Post from Greece

SixTen!

It’s been harder than I thought to keep blog posts updated the past few days! This week has felt very full and busy. We’ve been splitting up and sending our team members to the various language groups to move through the course material. For the most part these times have been awesome, which much God-centered discussion and also the amazing opportunity to hear the stories of believers in other countries, many of whom have endured a host of hardships in their life because of their faith. I, personally, have ended up helping to lead more of the groups than I anticipated this week, spending most of my time (Sunday-Wed nights) with the Albanian group, but then joined the African group of believers tonight.

Since our trip is basically the first of it’s kind from Training Leader’s International, we’ve encountered some challenges for sure. There’s been some mis-communications to the different groups about a few things, such as some of the materials not having been translated into a couple of the languages, some mis-understanding about the type of material we’d be covering, and to some extent the level of education of some of us sent to lead. We were anticipating needing to keep the courses very foundational (7th-8th grade level) but in some cases have been asked to teach at a much higher level than that which has required much more time to prepare for each evening and maybe even a little bit of stress:)  However, we’ve also experienced great fellowship in every one of the groups at different times as well as within our own team of 8 Americans. God has certainly been faithful.

I had the opportunity tonight to help lead the English speaking group mostly consists of Africans, and it was just a total encouragement! These men (and women) were some of the most gracious and humble people I’ve ever met. They were a joy to be with. It was also nice to not need an interpreter! I met a man tonight who shared some of his life “story” with me. He is a medical doctor from Pakistan who had to flee his country 3 years ago, because the Taliban took control of his part of the country and were threatening to kill anyone who did not submit to their radical Islamic rule. Essentially, while he was in Greece for a conference, he found out that he had been being tracked by the Taliban and was on their “list” and that it would not be safe for him to re-enter Pakistan. This was three years ago and his wife and 2 kids are still in Pakistan, though he is still trying to get their papers approved to move them to Greece with him. Hearing his story just blew my mind. He became a Christian soon after he received help from one of the Christian-run humanitarian centers in Athens, and it was totally humbling to speak with him tonight and think what it must be like for him to be far away from his family for 3 years and to fear that they may be in danger. We need to pray for men like this!

On a lighter note, we did have time yesterday to make our way to the Acropolis and walk around the ruins there which was a pretty cool experience and unlike anything we have in our country. That’s what the picture is of. I’m signing off for the night; thanks for all your prayers and support.