We arrived back in Spata, a suburb of Athens last night, where we are staying with the pastors George and Lydia until our departure for home Thursday.

Our last three days were spent in the Christian churches of Greece 12th annual conference on the island of Evia. The theme was "Going to the Transformation (Metamorphisis) of Maturity". You can see picture I took of the beautiful poster that was across most of the stage showing the process of change the catepillar goes through to the become a butterfly. It was a wonderful theme that God gave Themis as he was in prayer for the conference. There were many ways that the various speakers developed it, but God was really challenging His people to change and to become mature so that they could be a testimony to win the world and that they could become mothers and fathers in the church instead of babies.

I took a lot of pictures and a few videos of the crowd of 660 people worshiping God and also of the teenagers who were down at the front seeking God and receiving prayer from Themis. I will share a few here. They also had a baptisimal in the pool, where Themis baptised a lot of people.

They used Shofars (the horns of sheeps or goats that were used in Israel) some of the times, which really excited the people to shout to the Lord. We had communion together yesterday morning. Ron was asked to serve the unleavened bread like we make and to lead in prayer for part of it. We also both greeted the people on the second day. The people were so loving and accepting of us, and we did a lot of prayer with them and some specific counseling with some inbetween services. The services were marathons. There were five services, which lasted from 4-5 hours each, usually 1-2 hours of singing, worship and prayer and 2-3 hours of preaching, etc. The difficulty for us was that we could not sing or understand the songs because they were all in Greek. For the messages we had little transistor radios with someone translating into English. But this was hard because there was often a lot of static, etc. My ears will never be the same from having earphones in them so long and so loud, and we had to concentrate so hard to understand. Sometimes there were two translators-from German to Greek to English. The messages were challenging. Many people here take naps in the late afternoon and then they go half the night. We were meeting with people all those times, however, and I am very exhausted.

The most amazing thing for me was the favor, love, acceptance, and heart connections the Lord gave me with many women. It was very humbling. They opened their hearts and lives to me so quickly and completely, and I was able to minister to them with God's love, prayer, and even practical things.Also a couple little girls, one of which I will show you again. I will tell you more about this aspect when I am back in Boise, but it was awesome and the most fulfilling aspect of the whole mission trip. Also God gave us a connection with a lovely couple from Switzerland, Hans Peter and Esther. I show you their picture here, and I know God has future plans for us with them. We also spent some time with Krasi and Hristiana and their family. This is the family we support in Bulgaria as a church. They are faithfully doing a very good work there in a very hard field, so we need to continue our prayers and financial support for them.

We love you and appreciate your prayers for us. We are looking forward to coming back to America and our church that God has given us to shepherd. We miss you!