Hello supporters,
So we are heading into month 7!! The plan for this month is ATL – Ask The Lord. This means that my team and I have no host in the country we go to. We are completely alone and on our own, with the Lord! We will be asking God where to go and what to do all month long.
We had a debrief at the beginning of this month in Macedonia with the whole squad coming together and catching up on our last month. During the debrief I had time to rest and hike a mountain! My friend Nick and I hiked up a mountain to the tallest cross in the world (217 ft tall).
One of the sessions during our debrief was a three hour block of time in which we had about two of those hours to pray and ask the Lord where He wanted us to go for next month. Sounds crazy, right? But in reality, God is always talking to us and loves when we ask Him questions about what He wants us to do. Our team sat in a room in silence praying and asking God for direction on where to go this month.
For me, I asked God to show me some things of what our destination would look like. I saw the picture of a white flag. I saw the picture of a river. I even asked God to give me the name of a city as a clue to which country we would end up in. And He did – He told me Volos. I had never heard of that place before and looked it up on google maps. It was in Greece! And right on a river! To confirm that God wanted us in Greece, I prayed for Him to give me one more confirmation. I told Him I would look up the people of Volos and said if the first picture was a person with red hair, then Greece would be confirmed. As soon as the search results came up I couldn’t believe it – not only was the first picture of a woman with red hair, but the picture below it was of white flags of sails on a ship! Not one but TWO confirmations.
After our team discussed the different things God had shown us, we still weren’t 100% sure whether to stay in Macedonia or go to Greece (as God showed everyone different things). After praying again, we all agreed God wanted us to go to Greece. We now had 1.5 hours to book transportation and a hostel to stay at before we had to leave the next day…If you have ever tried to plan going to a country with such little time, then you know that it really isn’t possible. We ended up staying an extra day in Macedonia to figure everything out.
My wonderful teammates Jess and Lindsey worked super hard to find transportation and lodging for us when we got to Greece. After lots of research, we had our train tickets and hostel booked! We were headed to Athens! Unfortunately the hostel fell through…
BUT that’s what an ATL month is all about right? We started the first leg of our journey by heading to the train station around 4am as the train was supposed to leave at 4:45am. The train was almost two hours late…which gave us time to make a coffee run! The train took us to the border of Macedonia and Greece where we then bordered a bus to cross over the border. It all went smoothly and we safely arrived in Thessaloniki for our 10 hour “layover”. We left the bus station and wandered awhile to try and find a coffee shop so we could sit and get wifi. We needed wifi to try to find a home to stay in when we arrive in Athens in less than 24 hours! Praise God for helpful people who pointed us in the direction of the mall where we got lunch, wifi, and found an Airbnb to stay at! God came through for us! After everything was taken care of, we were able to wander the streets of Thessaloniki and see many of its historic sites. Pretty amazing to think that this is where the church of the Thessalonians was when Paul was writing his letters to them that are now books of the Bible!
Currently we are chilling at Starbucks (oh how we have missed this place) with a beautiful view of the sea. Just waiting for our night train that will be leaving at 11 pm tonight (well, that’s when it is supposed to leave…we shall see).
Please pray for our team and the other four teams who are doing an ATL month that God will lead us to the right people and places to bring God’s light into the city and country! It’s pretty amazing to have an entire month where I have to rely COMPLETELY on the Lord to direct where my steps should go each day. We are incredibly excited that God has led us to Greece! Thank you for all the support everyone!
