ReCaP...

So you may be asking...what's been happening in Greece? Well, here's a quick recap...


All of the girls made a special Valentine's Day Dinner for the guys...Here is a picture of our class all dressed up for it!


This was the decorated table...It was really pretty!


Tsiknopemti...It's a Greek holiday where everyone barbecues the day before Lent starts. So we barbecued and went to play football (a.k.a. soccer) and some other sports...It was a ton of fun!


Here's Jesse and I on the teeter-totter while waiting for the food to cook! We were acting like 2 big kids!

sacrifice.

This is one thing the Lord has been teaching me since I have been here. I realized that sometimes we need to sacrifice things in our lives that may seem like the best in order to get what is best from the Lord because He knows you and me and knows what we need. "God will never leave you empty. If something is taken away, He will replace it with something better. If He denies your request in a certain area, it is because He wishes to give you what is best. If He asks you to put something down, it is so you can pick up something greater" (Roy Lessin). Is there anything in your life that you are holding on to that you need to lay at the altar and give up to the Lord? Think about it! Isaiah 58:11 says, "The Lord will guide you always; He will satisfy your needs...You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail."

So let me update you...Last Thursday night, I went out to Omonia Square and before we went out, I seriously prayed that I would encounter an english-speaking person so that I could talk. Well, what do ya know? I found someone...by accident! I tried speaking Greek to this man and he asked me if I was from Spain because he said my accent sounded Spanish...oops, that has been my problem with me speaking Greek-I speak it with a Spanish accent, which you don't want! I then told him that I was from America and then he started to speaking to me in English...Praise the Lord! His name was Leftherios and he just started telling me about his life...He said he had been on drugs for a while and that he had been wanting to come to the ministry and check it out. I got to evangelize a bit to him and the cool thing was that he said that as I was talking to him, he felt like we had been friends since childhood...Which is really cool because when I am talking to people, I want them to feel comfortable and open to talk. Then on Saturday night, we went to the ministry and guess who I saw there? Leftherios! I was sooo excited that he came...I got to talk to him more and he said he wanted to come again next week which is awesome! So pray for him to keep coming back! On Sunday, I taught the little Greek Sunday school class about David and Goliath and then afterwards, my friend and I went to this really sweet little old couple's house for lunch. The Greek people are very warm and hospitable! Last night, I got to tell the parable of the lost sheep to the refugee kids which went pretty well but it's still very hard when it has to be translated! One funny thing was that one cute little boy sitting in the back winked at me every two seconds while I was telling the story, I was trying not to laugh so hard! It was really cute though! Otherwise, it has been a little chilly here...February is actually the coldest month, I just took a mid-term for my theology class and I think it went pretty well!

A verse to leave you with, which is one of my favorites, is Isaiah 26:3-4..."You keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock." I pray that my mind can stay focused on the Lord and all the great things He is doing because I trust in Him and know that He is control of it all!

Am I Placing My Eyes on GOD?

Oswald Chambers said that, "Christian workers fail because they place their desire for their own holiness above their desire to know God...God cannot deliver me while my interest is merely in my own chracter. Paul was not concious of himself. He was recklessly abandoned, totally surrendered, and separated by God for one purpose-to proclaim the gospel of God." I love this quote that read in "My Utmost for His Highest!" Sometimes, we (myself included) get so caught up in our own desire to be holy and more like Jesus that we start losing focus and are only caring about ourselves and our own growth. We say things like, "I want to be more humble, I want to be more generous, I want to have more patience, etc..." Which those thngs are great, don't get me wrong! BUT, it's us trying too hard...I think if we align ourselves with the Lord and continue to seek after him and desire to walk in His footsteps then those things will come naturally into our lives and we can stop trying...Humilty, generosity, patience, etc. will flow from every area of our lives when we are running to the cross! So I need to make sure that I am placing my eyes on God because if they are not then nothing else is going to matter because if I don't have Him as my focus then that means I am just depending on myself!

So this past Tuesday was really exciting...I went to my normal ministry at Mercy Center to work with the refugee kids. My friend told me a couple of hours before that I was going to have to give a 5 minute bible story to these children. I was super excited but then I got freaked out for a second because I did not know what story to teach them, I only had a couple of hours to prepare something, most of these kids are Muslim, there is a huge age range, and the story was going to be translated into Arabic...So I had to keep this story simple and to the point! I just prayed that God would show me what story to tell them! I bgean to feel so privledged and honored to be able to have 5 minutes to speak some truth into these kids lives! So I ended up picking the story of when Jesus feeds the 5,000 people with only 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread. The kids were actually pretty good at listening and during the story, some of them realized that they had heard it before, so they got really excited. It was amazing because afterwards, this little 10 year old girl came up to me and the guy that had translated it into Arabic and asked us again how many people Jesus had fed and she was amazed...The guy spoke a little bit more to her and then she said she wanted a bible! Praise the Lord! Who knows, maybe this little girl will go home and tell her parents, etc...It's a dominoe effect! One of the Muslim parents even came up to me afterwards and said thank you...which is huge because talking about Jesus to these people, especially thier kids is not really allowed! So now , I am going to be sharing a story with the kids every Tuesday night...Super exciting...So be praying for that! Otherwise, the weather is beautiful here, it's in the 60's, I got to go to Port Rafina yesterday and to Kalamaki beach on Sunay which was absolutely gorgeous...Picture a rocky beach with beautiful blue waters and mountains/hills in the background! Amazing!