Life in the Unknown

Words from John Wesley

2011-05-14T09:01:00.002-04:00

O why is it, that so great, so wise, so holy a God will use such an instrument as me! Lord, 'Let the dead bury their dead! But wilt thou send the dead to raise the dead?' Yea, thou sendest whom thou wilt send and showest mercy by whom thou wilt show mercy! Amen! Be it than according to they will. If thou speak the word, Judas shall cast out devils.
-John Wesley

Thessaloniki Sunset

2011-05-13T16:46:00.000-04:00

I don't know if anybody still reads this, but I just got back from watching the sunset over the water in Thessaloniki. I thought people might enjoy some pictures. I fly home June 7th, so I'm trying to enjoy it while I can.

Pictures of My Apartment

2010-10-31T08:28:00.000-04:00

View from outside my window. It's a bad picture because of the screen, but I was just trying to show that there's a turf field right outside my window.

You can kind of see the red track in this one.

Here's a picture from in my room. My bed is to the left.

My school desk

The other bed

Looking out the doorway from my room

The apartment is a hallway. That door at the end is the entrance. Ivan (my roommate's room) is right to the left, and the bathroom is to the right. The kitchen is straight behind me, and behind me to my left is my room.

My massive mirror that all the girls are jealous of

The bathroom

Bathroom sink

Looking down the hallway the other way, that is the entrance to the kitchen

In the kitchen

The kitchen table, and a cake, courtesy of awesome Balkan Grandparents

Our microwave and plug-in grill

Kitchen window

Other side of the kitchen

One side of Ivan's room

I realize this is about six weeks overdue, but better late then never I suppose... These are the pictures of the apartment where I live. I have a flatmate, but we each have our own room. You'll notice I have two beds in my room, that's because they put an extra one in for my brothers when they came to drop me off, and I asked them to leave it. I only have one picture of my flat mate's room so far, because he wanted to clean it more before I took pictures. He didn't know I was going to take pictures so his room is a little messy, but in his defense, my room was much more messy, I just cleaned it all right before I took the pictures. I'll post pictures of the rest of his room later.

Pictures from Mount Olympus Hike

2010-10-17T12:06:00.000-04:00

I climbed Mount Olympus last weekend, and it was a great experience. We hiked three hours the first day, and then spent the night at a refuge, part way up the mountain. The next day we hike about three more hours up to a plateau at the top. We spent some time at the top taking pictures and such, and then we climbed down after about two hours or so. It was around six hours to the bottom-so twelve hours of hiking in all.We were really blessed because it didn't rain. When one is 10,000 ft in the air, the weather is extremely unpredictable. Storms can come and go in a matter of minutes. Generally it is rainy on the way up so you have to walk six hours in a poncho, and then it will be foggy at the top. However, for us it was perfectly clear! So we had some great views at the top. I already posted some of these on facebook, but to those of you who don't have facebook here are the pictures-I've also included many more that I didn't put on facebook. Thank you all for your prayers! It's hard to find time to update this blog, but I'm trying to as much as I can so please be patient with me :) God is really blessing me by helping me to find friends that I can feel comfortable with, and who aren't raging partiers. So that is a huge answer to prayer. Thanks again for all your support!

At the bottom. We had a 30 minute drive to go part way, this is where we started hiking from.

This is the best water in all of Greece. Fresh mountain water.

Mules take the supplies up to the camps. Most of them don't have riders, they go by themselves.

Rest stop part way up.

The views got better and better with each turn of the trail

Almost above the cloud line

The fog was pretty intense at times, even though there wasn't rain

Fog

Then randomly, there was snow everywhere

It felt like Christmas. I switched to Christmas Carols on my IPod

Of course I made a snowman!

Base Camp

It looked beautiful after all the hiking

The mules beat us up. We got passed twice by them.

Base Camp

At the top. It cleared up the next day.

Inside the lodge

No shoes were allowed, everybody walked around in slippers. It was cold outside so we huddled around the campfire, drinking hot choclate and telling stories. The only thing missing was a card game, so we began to deal, and then one of us looked at the wall.

WHAT?!?!?! Apparently Gambling is illegal in Greece, so that means no Card games!?!?

LOTS of Feta, Feta Everywhere on everything

Group beds. It stretched the length of the room on both sides. About 20 per coed bed.

Above the Clouds :)

Cool Icicles

Camera mess up that turned out cool

Sunrise at 6:30

Looking down over the valley at Sunrise.

