House Guests, Family Conference, Strikes and More School

Practically please pray for us:

To be able to learn the language well.

For the sale of our house. Yesterday we learned that the deal we had to sell our Wheaton house fell through, so it is back for sale again!

Real estate prices are sinking as well as the US dollar against the euro. Financially we are having to trust God more and more with things we cannot understand.

That we will continue to be open to the things God wants to teach us

It’s been busy these days in Greece. At the beginning of the month we hosted our first house guests, Carol Getz and Gary and Christy Bollier, all from our home church. They are also members of the HM board and were in Athens for an annual board meeting. HM combined the board meeting with the annual family conference this year so we all had the opportunity to get to know the board members and likewise for them to know us better.

It was an incredible week of busyness and fellowship. I was in charge of accommodations as the 60+ of us gathered at a hotel in Glyfada for a 5 day retreat. It was with such joy that we welcomed familiar faces from Wheaton and were able to spend time catching up on home. One night, we had an awesome candlelight dinner at our house with 8 of us from WBC. We weren’t intending for it to be lit by candlelight, but we lost power about 15 minutes before they got to our house. (Part of an ongoing strike by the power company. I think our power has been cut off at least 5 times in the last 10 days.) Our guests were gracious and we ate our cold food (it was ready two hours earlier) in a very intimate setting here around the kitchen table.

The family conference was a time to get together and for each of us missionaries to give a report about their life and ministry in 2007. For those of us new people, it was a great chance to learn about all the ministries that HM is involved with. There were long days sitting around the conference room soaking up the reports but we did have a break every afternoon so Mike and I took the opportunity to walk down to the beach and to enjoy the sun. Mike even took a dip in the sea on two occasions. It was quite cold but refreshing? (he said his chest hurt after the dip) for him.

We came back and hit life like crazy again. This time we had two new houseguests, the Bougas’ from South Africa. Mike has had to be Mr. Hospitality since I am in the city for language school three days a week. Mike is working on his Greek using the Rosetta Stone computer program and we are hoping to find him a tutor soon. Level 2 for me is quite difficult, I realize now how easy Level 1 was. It might be hard to imagine just how exhausting, both physically and mentally, language learning can be, but trust me, it requires a lot and we are grateful for the time HM is giving us now to study the language. Sometimes it is frustrating because we are so anxious to become more involved in ministry, but God is telling us “siga, siga, (slowly, slowly), first things first.” And so we wait, what else is new?!

Mike is off on the island of Patmos this week with the Bible school students doing a study of the books of Daniel and Revelation. Patmos is the island where John was exiled when he received the revelation from God (Rev 1:9). The trip was rather spur of the moment for Mike, they had a last minute cancellation and he took advantage of it. We are both so excited that he is having this opportunity to study the Word of God in this way. It does seem much better than the winter commute to Moody that I did!

A fun surprise: I spent the day today with another girl from Wheaton, Jennifer Fichera, who is here for 6 weeks for work. It was so fun to meet her and to spend the day talking of familiar things and people from back home and seeing some of the sights of Athens together.

Anyways, we are reminded again and again of God’s sovereignty as He is directing our lives. No day is predictable here; right now we are in the midst of a one week garbage strike (it’s piling up and it stinks) an ongoing power company strike (frequently losing power), and weekly general strikes where they close everything down including, banks, metro, buses etc. This makes it a little difficult getting around and knowing how and when to get to school and the office etc especially when we can’t understand the news in Greek! There is much we can’t figure out but we are always sure that this is where God wants us. He is doing a lot of uprooting in our lives but at the same time we know He is shaping and forming us anew so that He can use us here.

Big accomplishments this week!

The weeks just keep flying by here. I can’t believe it is March already. We had several big accomplishments this week.

On Wednesday Mike got our clothes dryer hooked up. I know most of you won’t understand this (because in my previous life I didn’t either) but Wednesday night after I got home from school and the office, I was able to do two loads of wash; washed, dried, folded and put away in 2 ½ hrs. This was incredible!! Normally this process would have taken about two days from start to finish. Anyways, we are thrilled with the dryer and received it just in time as we have house guests coming this week and were able to get all the bedding washed and dried in one day!!

On Friday, we had our last day of Level One Greek class. That also meant we had a test that day. As you can see from our certificates, we did pass the class (do they fail anyone when one pays for the class?!). We’ve survived the first level and have had 60 hours of class. It has been one of the roughest things Mike has ever done. I am more used to it since I went back to college in my 40s. Certainly a challenge to feel so inept (stupid) at this age! It is also embarrassing to try to use the language on the street and still be misunderstood. Sometimes we concentrate so much on what we want to ask/say that when the people respond to us in Greek we have no idea what they have said!! Did I mention that Level 2 Greek class begins tomorrow-March 3^rd!!

This week (Thur-Mon) HM is having a family conference at a hotel in Glyfada, Greece which is about 30 minutes from Athens. It is different this year because we have HM Board Members joining us from North America, Australia, South Africa and Greece! We are all excited to have this time together, especially the three new families who have joined HM this past year. The conference will include reports from each team member about their work here in 2007. We can’t wait to hear more and to learn more about how HM works.

Needless to say, we have also been quite busy this week trying to get ready for the conference. Before the conference, we are housing Carol Getz and Gary and Christie Bollier so we've had a lot to do to get our newly furnished house (1 month) ready for guests. Lots of boxes to get through and clean out! We think we are ready which is good since Carol arrives in a couple of hours and the Bolliers tomorrow.

Mike has been helping at the office with some renovation projects and I have been working on accommodations for the conference as well as having four days of school this week and a test!!

The days go by really quickly and we are thankful to have so much to keep us occupied with.

The weather this week has been lovely, most days in upper 50’s and a couple in the upper 60’s. We are enjoying the weather and are sorry for those of you stuck in cold and snow.

Thank you again for your love and support. We are always mindful that none of these accomplishments is done by ourselves. You are part of our busy lives and ministries here everyday as you partner with us to share Jesus here in this country.