Greetings from Greece!  Where to begin... it is now August 5th and this is the first time I have been able to get connected to the internet for any length of time to do web work... God has been doing an incredible work in and through us here.  I flew in on July 20 and went straight to a peninsula outside of a town called Halkida, about 2 hours north of Athens.  We were on a very primitive property where everything that came in had to come by barge... literally everything!  Water via barge and power via generator!  From July 20 - July 29 we were on this beautiful property called Porto Astro!  We had the glorious privilege of teaching over 60 Greek students how to Jet-Ski, sail, water-ski, beach volley, archery, rock climbing, etc, but even better than that we were able to minister to their souls through our lifestyle, through evening worship, and through building relationships with them daily!  At the end of the camp the Lord blessed us with over 30 decisions comprised of salvation, re-dedication, and my favorite.. a commitment to full time Christian service!

We are now in the region of Pella in North Greece.  For some brief history... Pella is where Alexander the Great was from.  It was here that he began his conquest and made it as far as India!  Our prayer is that through our faithfulness we will see the Word of God, the hope of Jesus, birth itself in the people of this region and as a result they will take this Hope into the furthest ends of the earth.

Sunday, August 3, 2003:
Today we made our transition from Porto Astro to Lutra in the region of Pella, it was a crazy day.  After worship on Saturday night, around midnight, we began to tear down the camp at Porto Astro and get the big truck loaded with kitchen stuff, tents, audio visual, etc.  Four of us were up after 4:00 am getting this chore done, it made for a long Sunday.  After breakfast I put on the SCUBA gear and got the "Blob" and "the Blob tower" out of the water for the season, in the meantime the group of 82 began there 6 hour trip to our camp site in Pella.  I finally got away from the property around 4:00 pm and began my journey.  I drove Hellenic Ministries 9 person van to the property.  After arriving at the property around 9:30 pm we got the camp site set-up and around 1:30 am called it a night.

Monday, August 4, 2003:
Today was our first "normal campaign day".  We spent the day in worship and preparation for the night.  Our team of 8 went into our first villages around 7:00.  Our team consists of Anthi Pipiliou and Haris Gantes from Athens, Greece; Foko and Tinicka Feddes from Holland; Heather Joorley and Liz Reidel from Winfield, Chicago; and myself, Mark Taylor from Pensacola, FL.

Our first evening was very exciting, we made many contacts and I am happy to say that even in our very first village, God saw so fit to allow us to speak with a man for over 2.5 hours, resulting in his salvation in the end (picture of Anthi, I, and Abraham below!), it was very good!  That night we made over 10 personal contacts who said they are very interested in the Truth we speak!  We were also able to pass out over 50 newspapers and tracks!  Many asked about the war and why Americans are killing all these people, it has made for some very tough conversations, the second highlight of the night (of course Abraham accepting Jesus was the highlight) was having a man from Iraq look me square in the eyes and say he was from Iraq, at first I was scared as to what he was going to say, he continued to talk and told me that Saddam had killed his entire family and he ran away to Greece and has since married a Greek woman, it was a tender moment.  The first night was an incredible success!  Praise God!

Tuesday, August 5, 2003:
Tuesday morning was very exciting as we shared with the rest of the group of Abraham's salvation, we praised God in our group worship time for the great things He did the night before.  Today I went into a nearby village to find an internet cafe.  All of them were closed and the ones I used last year had gone out of business.  God brought my attention to a second story of a building with a sign that said computer in the window.  I hesitantly knocked on the door and was grateful to find some English speaking guys that worked on computers out of there house.  They let me use their computer phone line and get on the internet to check email.  I was able to use this opportunity to visit with 4 very nice teenagers.  They were very interested in what I said.  I showed them pics of Pensacola World Changers (www.PensacolaWorldChangers.org) and Greek Sports Camp at Porto Astro.  They were very receptive.  I don't know how to continue to follow up with them, pray that I will have to opportunity to visit with them again.

Tonight we went into another village, we were a little frustrated as a team, I had misplaced my IPAQ Pocket PC, Harris had a headache, and Liz was frustrated about some different things.  We prayed together for the peace of God to over come our inadequacies and to allow His glory to protrude for our lives.  We met lots of opposition for the Orthodox church tonight, but still God was faithful to put the "right" people in our path, we passed out evangelical news papers, tracks, and Bibles, had many very good conversations and saw the Spirit of God convict many, over 5 people tonight were very close to salvation.  We trust and ask you to pray with us that there conviction will remain and that they will know what we say is truth, and accept Christ as Lord and Savior!  

Just as we were about to load up in the car, Anthi noticed 5 widows sitting on a bench.  We went over and visited with them, they were very sweet, but so lost.  It broke our hearts.  I had the opportunity to preach to them for at least an hour, they even allowed me to pray for them in the street, it was very good.  In the meantime, Heather, Liz, and Harris, had started some conversations with some teenagers.  One guy walked up and kind of scared them.  He was tall, wearing total black, and had a very "hard" facial expression.  As we wrapped up with the widows we went and joined them.  I began to preach and this guy was the only one who stuck around, everybody else left.  He asked many good questions.  We talked for over 2 hours.  You could tell that God was talking to him and he was becoming very sensitive.  He told us he felt a burning in his body.  I told him about the promise of Jesus as He was about to ascend into heaven, that He would send His Spirit to be with us.  He understood and with tears in his eyes, asked Christ to be his Savior!  It was very humbling to see even as we felt inadequate, God's power through us was very adequate and powerful!

Wednesday, August 6, 2003:
Tonight we visited three villages.  One of which was the one with the widows (above) and the 20 year old that accepted Christ.  As we were driving through in route to the next village, the widows saw our car and flagged us down.  They invited us into their home and we drank together and continued or discussion from the night before.

Soon we moved on to the next village, just a short ways away.  We were a little anxious about this village, because one of our Christian contacts had been banned by the priest from the city and residents were told not to buy bread, etc from our Christian friend.  Within minutes of arriving into the village, we had sat down in a cafe visiting with 6 or so, next thing I new, here comes the priest with one of our newspapers in hand, walking right to us!  With much concern we invited him to sit down.  We spent nearly 3 hours with this priest (the same one who banned Georgos), we talked about confession of sins and it was incredible the boldness God gave me to discuss some very deep subjects with him!  The most beautiful thing though was the dozens of villagers who sat around and listened in.  At the end of our conversation, I told Anthi to stand up with me and talk real loud!  Every single person that night, heard a 20 minute, very clear spill of the gospel with the priest standing right next to us!  It was incredible!

... (more later, in a persons house and must get back to Lutra (camp)).

Prayer Requests:
1)  Please pray for our camp.  We are in the middle of the week and could easily "coast" into the end, living off of the blessings we have received.  We are all very tired, I personally am getting very little sleep.  Pray for the strength of the Lord to fall on us!

2)  We will do a large gathering in Berea on Friday night.  We don't have a permit to do it and need God's peace as we go forward.  Pray that the authorities will see us with grace and not cause trouble.

3)  Pray for the two men that have accepted God's salvation.  Pray that they will not be discouraged in their faith, as they are some of the very few Christians in the area.

4)  Pray for the dozens of others that we have talked to that are so close and so hungry to accept God's promise for their lives, pray that the Spirit will convict them of the truth and put other believers in their lives!


*Please continue to check back to this page for highlights, updates, and pictures of what the Lord is doing in "Greece and Beyond"!