It took it a while, but the sun finally climbed over the mountain

The valley looking down from base camp

Where I watched from

The hiking Terrain

About 3/4ths of the way up

Looking back at our group

Trudging along...

The Valley at the top of the mountain

Climbing the hill where the second camp is

The Mythological Seat of Zeus

Camp #2 at the top.

We made it :)

They have really epic Lord of the Rings style fires on the mountain peaks. We didn't get to see one unfortunately, but we saw the remains of many.

At the top

Inside Camp #2

Looking down at the clouds creeping back over the mountain.

The Cloud line

One person decided to sleep outside...

Going back

Climbing down from Camp #2

Almost down, looking back again

12 hours of walking later, we made it!

We walked through the gate to the right, stepped on to the bus and then slept for the 90 minute ride home :)

Do not Forsake the Assembly of Believers

2010-10-06T18:16:00.000-04:00

What does it mean to Forsake? What defines an Assembly? Who are Believers? At what point is a person in violation of this passage?

Hebrews 10:23-25

23Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. 24And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. 25Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

This passage is most commonly used for the purpose of judging people who don't go to church. I admit, at times I've wanted to use it to tell people that they have to go to church otherwise they're going against the bible. I don't because first of all that would be hypocritical, but most importantly because it would be abusing the passage for my own purposes. I've grown up at Wintonbury for all of my eighteen years and so many of my close friends go there. Partly because of my being home schooled, and partly because of the awesome people there, any opportunity there was for me to go to church was a joy. In my childhood naivety, this joy that I felt in going to church, made it difficult for me to understand the numerous situations that can cause people to not attend church. Sadly, I must admit there have been occasions where I too have used this passage to judge people for skipping out on church for a week, month or longer. I won’t go into the context and the full meaning behind this passage, but I will make a claim that it was not written for the purpose of condemning people who didn’t attend church. Although we are certainly called to be in community and fellowship with each other, it doesn't declare a quantity amount of time which determines when somebody is "forsaking the assembly". Apparently it can't be just one Sunday, because for example, Jesus fasted in the desert for forty days. He was away from other Christians for quite a few Sundays. In addition, there have been countless monks and missionaries who lived in solitude or just great distances away from other Christians. What is the purpose of the church then, if Christians can survive for long periods of time without it? Clearly it's not to be the only means from which we can experience intimacy with God because we can survive and I would even say prosper for long periods of time without being intimately connected to a church. Paul describes a purpose of the church in 1st Timothy where it says:

...I write so that you may know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth." (1 Timothy 3:14b-15)

Although the church serves many purposes, I think a significant one is mentioned in this passage, the church is a pillar of the truth. The church is a place that keeps men grounded in their faith. Being alone is dangerous, because there's nobody to sharpen you. A simple principle of Sociology is that humans were meant to live in community, this is true among Christians as well. We need brothers and sisters in Christ to walk through life with. When nobody is building us up when we need support, or pulling us down when we try to leap, the result in either case will be that we fall. I was pondering this principle yesterday when I was studying the 23rd Psalm. Suddenly, as I read it, the words seemed to take a totally different meaning in my mind. I read it again and realized that the passage could be interpreted in a way that was not only different, but completely opposite of the way it is traditionally understood. I sat back after this discovery totally in awe. I had read the passage innumerable times, and it was one of the first passages that I had ever memorized. I read it a couple more times, and then decided to put it away and think about it more later. Later that night I decided that the way I was interpreting the passage was incorrect. However, if hypothetically I had kept this interpretation, unless I was connected with a christian body to talk about the passage with, it could have become a fact in my mind. This is how heresies are generally born. Church is extremely important to prevent misinterpretations, so as a pillar for the truth, what happens when one is without it?

Until I decided to come to Greece, I wouldn't have believed you if you told me that one day I would be analyzing my decisions to see if they were in accordance with that passage from Hebrews. I have come to an incredibly humbling realization, I am a non-church going Christian. I didn't quite realize how much this admission would affect me. I've felt great shame at times; I didn't realize how much of my identity I had in my church attendance. Every week when Sunday comes, I have to stop and think, “what day it is?” Because I'm not waking up at seven or eight AM to go to church, the day just feels out of place, every... single... week... like a day that is exists somewhere outside of the seven day week that I'm used to. A magical eight day has appeared, and now has become my Sunday. One Sunday, a friend of mine asked me if I would go to church with him. This person wasn't a Christian, they just felt like going to the local Greek Orthodox church would be a good idea, and they observed that I hadn't gone to church and so as they pitied me (the perceived athiest) and thought I might benefit from some exposure to Christianity. The irony was extremely bitter. My first thought was that I should explain to them that I was the Christian and that I should be inviting them to church but that there wasn't one to go to so I couldn't, but they had no idea who they were talking to, clearly, they wouldn't have understood.

