On the Ground in Greece--July 14

"Oh, magnify the Lord with me, let us exalt his name together!"  Psalm 34:3

Some of the Hellenic Ministries team members I flew with

Thankful to have arrived Saturday in Thessaloniki after over 30 hours in transit. The trip was scheduled for about 17 hours but delays in Chicago and Rome made the trip a good deal longer. Uhg, airports are uncomfortable! But the delays gave me and the team from Chicago that I traveled with an opportunity to get to know one another, and I'm very thankful for that.

A big highlight over was talking with a fellow passenger on the flight from Rome. Peter is a young man from Poland who was returning to Warsaw after visiting his sister in Chicago. Peter and I jumped quickly into a discussion about Christ and the things of God and when we parted I gave him my address and a gospel tract.

The final flight from Rome to Thessaloniki touched down around 1:00 AM local time on Saturday . The time difference is 8 hours, so...(calculating)...that would have been 7:00 PM on Friday in Iowa. Rested a few hours in a nice room at the Avalon Hotel and then headed by bus to Alexandroupoli, near the base camp for Operation Joshua.

Today (Sunday) I'm looking to meet up with locals with Hellenic Ministries. Three weeks ago they began assembling 120,000 packets with Greek New Testaments and another 10,0000 with Turkish editions with evangelistic materials that the 300 or so volunteers will distribute in 550 villages in northeastern Greece. Teams of volunteers from around the world will go out to assigned villages each day in the three northeastern provinces of Evros, Rodopi and Xanthi.


This video was recorded a while back, but you might enjoy listening as Johnathan Macris, the President of Hellenic Ministries, talks about reaching the people of Greece with the Word of God through the Operation Joshua project.