Family Retreat at Omonia
My dear sisters …just a few pages to walk with you in the midst of God’s working among the Greek Christians on the occasion of the third annual retreat 2007 in Ancient Corinth.
In my last message I shared with you my recent experience with being available to God’s will and how faith in Him can pull us out of any dark and hot “pit”…and not only but deliver us in glorious events and experiences.
You just do not take your two year old out of the mud and leave them dirty looking at you….you throw them into the bath tub in soapy warm water, you get new clean clothes to dress them with and in the mean time you cover them with kisses and tell them how you love them. They end up better, clothed in brand new clean clothes, loved and kissed. This is the best picture I can project in my head when God our Lord deliver us from all kind of holes…and this time I want to talk to you about the hole of unbelief and how He was faithful to our so very little faith…imagine…after you read what happened…..how it would be if we had more faith…
Three years ago for some unknown reason for the moment, talking with some other Christian sisters we thought it would be wonderful and almost necessary for the families and friends of the Omonia Church to gather at one spot, spend time together in fellowship, in , learning, in spiritual growth. Preferably all the above close to the sea. Of course being in Greece that is not very difficult since driving two hours some direction you are going to fall in the water…of either the Aegean or Ionian Sea.
For the two last years a beautiful hotel hosted us in Northern Attica, area called Kalamos. We kind thought that the owner was in either a terrific mood or out of his mind for the price he gave us for our three day first annual retreat in year 2005. It was amazing and a time we will never forget since in our ignorance of organizing such events God was right there to meet us and deliver us into amazing fellowship and spiritual growth. Fifty five souls attended.
Second year, 2006, same scenario, better fellowship, more spiritual growth. Seventy five participants.
Third year 2007. Among many personal and common trials I felt as my knees were bending. Here we had invited an entire team to come from the United States and two weeks before the retreat people were canceling, booking and the picture was not some what perfect. I did get frightened and thought to myself, how do you get your selves in all this. So here came the FAITH issue. Both Alexander and I had to submit completely and pray …God may your will be done. We know it is going to be good, let us see it. As His nature is He loves to hear us say, we are unable…take over…. we are confused.
God our Lord must really be attracted by Faith. Maybe that is because he has hanged our salvation on faith itself. I am imagining as He is moving into the unseen and every time He “hears” faith He makes sure we know He is around and makes himself visible through thousand ways. See the thing is…God’s will and plan will happen. No matter what we do or don’t…the difference is that when are faithful to Him we will be able to taste the blessing or hear the answer or feel the presence. Time after time we look into the past and we say…how come I missed those blessed good days…or how did I miss that kind gesture my friend did, I have..have you?Faith was upsent. Couldn’t see. Simply Faith opens our eyes to our Lord’s working and if we do are available we will enjoy along with Him. So now that I am done telling what I learned…here is what happened this year. Before, during and after our Church family retreat.
On June 18the a group of 16 very nice American people arrived at the Athens International airport. They were 16 people from the Smyrna congregation in Tennessee. Supporters of God’s work here and of our family for a few years. We had contacted them through Lee and Jerry Burgess last year to invite them to join us at this year’s retreat. To help us teach all the classes, adults and children. Last March when I was in Tennessee we had a meeting and little I remember of what we talked about…pretty much I told them how beautiful Greece is and how they would benefit and possibly enhance the spiritual lives of our people here. My picture of the gathering to come, at the time was so limited…now that I can see back.
All of the campaign members took off from their jobs using their annual leave time and paid their own expenses. As with us little they knew of God’s preparation for this event. I mean all of us have some kind of short sightness when we are involved in some major activity planning and thinking, only thinking that what we have planned will happen.
Our God had extravagant plans for all of us. For one the price we got again was unbelievable and we can only assume that when I talked to the owner, she is a friend, of this hotel…that she was again in an extremely good mood, as with the other hotel for the last two years. When I booked the rooms last year I had to guess on how many rooms to order. I kind thought Lord…do you think 35 double and triple rooms will be enough? I did not hear anything back so I took it that it would be fine. Guess what? Every room was occupied. Everyone who was supposed to be there …was there. God made sure that all 90 participants were there. Christians and visitors came from seven different Ethnic groups. Romanians, Russians, Greeks, Americans, Bulgarians, Egyptian, Ukrainians.
