Brother Angelo sends these highlights of his weekend:
The last time I saw my cousins and my mum’s sister was twenty-two years ago. Then I was lost as could be. Now I am saved as could be. I set off on a beautiful scenic bus ride to preach the precious gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. When I spoke to Pastor Takis from the Bible-believing church in Zakinthos asking if he knew my aunt and uncle, he said he had been witnessing to them for years and that his nephew works at my cousin’s restaurant and that his brother owns a restaurant across the road from my aunty. Coincidence or God’s divine providence?! It is amazing how our God is always answering prayer, even when we know nothing of it.
When I approached my aunty in their store with Brother Takis and got talking with her she did not notice me as I was acting as a tourist. Then Brother Takis asked her if she had any family in Australia and she said, “I do.” Then I said, “I am Sofia’s son Evvangelos Goussis.” She nearly had a cardiac arrest. It took me half an hour to convince her it was me, poor thing. We hugged and kissed and she told me it was the time of her son’s wedding and I was welcomed to come. Praise God, it was a wonderful opportunity to testify of God’s simple plan of salvation to my cousins. Numbers were exchanged and tracts were passed out. I learned that my cousin’s wife Dianna is from Thessaloniki, so in the winter they will be living in Thessaloniki as their business closes down. He took my number and said we would catch up. My aunty also told me Rita, another aunt lived in Kavala one hour from where we live, and her daughter lives – you guessed it – in Thessaloniki. Praise God.
There was an older man called Nikos at the table where I was sitting. As we got talking I preached to him JESUS. He listened with a tender heart and took a gospel tract. We spoke for about an hour. The amazing thing was that his brother Jimmy is my dad’s best friend and lives in our street back in Sydney. Can you believe that?! Please be praying for precious souls who have received the living seed who must be saved before its eternally too late. thank you for praying; God is doing a great work here. PRAISE HIS HOLY NAME — TRULY LORD GOD HOW GREAT THOU ART!!!!
Team 2 – Travel Report
Linda Stand and Nicole Josey, from THE BIBLE Baptist Church in Deland are the second team assisting with Project Thessalonica. Tuesday / Wednesday were their eventful travel days. They write:
It is Thursday 9 a.m. We are up and raring to go. I believe we will get to work in the new building today, along with exchanging money and buying groceries.
We had good flights, no delays, including the long uncomfortable one from Chicago to Germany without any sleep. The turbulence was very bad during the night as we went through a lot of storms. We did get a bit of a nap on the benches before our last leg.
There were no problems going through Customs. All the tracts made it through. Praise the Lord!!
Linda got her first Passport Stamp and Nicole’s book is full.
We witnessed to a man on the first flight. He could not understand why we would care enough for people to make a trip to tell them about Jesus. He listened to the gospel, was very polite – but rejected it. He did take a tract. We could see he had NO joy, and he could see we had plenty. Pray for Justin to be saved.
On our flight to Germany, the only Chinese woman in the whole flight was sitting across from Nicole!! Who planned that I wonder? They hit it off and Nicole, who speaks Chinese fluently, did all she could to proclaim Christ to her. She did take a tract, Praise the Lord.
After napping at the Dusseldorf airport, I woke up to Greeks talking all around me. The teaching from Brother Bernard’s classes at THE BIBLE Baptist Church kicked in and we were off in conversations. Most of them knew English, only the elderly did not. I enjoyed using the Greek I had learned. The people were very kind and patient, smiling as they watched us pause to think of the next word. We realized we had NO tracts, as all the English ones we had brought for use in Greece we passed out in the airport in Chicago and all the Greek ones were packed in the check in luggage.
A man from Albania sat with us for the last flight. He did not understand English or Greek (nor Spanish, or German, or Chinese). We now knew what it was like at the tower of babel. We tried to do drawings of the Cross, and Empty Tomb and pointed to nails in hands (the sign for Jesus). He shook his head and pointed upward. I got out the laptop and showed him all the slide photos of the Good News Club lessons and songs with a lot of detailed photos of Jesus, that we use teaching the children in the public schools back home.
We assume he had some kind of religion as he did the mark of the cross as Catholics do, but when the liquor cart came by he was trying to buy us drinks! Pray the Holy Spirit will work with the seeds that were planted.
There were also two G. O. priests in black with hats on that flight. We had the opportunity to talk to one. He was rude and cut us right off before we could tell him anything about Jesus. He had a big wooden box hanging around his neck and held what looked like a small New Testament size book.
We are so thrilled to be here. Please pray for us.
An American Christian, witnessing to a Chinese woman in her native language, enroute to give the gospel in Greece.