Wednesday, July 28, 2004

The spiritual landscape of Greece

THE CROWN OF LIFE - click here

The main area we will be staying while we are in Greece is an island called Evia.

The biggest town on that island is "Halkida" (no connection with Alqueda thankfully :) You'll see it there on the map. Athina is Athens.

This town does have significance for Hayley and I.
Two years ago, when we lived in Greece, myself and Aris Angelakopoulous spoke at an Evangelical church in Halkida. We met a wonderful young pastor named John. He was doing a fine job and the place was packed with young people. Hopefully I can post a few pictures of the meeting, but John was gracious enough to translate everything I was saying from English into Greek for the congregation.

When Hayley and I decided on Evia as our island for our Operation Gideon team we wanted to get in touch with this church that we had briefly visited only 2 years ago. Sadly we discovered that our dear friend John had passed away just a few months ago.

For those of you who do not know the evangelical layout of the land, this is a huge loss. In Greece there are only 0.15% evangelicals (15,000). That's the whole country. Very limited resources, workers, evangelists and pastors. Evia itself has only 2 or 3 churches on the entire island. The loss of a young pastor is devestating and so as you read this say a prayer for John's family, his wife and children and the evangelical churches in Greece. Perhaps some day you might want to think about helping out this needy region of the 10/40 window.

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