Fly a Kite…Get Rid of Your Sins?
Sounds like a strange idea? Well during Kathari Deftera (Clean Monday), everybody in Greece is buying and flying kites (see pictures). I am not kidding. And I thought easter egg hunts and chocolate bunnies were strange pagan traditions. The Orthodox church tops it all. The people are told they must fast (which means only seafood and a special type of unusual bread) after they have enjoyed the meats and parties of Carnival (which has its own wicked pagan roots). In addition, you are encouraged to go fly a kite. Not knowing all of this weird tradition, our group stopped to ask one of the many vendors why they were selling kites everywhere. The answer was that it was to release sins into the sky to be clean. This is the mentality that we deal with in seeking to preach the true way of God’s forgiveness through faith alone in the blood of Jesus Christ. Nothing has darkened the nations like religion. No wonder the Bible is so foreign to the people. We took advantage of this event today and went among the crowds to hand out the light of the word of God.
In spite of the darkness, Project Thessalonica presses on with the blessing of the God of heaven. Yesterday on the Lord’s day, we were blessed with a total attendance of 18 people. One Greek man, Kosmas, visited the church for the first time. We had met him on the street a few times before with very good conversations. He was thrilled with the preaching and even joined us to give out gospels of John today! Telemachos, our faithful Greek man, was also on the streets with us spreading the gospel. It was sweet to watch the Greeks on Sunday during the service. They were not only singing the hymns but even reading the Scriptures out loud during the preaching service. Although somewhat disruptive, it is good to see them speak out when they are trying to find their place in the word of God or understand something more fully. Please pray for Karina. She is a sweet middle aged Greek lady that has been coming for several weeks to our services. She weeps during the preaching and has been confused by all the Charismatic things she has watched on AMERICAN television stations such as TBN. It is going to take much patience and a teachable spirit to help her. To this point her spirit has been very tender. She even purchased and brought cleaning supplies to clean the church building.