The religious scene in Thessaloniki presents some very contrasting opportunities for spiritual gathering. The primary religion is obviously Greek Orthodox. I still don't know exactly what this means, but from my experience so far, it sounds similar to Mormonism. This is not because the religions are similar theologically, but merely because they have many concepts that are similar to ones I accept, and yet in-whole are totally different from the Christianity I understand. Greek Orthodox is not just "deeply" rooted but it is utterly submerged in tradition. It is similar to traditional strict Catholicism in this way. My experience isn’t with priests or any religious leaders, I haven't talked to any of them. My understanding is based on my interaction with Greek Orthodox students, because many of the students here are Greek Orthodox. However, what I gathered from talking to them, is that beyond belief in some God out there, the existence of a Trinity connected in some form, and An Orthodox Prayerbook which they use like the Bible, there is little in-common with the religions they described. It is ironic because the church services are overpoweringly traditional and ritualized, and yet their individual religious lives are completely subjective-determined by opinion and personal morals. Many don't read or even own a Bible, and they have extremely contradicting theological beliefs. However, this fact doesn't bother them at all because the living out of Christianity is a personal decision, only the church services are traditional. There are Greek Orthodox Churches all throughout the city, but because of the reasons stated above in addition to the fact that all the services are in Greek, beyond the occasional curiosity visit, I will not be attending a Greek Orthodox church long term.

"Do not forsake the Assembly of Believers", is that what I'm doing? As I already said, "forsake" is a completely undefined term, in my situation, should this be considered forsaking? How do you define believers? Do these churches even apply as “believers”, if one considers their theological beliefs?

There is one other church that I've found so far, which makes this situation even more fascinating. The church is a gathering of about 50-60 people who meet twice a week, and they are polar opposites of the Greek Orthodox church. Tradition is not really a concept at this church. Besides the fact that services are on Saturday and Sunday nights each week, and that they are at the same location, the services are run with complete flexibility, even the start time fluctuated if people wanted to start late. Visiting the church was very refreshing. The people were incredibly welcoming-they had a man translate for me, and our theologies were the same on all of the main points. I had told myself before coming to expect to never attend a church long term until I came back to America, so this opportunity to go to church, to hear Blessed be your Name in Greek, to hear a message in English was such a blessing. However, week two at this church was a little bit different. Partly because I had been so desperate for Christian contact, and partly because of the different format of the service, some things became apparent that I hadn’t noticed the first week. After the preacher had spoken for about 30 minutes, he asked people if they wanted to share anything from the week. For me this was all through translator, and one by one people started to come up and share visions from the week. One saw God on his Throne, another saw God come and eat with them and another saw God in their room while they faced a difficult circumstance. Maybe it’s just the inner cynic in me, but I felt my skepticism begin to grow as one by one men and women shared how they had seen God that week in visions, and what he looked like. This is some of what I wrote in my journal explaining my torn emotions:

“Why is it hard for me to accept these prophecies and visions? Is it from weak faith? Or is there something wrong with my understanding of Christianity? What would Jesus do?”

What Would Jesus Do? It’s been overused I know, it’s a Christian Icon of the 90’s, but since we’re called to live like Christ, I was seriously pondering what he would do/what I should be thinking in that setting. The night continued with more of the message, and then there was prayer time. Their definition of prayer time was an experience very new to me. I have never heard such a loud prayer time in my life. My translator left for this so that he could pray, and so I started to pray but became quickly distracted because I realized that I was the only one who believed that prayer time was more considerate when done in one’s head. Everybody else immediately began to speak in tongues (what that even means exactly I don’t really know), but this was accompanied with people swaying or walk around. Some muttered things quietly while others screamed it out loud. This is hard to explain exactly, but it was extremely unnerving. I hate using this description because I am completely ignorant of what this really means, but it felt demonic. Something was just wrong. The people swaying, muttering, whispering, weeping, wailing... I didn’t then, and still don’t really know what to make of it. The Bible talks about things like this, speaking in tongues and prophecies. It mentions people who get filled with the Holy Spirit and just become controlled by it. Maybe it’s just because it’s new to me, but should it be new to me? Was nobody ever filled with the Holy Spirit at Wintonbury? I don’t believe that, yet this church looked totally different. Is Wintonbury always right? Certainly not, but this place felt wrong at times. 90% of the church felt fine to me, but 10% made me uncomfortable. Aren’t stretching experiences good? Isn’t Christianity portrayed in many different ways and styles? This is essentially just a passionate Pentecostal church, am I just lacking in faith, and that is the reason for my discomfort? What difference does it make that it didn’t “feel” right? How much should I value the opinion of my feelings which are utterly naive, totally subjective, completely biased, and ultimately modernized, westernized, and essentially wintonburyized?

