Journey to Athens Part One

We left Italy by Boat to travel to Athen's the boat ride was 12 hours (which we barely made it in time )......We couldn't afford any rooms so we piled all our luggage and ourselves on the deck of the ship.......As the day came to end we said goodbye to Italy and prepared our hearts for Greece we were told we would be staying in the red light district......Sleeping on the boat was surely an adventure.......I woke up the next morning where water and black stuff covered my sleeping bag and I was already grumpy because it marked 4 years since my mom had past away......Not a morning to remember however God showed me beauty in the passing islands as we made our way to Greece........We arrived in Greece to meet our host.........where we traveled by bus a couple hours to reach Athen's......On our way we were able to stop by the ancient town of Corinth.........It was a sight to remember.......To be in the same town Paul shared the gospel and where he wrote Corinthians it was truly amazing.....I began to understand Paul's heart beat.....seeing the mountains behind the town and the large temple where they would sacrafice animals.............Then we stopped at another ancient place where Paul actually shipwrecked before he made it to the town of Corinth......there we ate lunch and made our way to where we would be staying....

We were housed in a 4 story buliding where they house a few refugee's from the middle east that are Jesus followers......the district we were in was directly around the Muslim culture......so we were not allowed to go out alone and most of the time we should take a guy with us.....We could see the brothel from our windows and watched men go in and out of the place.....At night the streets came alive and it was really noisy I didn't sleep much......It was so hot that I sweat all night long and I would constantly be having bad dreams I even woke up screaming once......I know God is bigger than any power trying to discourage me......:)

Outreach times: Our first performance was at a local church which was really fun and met a lot of Christian Greeks that were so wonderfully nice.......The next two performances were at a park square where alot of the illegal immigrants from the middle east live and do drugs........The first night was a little nervous because they gave cat calls almost the whole performance and at the end a local pastor preached to the audience and it wasn't presented in the way I think needed to be presented........It was a little direct and harsh and it made the crowd angry to a point they were yelling and booing all of us........After wards we got to share our hearts with the people and I think it was good........The second night was about the same except a recovered drug addict student in our DTS shared his personal testimony of how God brought him out of his addiction.....they really like what he had to say.....Almost the whole crowd stayed and listened and after wards I was able to meet some guys from Afghanistan and shared with them what little I knew of their culture from working at Barbur World Foods..........

The next Performance was at the place where we stayed......two times a week they fed the refugee's so we performed our show to them and they loved it and a couple of them even gave their life to Christ......after that ended we went up at night to the Parathanon and viewed the whole city of Athen's by night it was so breath taking.......Another place where Paul shared the Gospel........I was able to fellowship with one of the young men living as a refugee in Athen's it was really humbling to know how easy I live my life.....He has to wait another 5 years before he can leave the country so he can get his papers......He hasn't seen his family in 5 years and has a part time job and helps out at the building where he lives.......I am learning that the circumstances in my life may have been hard but their is so much blessing in my life that I never even thought about............

The next day we cleaned and packed for our next outreach adventure to the northern part of Greece where we will be teaming up for 10 days with Christian Greeks where we will be traveling to many different citys to share the gospel.........