Thanks so much for your prayers and support during these outreaches!  Your partnership in these outreach events is so important to us.  Thank you!  Here are a few more pictures from our week.  Enjoy!

A packed house!

Enjoying the festive environment!

Our teammate Michalis with some of the Afghan boys

Burnt bread from the bottom of the rice pot - an Afghan treat

Kingdom Beyond Borders is a collection of refugee stories and testimonies from 15 years of ministry at Helping Hands!  What more could you ask for!  While most of these stories pre-date our family’s arrival in Athens, it is encouraging to see the legacy of God’s work here.  I’m honored to a part of a long line of God’s servants here in Athens.  Indeed, we stand on the shoulders of giants.  Our history here encourages me; our future here inspires me!  Here’s the publishers description of the book:

Kingdom Beyond Borders is a collection of true stories, told by refugees – unwanted people living in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Helping Hands Ministry in Athens, Greece, shines as a bright beacon on the long and treacherous refugee highway. There, the heroes of this book – like thousands of others – found help, acceptance, and friendship; but above all, they found the key that unlocked the secret to the Kingdom. These are their stories.

All profits from the book go back to International Teams‘ refugee work around the world!  So, buy a copy for yourself and one for a friend (of course, this is the perfect Christmas gift for anyone interested in missions, refugees, or who simply loves a great story)!

Amazon (paperback and Kindle) – HERE

Barnes & Noble – HERE

WestBow Press – HERE

The definition for despair is: 1) To lose all hope; 2) To be overcome by a sense of futility or defeat…  More and more we are seeing refugees who are “living lives of quiet desperation” (Henry David Thoreau).   A few days ago at our family meal and outreach, I sat with a family who have two children.  Their son is one of my favorites – a very sweet boy, who likes to tease me about my poor Farsi.  After dinner the mom was standing outside on the balcony with her son and daughter.  She was looking down to the street as the traffic went by.  Susie [a teammate] stepped out to speak with her.  She told Susie that if she didn’t have two children to care for she would jump in front of one of the buses as they went by.  I had no idea.  A life of quiet desperation.

“A” a woman with five children to care for gets up early each day to take her older children to school and then goes to work cleaning apartment buildings for little pay.  She struggles every day to keep her children fed and to have a place to sleep.  Often her heroin-addicted husband comes home at two or three in the morning and he wakes her up to cook food for him in the middle of the night.  He is sometimes abusive and she is afraid.  A life of quiet desperation.

“L,” a journalist who wrote a book on human and women’s rights, has a death warrant on his head.  He fled his country and has not seen his wife and children in two years.  As he sat on our couch recently, he began to weep when I asked about them.  A life of quiet desperation.

Many young Afghan men left their homes after being denied an education because they were the wrong ethnic group.  They spend their days living in the park,  walking around from place to place to get food.  They feel they are wasting their lives and there is no end in sight.  Lives of quiet desperation.

Families that are separated as one parent takes some of the children and goes to another  country hoping for asylum and to be able to send for the rest of the family.  An almost blind grandmother caring for her grand daughter whose parents have moved on and no longer want her.  A child left to live with relatives or friends or even worse, on their own, as parents break up the family in hopes of moving on.  Lives of quiet desperation.

… We do what we can to ease their way – we give out groceries, we give out clothes, we listen to them, cry with them, pray for them.  In the end there is little we can do to change their circumstances.  But we can offer hope.  Hebrews 6:18-19 says “God did this so that… we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged.  We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”  In a world where nothing is secure we need an anchor.  

Read the entire update here.

1 – Camps – We joined up with Hellenic Ministry to help serve at two weeks of “refugee camp” (one week for single men, one week for families).  Please continue to pray for our refugee friends who heard the gospel at each of these camps!  We’ll also be sending around 25 kids – over two sessions – to camp at Kalamos (a Bible camp run by the Greek Evangelical Church).  The first group of campers has already returned… one Afghan teenager told me that it was one of the best weeks of his life!  Pray that the gospel seeds that are being planted here will continue to be watered and nurtured – resulting in growth and faith!  A second group of campers will go to Kalamos later this month.  Thanks for your prayers and gifts to make these camps possible.

2 – Retreat – Last week a group of 13 guys (both staff and refugees) spent a night away at the KosmoVision Center, a Christian sports and retreat center just outside of Athens.  They enjoyed some play time, and studied the Bible together – tracing the progression of faith in the lives of Jesus’ disciples.  Please pray for these young men, each at different places in their own journey of faith.

3 – Saturday Bible Study – Just before we headed back to the US, the team started a Bible study for anyone (whether believer, seekers, or just curious) who had questions about Jesus.  Working through the book of John, the study started with 5 people.  While we were away, the group grew to include about 20 people who wanted to know more about Jesus and the gospel!  Praise God and pray that He would raise up new followers of Christ from among the group!

4 – Protests – You’ve probably heard a lot about Greece in the news in the past month: austerity cutbacks, strikes, and riots!  While these have been a distraction and a nuisance, our team is safe.  But please, pray for the nation of Greece – its leadership, its future.  Pray that God might use this economic crisis to open the nation’s eyes to its spiritual crisis.  Also, please remember to pray for the many refugees and immigrants in Greece now – this economic crisis also affects them significantly (less work, less government help, more xenophobia, more violence).  Pray that our team would clearly display the gospel – both to the glory God and the sufficiency of Christ – to a city that so desperately needs it!