I have three options: a tradition rich church that gives little support for daily life, a structure lacking church that is full of passion and heart, or I can stay at home and pray, read, and study the bible in the ways that I have always done.

“How seriously should we take the passage, ‘Do not forsake the assembly of believer’. If it’s in another language, different traditions, and in many ways appears to be a different religion. Is it wrong to forsake it?”

I have been pondering these questions over the last few weeks. I don’t know what God wants me to do yet, but I am comfortable that in his timing, he will reveal his will. I have God, and he’s blessed me with choices and so I will praise God for that and let him open the doors.

Last's Night Dinner

2010-09-26T06:15:00.000-04:00

I've been here for about two and a half weeks, and among many other things, I've been learning how to cook. Well, actually, let me rephrase that. I can't really say that I've learned how to cook, it's more that I've learned how to balance meals.

For those who don't know, I have my own apartment with a kitchen. This is a great blessing because it means that I don't have to spend a small fortune on a meal plan. However, the flipside is that I need to cook my own meals; this includes doing all my own shopping. It's kind of fun, because there are four local grocery stores and so I compare prices between them to figure out where to buy what. I've learned a lot about how to buy, cook, and prepare food, although it's still really weird buying only one pound of pasta instead of four. Today I wanted to post some pictures for the mothers reading to prove that I am eating my veggies. Here's an example of one of my meals.

Lol I won't lie and say that I take the time to make all my meals look this organized, but here's what I ate last night. And yes, I did make those french fries. I went to the open market and got a huge bag of potatoes for 1 Euro and am trying different recipes with them.

First Philosophy Class at a Secular School

2010-09-22T09:53:00.000-04:00

Classes started this week at ACT, and I must admit I was ready to get started. Right now, my schedule has three classes, on Mon, Wed, Fri, and two on Tues and Thursday. My five classes are History, Management, Mathematics, Greek and Philosophy. I got to pick from a list of several different General Education classes, but probably the easiest choice was Philosophy. Not only is that a subject where I have an interest, but I feel as a Christian it would be irresponsible for me to not try to understand the philosophies of this area and so the world. In addition, how could I pass up the chance to study philosophy, in it's birth place, Ancient Greece...?

I approached the class a bit too smug I must confess, partly because of my intellectually based Christian education, but also because of the knowledge I had gained at the rigorous two week worldview camp I attended in Colorado this Summer.

I picked my spot in the middle of the 2nd or 3rd middle row as is my custom. Not too close as to be considered a teacher's pet, but close enough so that my hand can easily be seen when raised, and so that the teacher would grow accustomed to seeing my face when he scanned the students so he'd become more familiar with me and learn my name faster. The students filed in quickly when the clock hit 11:30 AM and the teacher sitting on his desk scanned the students stoically in what is commonly called by communication majors as a "power pause". A power pause to those who don't know, is an attempt to gain control over listeners by a confident silence, which psychologically communicates to the viewers that the speaker is somebody who has something important to say and thus should be granted silence to, at least for a moment. After it was quiet, the teacher stood up and began to speak.

"I have a philosophical question for you today." He paused momentarily to let that thought sink in. Since most of the students didn't know what made a question philosophical, they continued to listen. "The question is a famous one that most of you have probably heard, and it is this. Can an all-powerful God create a stone that he cannot lift?"

