help us in order to honor him. Some of these compositions, included "A day of celebration", which was immediately adopted by the youth group in Rome, and now this song is included in the hymnbook of our national church. Today I am a mature, middle-aged man. I pretend to be young… but now I have a wife and two grown sons. One of them is now the age I was when I first met Jesus. Presently, I am pastor off a small mission church outside of Rome in the community of Olgiata. Valerio is pastor of Roma Pietralata church. I am heavily involved with our summer camps which are sponsored by the Assemblies of God of Italy. I work mostly with teenagers, I love them. I have a secular job, as a computer programmer and consultant. In my spare time, I continue to compose songs to Jesus. I love Him, but He loves me even more! |
