Greece Ministry Recap
The last month on the World Race has been such a gift of time to pursue the Lord, ministry opportunities and reflection.
The uniqueness of this month without a designated host has brought us all kinds of new opportunities. We use the freedom of not having a ministry host to partner with the Lord in whatever direction He nudges in. We call this Ask the Lord. We intentionally pray about our ideas, hopes and calling for the month and trust that we will feel led in a certain direction for the month. My team and I were in Athens, Greece this month. We traveled here as an entire squad before setting out into the nation as separate teams. Some of the unique opportunities of ATL were: creating our own ministry schedule, deciding our ministry activities, and partnering with a new ministry partner that God led us to, Streetlights.
Streetlights is a community center in a primarily refugee community in the north of Athens. Here, the ministry looks to serve its community through an after school facility from 4-9pm each week day. We have been able to play games like Fifa, Wii, Foosball, and Uno with some of the local kiddos as well as color, get our hair done, give piggyback rides and watch movies. The families we are serving are primarily from Afghanistan and others are from both Romania and Greece. Although we don’t desire anyone to be in these circumstances, we view our time here with these moms and kiddos as a privilege to understand more of what they’re going through and who they are. It’s our goal to continue to bring Christ’s undying love to an often unloved community.
We have been so grateful to partner and serve with Streetlights amongst other ministry activities. We spent many hours praying over this community, past hosts and organizations from our time on the World Race, each other, and our communities back home. We have also made friends and shared the love of God all throughout Athens as we toured the city, shared meals and explored some of the historic places this ancient city has to offer, including Mars Hill, the place of St. Paul’s famous Acts 17 speech.
Now that we are at the end of our time in Greece we are entering a time for celebration and re-entry into the United States. We will spend a few days celebrating as a squad throughout Europe and then we will spend a week in Georgia back at the Adventures in Missions Base before heading HOME in early July.
Looking forward beyond the World Race, I plan to keep up with the blog as I still have much to say and much to reflect on. The road has been long but the miles have passed by so quickly this year. To get the full picture in review, check out my world map! Here you can visit the webpages of our previous hosts as well as view many of the photos I took along the journey!
https://maphub.net/snkandiko/worldrace-map
I hope you’ve had a pleasure watching this journey unfold. This year has been so good and there are so many reasons why, so much that I learned and so much that will help push me forward into whatever lies ahead. Be sure to stay tuned for that!
Thank you for your prayers, your support and your faithfulness to walk alongside us throughout this journey. We love you, we appreciate you and we look forward to seeing you so soon! It is a treasure to represent you and of course, Christ on this journey. Lives are being touched, encouraged and changed because of your financial giving, prayers and words of encouragement. Though the needs are many, blessings abound as we go forth and serve others.
Lots and lots of love,
Savanna & L Squad
