On Tuesday we flew to the
UK for the first time ever! Seeing our friends from DTS, the Fishers,
was a delightful breath of fresh air! Its been over 2 years since we
finished our mission school together! We had a few hours of a layover
in London and had a blast catching up with them and their daughter,
Abi!
Leaving London we had a
night flight into Athens, it took about an hour and a half before
lift off for some issue they had with a cabin door not closing
properly. Then finally after that 3.5 hour flight, we landed safely.
Its 4:00am and find that there are no trains running not just because
it was too early, they arent running all week! So, we must take 2
taxis to get to our apartment. We arrived to a very narrow, dark
alley looking street with all our bags and manage to get in to find a
small place on the 4th floor that I arranged with
AirBnB.com a month ago. I had the area scouted out, knew that it was
more congested being closer to the city center. It was exactly what
we wanted, to be with the people. Its cozy and has many small
businesses around I found when searching for coffee. We like to
frequent a place (grocer, coffee shop, burger house, etc.) that God shows us and
connect deeper as He leads us. Being in the city, everywhere we go,
we walk. No big deal! Because we brought our stroller for Banner! And
with the big kids getting bigger, that part is getting easier!
Anyway, back to the
apartment when we arrived...All the beds were dirty, we were pretty
disgusted quite honestly. Everything else was clean. But we had to
strip the sheets from all the beds, find clean linens and remake the
beds. We were not happy and had pretty grumpy attitudes if I'm
totally honest. Our expectations were a little high I suppose, and we
were just total zombies from the 2 days of flights, travel and hardly
any sleep and needed some shuteye, laying flat!
So now at 6:30 am we get
settled down in bed, and what was only going to be a bit of sleep
turned into all day sleep! I woke up at 2:15 in the afternoon!
Welcome to jet lag! It took the kids a few hours to come to complete
coherency, get ready and get out the door later to grab some food and
then groceries. Its probably 7pm when we walk through
the plaza that we didnt realize we were in at first, we thought we were
starving! Then we find our favorite burger and
gyro place, Goody's. After a good fill of yummy food, And its dark by now...we step outside of Goody's take a few
looks around to see where we can possibly find a store to grab some
bread, cereal, milk, lunch items, etc...and just as I spot one and we
head that way, we start to notice the people in the
plaza/square...under the street lights, throughout the square, on the
sidewalks and at every bench sat people...kids were running around
kicking a ball, a woman nursing a baby sitting on the ground off to the
side against a wall with 2 other small children playing around her,
and by this time I'm about in tears... We get our groceries and head
back a half mile or so away to our cozy little apartment for the
night, where we know we will be able to feed our children when they
are hungry, snuggle them in a warm and clean bed for every night
while we get to stay here in Athens. Yet..so many dont have that
comfort. And my complaints about dirty sheets seem so very petty. A
while back, we were told about how the refugees were kicked out of
the camps around the city, but did not know exactly where they were
living now... its just a little sobering to see it with your own
eyes...
We've been settling in to
our place here and trying to shake our jet-lagged headaches,
but....our hearts are broken tonight...seeing so many people without
homes is wrecking us. Without a home and without hope is a sorry
place to be. But we know God has had a plan in this move, this huge
Exit from the Arab nations where they've fled from...maybe making it
easier for them to be reached, and their hearts more ready for the
gospel Truth.
Keep us in prayer, we want
to be led by God to the right people to reach. We can't reach them
all, please pray...We only have 10 weeks here and we want every day
to count.