I'm not going to lie, even I was a bit surprised. I realize that it was a common question, and I had certainly heard it before, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember any Christian responses, not from books or anything told to me. I think even the teacher was surprised at how quiet it got. Finally one student raised their hand and said "Yes, since he is all powerful he could." I felt embarrassed for her because she had walked right into the purpose of the question which was to be a circular paradox. Another student raised their hand, and with his answer brought her statement full circle revealing the error in her judgment, "if he is truly all-powerful, then he would be able to lift the stone." The teacher nodded smiling. He then opened it up again to the class. "So what is the answer?" Everybody remained quiet. Meanwhile, I was racking my brain for an answer, all the while sinking deeper and deeper into shame. This wasn't supposed to be a difficult question, it was only the first day! What would happen later in the semester, when he tried to disprove God and not just his omnipotence. Trying to clear my mind I began frantically writing down thoughts on my notebook paper, trying to come up with a solution. However, then the teacher spoke again, and there are few times I've felt as humiliated in my life, "aren't there any religious people out there? Are there any Christians who believe in God? I just disproved the omnipotence of God, a critical part of your religion, of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism... Is there nobody? After that challenge he paused. Nervously I raised my hand, and gave the answer that I had scratched together on my notebook page, praying that my reasoning had been sound enough despite the pressure. "Your statement is incomplete," I began. "You must first answer whether you believe God to be a rational or an irrational God. If God is omnipotent and rational, then he cannot lift the rock, because God must then follow the laws of Logic which say that there is no rock too big for God to lift, and so he could not create a rock that would be impossible to lift. But if God is omnipotent and irrational, then he could lift the rock, because then there are no laws that God works in accordance with and so he could make a rock he could not lift, just as easily as he could make 2+2=5." I knew while I was writing this that as soon as I said this, he was going to think he saw this as a loophole in my belief in God and would attack that in the following way. "So are you saying that God is subservient to certain laws, or are you admitting to serving a God that can create things he himself cannot do, and thus is not omnipotent?" I already had thought out my personal belief on the subject so I responded, "in regards to my believes, I believe that God is a rational God but also that he is omnipotent. I believe that there is no rock that God cannot lift. However, I believe that God obeys the laws of logic and reason as we understand them. I don't believe that God is in anyway subservient to these laws though, they are laws that HE created and that HE can change at any point, but in his omniscience, he has decided to follow them right now. In conclusion, God is a rational God who can lift any rock. But in his omnipotence, if he wanted he could change the laws of logic so that he could create a rock that he wouldn't be able to lift, but because he controls the laws of logic and reason preventing him from lifting the rock he is still omnipotent."

Feeling slightly relieved at seeing a few nodding heads I thanked God for giving me an answer that at least made sense to a few.

And that was the discourse. Just a note however, this is not literally word for word what transpired. I tired to capture the ideas that were communicated but in certain parts these are slightly different words. I wanted to present the ideas of the discussion in this blogpost in a slightly more professional manner, but the arguments are still the same. The reason I am posting this, is because I was wondering if anybody had some thoughts on the subject. I am not by any means set upon the ideas I presented in this post, and so I would greatly appreciate any feedback or comments. These ideas were what made sense to me, but if you think you see an error in my reasoning, by all means please point it out to me, I don't care about being right, I just want to know the best answer or best way of explaining it.

Thermopylae and Delphi

2010-09-17T09:13:00.000-04:00

My three day trip in Greece has been amazing. Not only have I been able to see these incredible historical locations, but God has really taught me a lot about faith.Our trip from Thessaloniki to Thermopylae, to Delphi was too incredible to share through only a blog, so it'll have to wait until I can tell you in person, let it suffice that God is amazing, he is all-knowing, and my faith in him has grown dramatically because I've seen his power first hand.

The following pictures are from Thermopylae and Delphi. Thermopylae was the site that I most wanted to see in Greece, (and probably the world), the Oracle of Delphi was Caleb's-neither of us were disappointed. We went to Athens today and so tonight at the Hostel is our last night. Tomorrow, I return to Thessaloniki and I start classes on Monday. Every place that we wanted to see we were able to. As a great Lagan once said, "we got what we came for". Although leaving Daniel and Caleb tomorrow is going to be hard, I am excited about finally starting school and the adventures that lie ahead. Daniel and Caleb are going to continue on tomorrow to Italy and then up through Europe.Today is my last day as a tourist, and honestly I'm happy about that. I have been spoiled certainly, but after seeing too many historical sites, "ruins" become just "ruins". Fortunately, I haven't reached that place yet, and I would like to keep it that way. Pictures of Athens will hopefully come up later today or tomorrow.

The boyzeeuh in front of the statue of King Leonidas. Our incredible joy right now is hard to see in this picture, but if you look closely, both Daniel and Caleb are smiling, that "doesn't happen every dynasty" to quote Mulan.

Me in front of the statue of one of my heroes.

Sideview

Statue again

Me on the mount of Kolonos, where the Spartans made their last stand after King Leonidas was slain.

My favorite picture of the trip. The spear is actually splitting the sun. One n00b asked me if that was supposed to be like that, do you realize how hard it is to spear the sun?