Alexander and I were in a way the physical organizers of this event this year. Our correspondence with the Smyrna team was our brother Vick. Of course this lets some people think that …we had to do all the work ourselves. Some days it felt like this but other days our brothers and sisters jumped in with both feet and helped us carry through.
So we do pick up our sixteen God sent people from Tennessee, three children included, and off to a nice hotel close to our home. We shared dinner at our home that night and Lee said as we started eating…..The eating has began…and it did last for about 10 days. By the end of the evening we managed to learn every ones name but the best was to come. We later fell in love with them and will stay that way for ever. This kind of God given love is eternal and not from this world . We do not love…because…we just love because it is God’s gift.
Everyone arrived on a Monday afternoon so Tuesday we had to take everyone to the Parthenon so they can realize where in the world they were. Indeed they looked lost…that Tuesday morning. Well the Parthenon along with 115 degrees heat did wake them up. On Wednesday we all met at the Omonia Church building and our trip started with destination the ancient port of Cenchres in Corinth. The yard of the hotel was lined at one side with first century ruins. The front of the hotel was a beautiful beach. We are afraid to call our gathering a “camp” because it might make you angry…the words that were covering the beautiful evening breeze that night were …this is like a dream…this is like a fairy tale…said in all languages.
We had morning and evening classes for the adults and three classes for the children. To say that our Smyrna family teaching force came prepared would be an underestimation. They were loaded with material and above all with love to touch the hearts of the people they would meet. Cindy with Lynnette taught the teenagers. Melissa, Margaret and Ladonna taught the elementary class and Kathy with Hanna and Lee kept the babies. No matter where we were we could see the sea. The conference room where the adults had their class was right next to the water. Real life language cannot describe what the Lord had prepared for all of us. The fellowship was magnificent, the classes taught by Rick, Robert, Larry and Doron will be remembered for ever. Vick was the coordinator of all the American team and made sure every one was doing what he was supposed to. Reese a young 13 year old along with Mark12 years old exhibit the behavior of mature adults and helped us with picture taking and everything you can think of.
Our theme this year was a life and Church with a purpose. It all pretty much came down to one thing….SERVICE. And the motive for all is LOVE. We all left three days later renewed by commitment of devoting ourselves to better service and love. Everyone learned what lesson they needed the most. I know our American family grew spiritually as well due to this International Christian exposure and watching how they were all hugging good bye when we parted they could not let go of each other.
Every day rolled in powder sugar to say the least. God was covering us in all. Ninety people slept, ate, studied, swam, laughed, cried, chatted, sang, prayed …and nothing not one thing went wrong. Did I tell you even our dog Iris had a magnificent time. She came along and found a home in the gardens of the hotel where everyone fed her and played with her.
Who else…but our Lord could have been the one to bring this event to fruition and for us to watch it happen and enjoy. Our local visitors were extremely blessed; in fact at least five new people are coming to Church following the retreat. On our final day we invited the owner and director of the hotel Marilena and Mr. Gifteas and we thanked them for their hospitality. We sang to them we love you with the love of the Lord in Greek and English. They responded to us by telling us that the presence of the Christians there was the best picture they have had in their hotel. They said they watched us sing and pray and play games with the children and rejoiced with us.
Again…God’s will was done. We finished our Corinth tour by taking our guests to the Ancient Corinth Archaeological site. The temperature was again up at the 116 that day. We did not loose anyone….
The next couple of days were more quite and some took a couple of day trips around the area. Our Lee though got a little sick and had to be hospitalized. See how kind she was …she waited until the end to get ill. It was some difficult because she did suffer quite a bit but the doctors under the instruction of Dr. Eleni took very good care of her. An inner ear infection and vertigo did give her a little hard time. When she felt better we moved to the house and saw everyone else from the group off to the airport. Our Lee and together with Vick the Greek, we now claim him officially, stayed for another 3-4 days for Lee to recover. Vick’s back ground, grandfather was Greek. So now everyone in Smyrna knows that Vick is simply Greek since they figured out how much alike he is with us. Despite Lee’s suffering we had the best time at our house with them. They left last Monday and now are home close to their families.
For all the above and much more we are grateful to the Lord. For all your prayers, love and devotion we are indebted. For the Smyrna congregation that sent us this precious group of people we are so very very thankful. Ask them, they will tell you…
Hope to see every one next year.
In His love, protection and grace
Eleni from Athens