So I’m sure a lot of you are wondering what the heck happened this past month for us in Thessaloniki with ATL?!?! First I want to just give a little background on the Greek people. Normally, going in to each month, we have hosts that usually will give us a complete rundown about the country and the people and what to expect and not to expect. With this being ATL month and not having a host, we went into this country completely blind on all of this. We decided it would be best to learn about Greek people from, of course, Greek people. After talking with numerous greeks, (the ones we ended up building good relationships with over the month) they explained generally the same things to us and of course things that we observed about greek people while being here. One thing that really stood out to us was that the people here are CONSUMED with consumerism. The amount of shopping done here on a daily basis among these people is INSANE. You can’t walk a block down the road without passing 7 shoe stores and 12 clothing stores, with jewelry and makeup stores in between. It’s truly heart breaking that they feel the need to spend and spend and spend to try and fill whatever voids are in their lives with things that just aren’t going to truly fill them. Only the Lord can do that. But they don’t realize that. Something that was told to us about greeks was that they NEVER accept anything free. Which of course, we passed out a lot of free things this month (food, flowers, waters) and therefore caused quite a bit of rejection for us because of this. People here in Greece think that if someone gives them something for free, there’s an ulterior motive behind it and that they’re wanting something in return. They don’t understand really what a gift is. Even with people we built relationships with, we would try and buy them a coffee or bring them a pastry and they would question us about why we wanted to do that. Another example of this- one day I was hanging out at my favorite coffee shop, Tom’s. I wanted to leave some money with the barista, Christos, who I had become friends with since I was in there everyday, to pay for the next person’s coffee who came through. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone as confused as he was when I tried doing this. He had to ask his boss and I was told that unfortunately, even though it was a kind gesture, I couldn’t do that because Greek people don’t do things like that and therefore I couldn’t. Please don’t misinterpret any of this and think I’m trying to talk bad about greeks or generalize them in any way or say that they are bad people because they are far from it. In fact, they’re incredible people and I miss my greek friends terribly already. They’re people of their word and will open up their homes and their refrigerators to you in a second. I just want to give you an idea of the kind of culture we were living in. Greek people are very tough skinned on the outside but are in need of something far greater and fulfilling on the inside.
The Lord blew us out of the water during our time in Greece. We got to watch the Lord place people in our paths every single day to have conversations with and also to just learn about them and the Greek culture! Some of the things we did for ministry as a team were prayer walks, public worship in the city square once a week, passed out our lunch to homeless people, held up signs that read, “Free Prayer” and “Jesus Loves You” while playing the guitars and worshipping Jesus, one night we held up signs in the square that read “What are you thankful for today?” and man were we blown out of the water with all of the responses we got. We had people from over 12 different countries approach us and share with us what they were thankful for that day. This was probably one of my favorite nights of ministry just because we got to watch people have joy and celebrate what they’re thankful for while letting us be a part of that. It also allowed us to engage in conversations with them. On a different night, we held up signs that read, “What’s 1 word that describes your life right now?” We didn’t get as big of a response as our first signs but we still had good conversation with people. I was surprised at the honesty some people had in their answers including some that wrote, “Disappointment” and “pain”. One man came up and actually wrote a cuss word. He apologized for writing that after finding out we were Christians and what our goal was behind doing this and it allowed him to open up and explain that he was just having a very bad night. His father passed away a month before and he had just left the cemetery leaving him feeling sad. We actually then had the opportunity to pray with him which was so incredible! We were constantly asked by strangers, “This is nice, but what’s the point behind all this?” or “Why are y’all doing this?” So that opened the doors for us again to explain that we’re followers of Jesus and we wanted to share his love with the people in Thessaloniki and help bring joy to these people. Other things we did this month was buy cold waters and pass them out to homeless people and other people that were working outside in the heat. We attached little notes that we wrote in Greek that read, “This water is from Jesus. He loves you and he sees you.” This was another time that we got rejected quite a bit but that’s ok, the people that received them were the people Jesus placed in our paths to cross with that day. At the beginning of the month, we felt like the Lord wanted us to buy flowers and pass them out to the women at some point during our month in Greece, so we got the chance to do that one day! I felt like the Lord wanted me to pass mine out to elderly women so that’s who got mine! It was so fun! We also, attached little notes to these as well that read, “this flower is from Jesus. He loves you and he sees you.” There was a couple of times that they first said no to it but once I said the greek word for “free” and “gift”, they took it, read the note, and walked away smiling. It was so beautiful that the Lord used us in this way to let them know how much they’re loved.
Sidenote- public evangelism is illegal in Greece, had no idea, but the Lord protected us in so many ways. There was even a night that a group of cops on their motorcycles sat in the square right in front of us watching us hold up signs and didn’t say a word. Woo! Thank you Jesus!
This month was a month of personal relationship building with the locals. We got the opportunity to build friendships with people from battery stores, coffee shops, appliance stores, our favorite gyro spots, on the streets, clothing stores, and even horse riding barns! The Lord was just placing them in our paths constantly! It was so amazing watching us as a team, still work as a team but also be able to go our own ways and spend time with the people we had started building relationships with. One of my next blogs will be on my sweet friend, Eleonora, who I got to get to know and spend a lot of time with!
This month also, gave us glimpses of what “real life” is going to look like for us when we get home. Once we go back home, we aren’t going to have hosts or ministry sites set up for us. We’re on our own and this month allowed us to figure out what that kind of looks like, how to navigate that and our personal time with the Lord. He showed us just how powerful and effective consistency really is and how friendships can be built just by going to the same coffee shop over and over. Or going to the same grocery store, how you really can have good conversations with the cashier and it turn into a real friendship which then can open up opportunities to share about Jesus! ATL shouldn’t be a scary thing. It’s a time to really lean on the Lord and trust that he’s going to provide in whatever way he sees fit whenever he sees fit. It’s a time to surrender all of your own expectations of what “ministry” should look like and realize that ministry can look whatever way it needs to look like to share the gospel. Each day should be lived missionally as Christians. All of us. Not just World Racers or “missionaries” in other countries. If you are a Christian, you are a missionary and ATL should be an everyday thing for us. Every conversation we have with people, they should be able to see the love of Christ in us. What if we changed our mindsets from “oh, there will be someone else to come along to share Jesus with them” to “What if I’m the ONLY person they’ll ever come in contact with that speaks the name of Jesus?”
I got to watch the Lord grow each one of us in SO much boldness this month! We went into this month feeling like the Lord was telling us it was going to be a very uncomfortable month (and boy was it, especially all the rejection we received) but, that’s ok! We got to proclaim the name of Jesus over that beautiful city and all of those beautiful people, we had incredible conversations with complete strangers, we built incredible friendships, and even though we didn’t get to see the fruit of those seeds planted, I KNOW without a doubt, they are not going to come back void. I know that the Lord is going to use that and work in those people beyond anything I could ever have done.
Another fun sidenote- for a few of our off days, a couple of us caught a train down to Athens for the weekend and got to see SO much history including Aeropagus Hill which is where the Apostle Paul stood almost 2,000 years ago and preached a sermon out of Acts 17!
