Month 7, Macedonia … well not exactly.
A little over a week ago as we were finishing up ministry in Albania and getting ready to head to month 6 debrief in Macedonia when we were informed that this upcoming way would be an ATL month. ATL – Ask The Lord, means that our team has no host, no housing, and no set ministry in the country we go to. We are completely alone and on our own, with the Lord! We will be completely dependent on asking God where to go and what to do all month long.
One of the sessions during our debrief was a three hour block of time to pray and ask the Lord where He wanted us to go for next month. 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 another country with such little time, then you know that it really is overwhelming; we decided to stay an extra day in Macedonia to make sure everything was taken care of properly and cost effectively.
After lots of research, we had our train tickets and hostel booked! We were headed to Athens!
Everything was great … then we got an email the next morning that our housing fell through… so we were headed to Athens, homeless and with no plan.
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. We couldn’t understand why the woman at the hostel was telling us that was too early to go to the station. When the train was almost 2 hours late we realized why she said that, clearly the train system is as laid back as the rest of Europe. 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 train station and wandered awhile to find a coffee shop so we could get wifi to try to find a home to stay in Athens as we were arriving there in less than 24 hours! Praise God we found an Airbnb to stay at, under budget and closer to the city than the original housing! 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!
After a long day of exploring and riding the emotional rollercoaster of finding housing we headed back to the train station for the final leg of our trip. Our train was scheduled to leave at 11:00pm; after a late arrival, some technical difficulties that caused a return to the station, we were finally on our way around 12:00am. We had a momentary “those Americans” celebration as the clock stuck midnight sporting our American flag socks and decided to sing the National Anthem for Fourth of July. Around 6:30am we arrived in Athens safely and headed to our Airbnb to shower and take a much needed nap!
We are getting ready to do our first prayer walk around the city for the month to see what God has in store for us. 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 we have to rely COMPLETELY on the Lord to direct where our steps should go each day. We are incredibly excited that God has led us to Greece! Thank you for all the support everyone!