Zoomed in picture of Leonidas

The Mountains in the background

The Sun over the remants of the wall at Thermopylae.

The view from Delphi. Delphi is a cliff city. It's literally built on the edge of a cliff. It's straight down. This picture was taken from the road.

The guard rail is the the only thing keeping cars from a thousand foot plunge.

The View again.

Hoods up Boyz

The flags of the EU lined the streets at Delphi.

The Altar of Apollo at Delphi.

The Temple of Apollo, undeneath which the Oracle of Delphi lurked.

Temple again

The most famous spot for pictures of Delphi. If you look at pictures online of the Oracle, most pictures show this temple. However, this is the wrong temple, this was built for Athene. The Oracle resided in the temple of Apollo.

Me in front of the famous picture spot. Far be it for me to break tradition.

One guy randomly asked me if I was from New England. Shocked, I said yes, and asked how he knew. He thought for a minute mysteriously, and then said, "your shirt is for the Patriots and your bag is for the Red Soxes," lol Greeks are so smart.

My Dream Come True

2010-09-16T14:16:00.000-04:00


My Whole Life I've Dreamed Of It

Thermopylae Greece

Day 4 - The Aegean Sea

2010-09-12T17:12:00.000-04:00

I apologize to those who tried to leave comments before, I had made an error in the settings and so you needed an account to comment. Regardless, it is fixed now. Today was a great day. I had my first real glimpse of the Aegean Sea, and my first swim in it as well. The water is incredibly warm, considering I am from New England-where it is not uncommon to see a penguin, iceberg, or frozen person float by you while you're trying to wade. With that as my past ocean experience, this was quite nice. Today we went on a walk along the seashore on a beautiful path.

This is a picture of the water from above on a ledge. It's warm, beautiful, and quite clear.

The water again. I find the different colors quite mystifying.

Their are beautiful ledges along the coast which make for great pictures.

Random ancient watch tower we stumbled upon. I love that about Greece!

The Tower again.

The tower was right near the ledge, overlooking the Sea.

Us, farther along on the walk.

Of course the tower needed to be scaled.

Kind of reminds me of Ireland, not that I've ever been there.

Second game of Ninja at historical sites. This one is of us playing in the Aegean sea. I've decided to make this a regular part of the blog. As my brothers continue to traverse Europe, they will keep up the tradition of playing Ninja in famous locations such as the Alps, Thermopylae, the Parthenon, the Colosseum, etc I'm in the process of making a youtube channel where I'm going to post all of these ninja games. Right now the score is:

Caleb 1 Daniel 1 Joshua 0

Concerning prayer request, Orientation is tomorrow, and I'm also meeting with my manager for the work/study program. I'm going to be significantly changing gears tomorrow from Tourist, to Student, so prayer for a smooth transition would be greatly appreciated.

Day 3 - 23 Things I've learned about Greece

2010-09-11T18:55:00.001-04:00

Day 3 was awesome. But before I get to that, I need to apologize for not writing any captions yesterday for the pictures. Although pictures say a thousand words, I would like to give you about a thousand and thirty, because I would like spend around thirty words explaining each picture. What is the purpose of a picture, if nobody explains the meaning behind it? My point, exactly. Now, to Day 3!

Thanks to the incredible generosity of the Gieseckes, (some great friends of our family who work at the school), we got the incredible opportunity to visit Philippi today. It was about an hour and thirty minute drive to that city. You might be wondering why we went ninety minutes away to see historical sites, when they are all around us. The answer is actually fairly legit. About four hours ago my time, (so about 12 PM) your time, the Prime Minister of Greece made his most important speech of the year in Thessaloniki! So the day after I got here, the president of Greece comes a couple blocks from my house and makes his most important speech for the next year. Amazing, right?! Except, on this same day, anarchists from all over the Balkan reigon, in protest of the speech, wreck havoc upon the streets. You saw some examples of the riot police in yesterday's post. Allegedly, for several hours the anarchists are expected to throw things at the riot police, flip some cars, burn a few buildings and then go home. Apparently this isn't a big deal, it's not even noteworthy. Several people died last year because some homemade bombs were thrown into stores, which exploded and killed store workers. All of that to say, we decided to go to Philippi today, instead of risk our lives with mad anarchists running around with bombs, (as tempted as we might have been to stay).

The following pictures are from the Ruins of Phillip as I said, several famous biblical locations, the place where Lydia was baptized and finally a Venetian Castle. And as a further attempt to make amends for last night, and the future times where I will be just too tired to post captions, I'm going to talk about some things I've learned so far in Greece. There are a million other pictures I will put up at some point, but right now I'm just doing the some of the humorous.

