August 10-30, 2004

Operation Gideon purposes to surround Greece with evangelistic teams on 40-80 Greek islands to break centuries of spiritual bondage through prayer, literature distribution and proclamation evangelism.

Please keep up with Mark & Crew HERE with Day by Day coverage from Greece & Beyond.

Monday, August 23, 2004:    Hallelujah, I have finally found an internet connection that I can use my own computer with (outlook is downloading 812 emails so please be patient with me on responses)!  What a journey!  I have been anticipating updating this site for two weeks and now that I have the chance I'm tearing up and having trouble putting words to the incredible things God is doing in and through us here in Greece.  As I'm writing this update I'm sitting on the second floor of a cafe overlooking a small square and street in the city of Kos on Kos Island.  Kos is in the far east Aegean Sea and I can see Turkey from the island!

Where to begin... I flew in to Athens Sunday, August 7.  First things first was to greet old friends, it's amazing how some people you just click with... it's only been 45 days since I was here last but seems like forever when catching each other up on the things happening in our lives since we've seen each other last.  My favorites of course are catching up with the children, 8 month old Allison, 2 year old Elizabeth, 5 year old Karsten, and 7 year old Kyle to name a few!

After a few hours catching up it was off to the Mec, a HUGE warehouse over 4 football fields long that would be transformed to house over 400 people!  The night ran till after 3:00 am as we set up staging, plumber shower trailers, and hung decorations.  Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday was more of the same.  Johnny Rose and I spent a large amount of time constructing a "Kiosk" that would be a central informational point and concession stand! 

Another HUGE feat was packing over 50,000 "gifts" with over 20 TONS of literature including a Greek new testament, 5 tracts, and HM's Dromos newspaper!  These packages being sent to over 45 islands to be distributed for free to every Greek household on the island!!!

None of us had any idea what was in store for us for Wednesday night!!  The first service of Operation Gideon with over 40 teams representing 27 countries!  The body of Christ together!  It was amazing, the energy, the unity, praise God from whom all blessings flow!

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were prep days for island outreach. 

The island makeup is 9 days, Days 1-3 fast and prayer, Days 4-6 proclamation evangelism, and Day's 7-9 literature distribution!

One of my main responsibilities was toward proclamation evangelism.  I walked the teams through days 4-6 and did a 2 hour "break-out" session with over 40 people all of those feeling called to boldly proclaim the name of Jesus in public settings!  It was incredible!

Probably my favorite night at the Mec was Friday night for the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.  We were broadcasting it on a HUGE screen and showing the Christian stats of each country on another screen.  It was amazing that nearly every country was represented by either someone from that country or someone with a close relationship with that country, while the world was watching the show we were praying corporately for each country!!

A quick story... Saturday night... I was finally getting a chance to go into Athens to do evangelism with one of the main teams I was "hosting", a dance group from Budapest, Hungary and then to a concert by Delirious.  I was so excited, the Mec is great but not seeing the sun shine much can get old quick!

I finished my responsibilities and went down to Sintagua Square on the bike to meet the team.  As soon as I found a parking spot and found the team Alex Macris called.  He had left the papers for the 65' sailboat at the house and needed me to run them an hour and a half north to the island of Evia so he could bring the boat under a draw bridge!  Those of you that know me best know I love evangelism but riding motorcycles isn't too bad either!  I picked up the papers and went to island.  As I arrived I called Alex and he was still 3 hours away!  I was pissed!  In my mind I was missing out on evangelism and the concert and could of still made it up before he got there!  The island was one HUGE party!  400 yards of boardwalk covered in sin!  I was very distraught!  I started to pass out tracts and kid you not offered literature to probably 200 people, not one of them accepted!  Now I was steaming!  I decided I was just going to eat a nice dinner and "watch the crowd" and the water, I went to sit down but couldn't.  I had noticed a small pizza place on a back street and grabbed a couple of slices.  Finally the lady working there accepted a tract!  I was pleased.  After eating I spent 20 minutes in prayer getting my heart right!  I went back to the same boardwalk and am happy to say passed out over 150 tracts, it was amazing to walk through and see so many sitting on the benches reading about God's promises to us!  Also that night I was able to preach to a couple of dozen people, 2 of which stayed with me till 3:30 am that morning and allowed me to pray for them, only God know's if they are saved now, but I know they are very close if not already!  What a roller coaster night, not including the next morning running out of gas and literally praying it 10 km to a gas station to arrive at the Mec to have Johnathan come up to me to say he was touched to pray for me 30 minutes before!  Praise God!

Monday, we ferried l0 hours to the island of Kos and arrived here Tuesday morning, we got settled in to the apartments and have been 100mph ever since.  I'm working mainly with the Hungarian team but am "hosting" with Anthi all of the Dodecanese Islands.  An island group made up of 12 islands.  We have 4 teams on other islands, mainly from Germany. 

One of the teams in on Nyssiros, a very small island not far from Kos.  They had an unfortunate run in with some negative people on Saturday night that really hurt the morale and drive of the team, I found a boat yesterday morning and went over, spent the day with them in worship through, prayer, Bible study and song.  Then last night we went into the village and had a great night proclaiming the gospel on the island, they were very encouraged and actually just called full of excitement!

I just arrived back here on Kos this morning.  We started literature distribution on this island today.  Nearly 4,000 literature packs to be distributed before the end of the day on Wednesday.  All of the staff will ferry back to Athens Wednesday to prepare for the arrival of the teams back to the Mec.  We will finish off Operation Gideon with a Greek "OneDay" of praise, worship, and teaching!  It's going to be incredible!

***Pray for packets that are being distributed right now.  Pray that they will physically find there way into the hands of every Greek on the islands and spiritually into their hearts!  Pray for the many people resisting the gospel and threatening us.  On Nysiros yesterday we were told the priest was talking to the police and the officer said he would of arrested us on the spot if he would of been there that night.  All they can do is detain us for a max of 6 hours by law, we all know our rights here and aren't breaking any of them.  Pray for the hundreds and thousand of people that are "chewing, contemplating" the message of salvation in their lives right now.  Dozens here on Kos that have come to find us every night to talk about the promise of salvation through Jesus.  Pray for the dozen or so believers on this island, and especially for Haralabos, the Greek pastor of the group.  This is hard soil here and he lives it everyday of his life.  Pray also for Costas, a younger man that claims to be an Atheist but said for hours he wanted what I had. 

More to come soon....