January 15, 2014

Church

The church has seen some people come and visit and others leave. With the winter and holiday time, people move around more than normal so we are hoping and praying that they will come back soon. Please pray for Kosmas and Leonidas. They have been gone for a couple of months now and their phones are not working. We miss them (Kosmas had been coming faithfully almost every service for a couple of months). Telemachus has begun to come faithfully again. Please pray for his son, Alexis, who continues to have health issues. These health issues were the reason that Telemachus had been gone for a while.

We do praise the Lord for a son of one of the men – he has been coming quite regularly with his father (the son is a young teenager). Please pray for him that the Lord would do a work with him.

Evangelism

I couldn’t believe how slow things got around here once the middle of December hit! We go out in the evening often to pass out tracts and we thought that the evening time would be perfect in the shopping district near Christmas time. No! The stores were actually closed by 8PM on a Saturday night! We did have some crowds that we came upon but not like I would have thought.

Once it was a few days before Christmas, the city turned into more of a empty place than a regular city. The colleges had let out and the students left town (students make up the largest groups we talk to, especially at night). Some of the days I was downtown, there would be maybe a dozen people that would come around over the course of 20-30 minutes! This was like this for most of the time from Christmas to New Years – there were 8 days between Christmas and January 6th that stores were closed (which meant far fewer people out)!

On January 6th, they celebrated the 12th day of Christmas with a ceremony not far from the square. They would throw crosses into the harbor to bless the water and then have young men jump into the cold water to retrieve them. There were thousands of people out there that day. It was a very religious crowd of whom many scoffed at me as they passed. Praise the Lord that many still took tracts.

Now that the weather is warmer, the streets are again crowded so the evangelism has been going well. Kayode had to go back to London for a couple of weeks and he was sorely missed. It is good to be out with him again.

Family

We had a huge blessing a few weeks ago. I have been teaching on Wednesday nights on how to give someone the Gospel and what Scriptures to use. Our oldest son, Charlie (4 years old), began to ask a lot of questions and came to tears one night after church when he was saying that he knew he had sinned and he did not want to go to hell. We spoke for a while and then put him to bed. We continued to talk about it for the next week and one morning, he told me that he had gotten saved a couple of nights before when he was going to bed. I spoke with him for a while and he definitely understood it! We praise the Lord that one of our children has accepted the Lord! He is a different boy since then and always talking about the things of God. The day he got saved was just one week earlier than when I got saved at the same age. 🙂

We are still working on our Greek and it is coming along well. We are feeling more comfortable in speaking with people and I am even able to have some basic conversations on the street. Please pray that continues.

Thank you

Thank you all for your continued interest and prayer. We greatly appreciate it and need it! We praise the Lord that we have the opportunity to serve our Lord here in Thessaloniki. God bless!

Charlie and family