1. An Explanation for Caleb's Odditys. The idea behind this picture was for everybody to look contemplative and thoughtful, like the statue. This is the reason why everybody did the classic pose from the Rodin's the Thinker. However, if you observe Caleb, he has no exaggerated body position, in fact he looks no different from how he normally does. This showed me that Caleb is merely always contemplative and off in some distant land dreaming about things.


3. Never say that a mountain top in the distance looks cool in front of Caleb. We were driving along the highway and Mr. Giesecke or Hans, pointed out this Acropolis of the city of Philippi on this mountain top, I said "O thats cool!". Caleb was like yeah, let's climb it. Mr. Giesecke said okay, an hour later I was lugging a backpack as we trekked our way to the top.


This is the theater where Paul preached to the Philippians. Pretty amazing stuff if you ask me.


4. The Ancient theater of Philippi has better acouustics than my 21st Century Church (Wintonbury). It's pretty incredible, you can say something at a normal voice in the center, and it can be heard all the way up the steps.


5. Historical Sites in America are Terrible Compared to European Ones. Reason 1: Expensive. Reason 2: The places really aren't that cool. Reason 3: They are empty-nobody goes to them. Reason 3: They are free, because I'm a student.

6. The Ancient Greeks used to play Twister. This is a stone spinner.

7. Restroom Accommodations have significantly improved since the Third Century BC.

8. Greeks are not extremely trusting, as I first thought, they are actually just extremely lazy. This is a priceless Mosaic. See picture 2 Mosaic.


This is Daniel infront of the priceless Mosaic. As you can see the only thing protecting the 3rd century AD Byzantine church mosaic made from tens of thousands of tiny, individually painted and carved stones, fit together over years of work into an intricate puzzle masterpiece, is a little fence. There are no guards, cameras, lights, charges... anything really blocking you from vandalizing it. It is not that Greeks are too lazy to build a bigger fence, it is just that they assume you're too lazy to climb over their little fence. I guess they were right, we just looked.

9. Everything at the ruins of Philippi is in ruins. See picture 2

even the 21st century tour guide map, put up by the Hellenic Ministry of Tourism.

10. Ancient roads are really rocky. lol

11. It's a scary experience climbing on ruins. I don't know whether to feel comforted, or worried that these ruins have been standing for over 2000 years.

12. They don't have Teddy Bears in Greece. They actually have Teddypuses as they put it. Platypuses, in teddy form.

13. There were two essentials to every Greek household. A jar of Spam

And a jar of cheese-wiz.


14. Never let Daniel lead. You turn your back for a second, and he's leading you up a mountain. His justification was, "I want to get to the top!"

15. I'm sorry to be unpatriotic, but from a purely aesthetic sense, the Greek flag is much more cooler than America's.

16. There's a reason cities took years to siege. I'm scared of dieing just climbing on the ruins as Ruins-let alone when they're in their splendor, stories high, with burning oil pouring down on you and thousands of people trying to shoot you.

17. These Wild Grapes are not infact Grapes and not Poisonous. When Caleb asked our guide whether they were actually grapes or not, the guide said that he didn't know. Caleb's response was to eat one and find out.

18 I asked for you Sam, but unfortunately this is not a Ramen bowl. I asked. He was kind of offended, I don't know why. He said it's for something about baptizing kids. I didn't get it all, it's all greek to me. (lame joke I know, but I needed to say it at least once. That phrase has been stuck in my head since I got here.)

19. Joey you are going to be so Happy. In Greek there is no "B" so use two other letters as a replacement. Knowing that, what does this spell? This is the oldest recorded use of that word.

20. Tourists in Greece are Shameless. This is a refurbished BC theater. *See next picture*

Sheesh.... Respect the Classics man...

21. There are stray Cats and Dogs EVERYWHERE!!! So much so that a lot of the roadkill around here is kittens and puppies. These ones weren't though, and they were pretty cute.

However, these adorable puppies, were right next to a very intimidating sign.

Translation *These animals have rabies, don't touch them, they have killed many people.*


22. I learned that this is not a route sign. This is truly the speed limit. Makes you wonder why they even bother?

Excuse the blurriness of the photos, these were taken while driving, very fast.

23. But I also learned that speed is done in Kilometers per Hour, and not MPH. KM are about .6 of a Mile.

And finally, I would like to end with this. You should be able to figure out what it is, if and if you can't ask your kid. I'm sad I lost though.

