Kalo Pasxa! Happy Easter!

We celebrated Easter here in Greece on April 27th. Mike and I enjoyed an overnight with our HM friends out at Porto Astro (the mission's seaside property). We were joined by about 30 others from our HM team and some other Greek friends as well. As you can see, we roasted lambs as is the tradition here in Greece. The weather was cool and damp, the food was excellent (even though I was too chicken to try any lamb) and we had a great time as we rejoiced together over the Risen Lamb of God who is now seated at the right hand of God interceding for us. What other God would sacrifice so much, His perfect Son, for sinful people like us? We are amazed at His love for us and long to share this love with others!

Akbar's family reunion

It was a special privilege for us to be part of a welcoming team that met at the airport in the very early morning hours Saturday to welcome to Greece Akbar's wife Lela and his almost 7 yr old daughter, Bita. Akbar is a refugee friend of ours from HM who fled from Iran almost 5 yrs ago. He had not seen his wife or his daughter since that time. As long as we have known him, he has been working to get them here with him. He has tried various means, including hiring smugglers and locking himself in at the UN building, to get them here but until now he had not been successful. Lela and Bita were even arrested and imprisoned in Turkey recently. Akbar is a very strong, intelligent, prideful man who is not used to not being able to provide for his family. The challenge of securing his family's safe arrival here has humbled and consumed him. With the help of the HM team, largely Bruce and Johnathan, and a multitude of praying friends, Akbar has been able to obtain the paperwork necessary to reunite his family. It was a hugely rewarding experience for us to be there with him as his daughter ran into his loving arms. There were lots of hugs and tears and love flowing that night as we clapped and praised God for this answer to prayer. The really neat part of the story is how God used this whole process to draw Lela and Akbar both into a loving relationship with Him and their surrender to Him.

Mike's birthday

I played a little surprise on Mike for his 51st birthday this past Saturday. I got him up at 7am and whisked him off to the port where we took a two hour ferry boat ride to the island of Andros. We spent the day site seeing around the island and then spent a very peaceful afternoon and evening at a great little villa that overlooked a bay. We had a nice dinner with phone calls from family back home and then watched a beautiful full moon and a sky full of stars together. On Sunday we spent more time driving around the island and then coming back home in the late afternoon. It was a very quiet but restful time together and I think Mike really enjoyed the surprise!

Spring is here and so are visitors!

The Wilson Family

Jennifer Fichera

The Caperwray Girls

One part of our assignment here in Greece is to manage the “HM Guest House” which is the apartment that is downstairs from us. Since we moved in in December one family, the Wilsons, occupied it. Sad to say, the Wilson’s left Greece after working here with HM for four months and are continuing their travels to visit a few other missionary families on this side of the globe before returning home to Seattle in a few weeks. Since then we have already had two sets of visitors through our doors. Three young girls on Spring break from Caperwray Bible School in England stayed with us one weekend and then the Bougas’s from South Africa were here for a few days last week. Needless to say, it has been busy, trying to get the beds made, the towels cleaned and dried and some basic essentials set up for the place. We are excited about this opportunity to meet new people as they come through and we have been blessed already by all those who have stayed here.

Other things about our home life haven’t been as fun. We have been struggling with some of the new appliances that we bought in December. The washing machine just quit, the refrigerator freezes things and the solar panels we had installed on the roof took four visits and 6 weeks time to work properly! It’s quite a challenge to call people and try to get repair men out here when we don’t speak the language. I am thankful that Mike has been handling most of the calls and we are about one third of the way there. I can’t even begin to tell you how many hours and days we have spent trying to get these things done. Waiting at home for someone to come who never shows up etc.!!

Good news though, Mike has been successful in getting us the internet at home now and in getting all our paperwork done and turned in to the local government office to apply for our residence visa. It appears that everything is in order and they have granted us a temporary pass but the bad news is that the licensing agency that handles the paperwork now is on strike for a month!! We also learned that our travel is restricted by the government until the official visa is secured! One step forward, two steps back J

I am still struggling through language school. Level two is much more challenging than level one. I have just 4 classes (I’ve been counting since 16) left and then will hire a tutor for more individualized help-yeah!! I am learning humility in new ways as I find myself praying not to cry in class when I am often overwhelmed. I am in a class of 8 and am the slowest, oldest learner-aka the “dumbest kid” in class. Another uncomfortable thing!

One really neat story I must share. Because of one of the transportation strikes two weeks ago, I spent an extended period of time at a bus stop waiting with a group of people for a non-existent bus. The next day I saw the same young man at my regular bus stop and we got to talking about how we managed to get to our schools the day before. During the course of the one + hour commute, God gave me the opportunity to share with this guy the good news about Jesus Christ. The whole story about how God sent Jesus to rescue the world and our ability to have eternal life by believing in Him. It is interesting that God works in such mysterious ways-would I ever have chosen a strike that caused my trip to school to be 3hours and 25 minutes, absolutely not, but would I ever have known that this is what gave me the opportunity to share with this young guy about Jesus and life in Him!! Surely His ways are beyond our ways and understanding.

Oh well, the days go by and we often find ourselves with mixed feelings between what- in- the- world are we doing here and what an incredible blessing it is to be here! Thank you for your love and prayers for us. Glad to be partnering with you all. Blessings.

Studying Revelation on Patmos!

I recently got the chance to go on a nine day trip to the island of Patmos with the Greek Bible School. Twenty of us went to do an Alpha Course Study (first time offered by HM in cooperation with the Greek Bible Institute) on the books of Daniel and Revelation. I (Mike) first must say thank you to Peggy for letting me go. It was hard being away but the time went fast.

I found it captivating to be on the island where John, who was exiled and about 80 years old, received the revelation about the last days of earth from God. We even visited the cave where scholars think he was when he wrote the book.

I really enjoyed the study of the seven churches in the beginning of Revelation. Things were not so good in them and I realized that we can learn a lot from them. We talked about how the conditions of the churches mentioned relate to the churches today. A few things that really hit me were:

-being lukewarm

-what we are accountable for?

-what is worship?

-how can we be in the world and not of it?

-how can I be on guard against Satan and false teaching?

-how do we not “water down” our faith?

-how can we prepare for suffering?

After looking at the whole study, one of the main things that keeps coming back to me is about prayer and fasting. Not just prayer to ask for something but prayer just to come before God and to thank Him and to find joy in Him. This really made me consider my own prayer life. I realize that I need to be spending more time with Him. I feel so bad for all the times that I haven’t done so well with this. I’m not good at fasting either but now I think I will try to do this more often.

I am back from my trip and life is getting busy again. Here I am writing this and already I am reminded how I need to spend more time before God. Satan sure is a good deceiver and he has ways to pull us into thinking we can put things off until tomorrow or the next day or week. Sometimes, we even think we are doing a good job or being close to God.

This trip to Patmos really made me look at my relationship with God. I realized that this is something I need to examine and I need to be honest with myself about how I am doing in this relationship. It also made me think that if the end of the world was tomorrow; would I be happy with how I’ve handled this relationship today? God is always there, waiting for us to come to Him. Don’t miss out.

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.