Ninja Tally in famous locations: Caleb 1 Daniel 0 Joshua 0

Day 2

2010-09-10T16:48:00.000-04:00

After 24 hours of travel, four different airports stops and five security checks, we finally reached our destination, Thessaloniki, Greece. Praise God, he was clearly evident with every part of the trip. My greatest worry from yesterday was the weight of my checked bags. The weight limit is 50 pounds, but because of a faulty scale I could never get a consistent reading. Needless to say, when we arrived at Bradley to weight the bags, my face dropped when I saw the first one total out to 51 Ibs, one pound over the limit which immediately results in a 150 dollar fine. But God answered my prayer and the man looked at the weight, shrugged, and let me through, Praise God! The rest of the trip went easily enough, I contented myself with taking pictures outside the airplane windows and watching movies. Our fourteen hour flight across the Atlantic (really seven hours with the time difference) went by surprisingly painlessly. I watched Karate Kid, and Robin Hood, and the trip seemed to fly by. Below are some random pictures from the day's events. I don't have time to write tags now, but I'll try to another day. Daniel (my brother) wrote some brief ones on his blog if you want to see. If you don't understand or want clarification about a certain picture, please comment and I'll try my best to explain.

Day 1

2010-09-09T08:22:00.000-04:00

And just like that, the day has arrived. September 9th, 2010, the weather is calm enough I suppose considering the storm of emotions which will surely flood me in the next couple days. In less than two hours, I will be on my way to Greece. I've been waiting for this day for a long time, it's hard to believe that this is it. I stayed up late last night saying goodbye to people so I am tired, but my mind and body are ready. All that's left is to go.

Prayer requests so far are that I will make it onto the plane without having to do a reconstruction of my bags. Both of my checked bags are leering dangerously close to the 50Ibs. And with our cheap scale, I'm skeptical... I have no choice but to have faith, which I guess is the point of this blog, Leap With Faith. I have faith, I'm leaping. Please pray that both my bags get checked.

Two Days Until Departure

2010-09-08T02:22:00.000-04:00

It's hard to believe that in only 36 hours, I will be on a plane headed to Greece. This summer has been filled with events like this trip that seemed so distant, it felt like they would never come. Now, I look back and it feels like they never happened. It's really incredible reflecting, as I realize all of the occasions that occurred in the last few months. Most notably would be the conclusion of my year at Simsbury High School. Some mornings, for a moment I still find myself wondering whether I want to go to public school or not, and then it dawns on me that I already decided, I already went and I already finished. That was an incredible experience that I would definitely choose to do again if I had the option in retrospect. A few weeks upon my departure from Simsbury High School, I graduated officially with a celebration at my house. Finishing high school gave flexibility for God to begin opening doors for my future. Another significant event was my 18th birthday which gave me legal admittance into Adulthood. Although I am under the impression that I became an adult much younger when my parents started treating me like one, it was nice to know that the government would now hold me accountable for my actions. Also worthy of mention, was my two weeks in Colorado where God groomed my knowledge of religions and apologetics. I met some amazing people, but also my ability to defend my faith was honed.The American College of Thessaloniki (where I'm studying), has around twenty different countries represented in it's student body, which means that people of all different religious backgrounds will be in attendance there. The knowledge and experience I gained from Simsbury High School and Summit will be invaluable as I try to be a Christian example in this distant country. I am extremely encouraged because in every step I've taken over the last few months, I've been able to see God's plan. Often in life we are not blessed with this luxury, but for whatever reason God has opened my eyes. I believe that God used this summer to teach me many things about myself, and other people, but most significantly, it helped prepare me for this next journey, this next adventure, my leap with faith.

Plan:
To study for ten months at the American College of Thessaloniki which is in the city of Thessaloniki Greece.

Goal:
To be an ambassador of Christ to the college, and to begin my university education.

It's been really hard to say goodbye to everyone, but I know that the Lord goes with me, and so do the prayers of my friends and family. I was at a retreat with my church this past weekend and I said my final goodbyes. And just when it was most difficult, God manifested his love with a promise of his faithfulness. I want to leave you today with this poem, and these pictures of God's promise to never abandon us.

"The Gate of the Year" by Minnie Haskins 1908

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year
'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.'

And he replied, 'Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!'

So I went forth and finding the Hand of God
Trod gladly into the night
He led me towards the hills
And the breaking of day in the lone east.

So heart be still!
What need our human life to know
If God hath comprehension?

In all the dizzy strife of things
Both high and low,
God hideth his intention."