Athens Trip – March 2010, Day 5

Our time in Athens keeps getting better and better. Monday we had an opportunity to spend the entire day in our neighborhood. We started off with prayer walking. Going through the municipality, and asking God for opportunities for His light to shine and for favor in developing relationships. We even had the opportunity to hike up a small mountain that overlooks Holargos for pray for the entire community.


We were surprised to find that a market was going on, and had the opportunity to walk through that as well. Since it is in the end of the winter season here, I was not expecting it, but it is always interesting to see the various people selling fruit, flowers, fish, clothing, and random supplies. By the way, non-brand name sweat pants will cost you 5 Euros, but knock Puma sweat pants will cost you 8, which really amused me for some reason.


The funniest part of the day was visiting Kostas’ office to mess with a lady named Effi. She is the person in the office who said she thought we were some sort of s-p-i-e-s. Kostas had given me some personal information about her to mess with her a little, and it was quite effective. We went into the office and I sat down at her desk. Immediately I asked her specific questions about her family and told her I had been watching her. She and her coworker (our friend Nikki) looked completely stunned!


I went on and told her, “I don’t think we have officially met, I am Jason Bourne and this is my friend Bond, James Bond” (referring to Jamie). Immediately they knew Kostas had let us in on her conspiracy theory and we all had a good laugh. This might seem like a small thing, but to me, it is huge in deepening our friendship and relationship with the people in Holargos.


Later on, we made it to the schools where we played basketball and participated in the drills with the kids. Sophia, the basketball instructor, was happy to see us and had us play games that would involve us with the children. It was really cool to see some of them who recognized us and were happy we made it over again. Not only did we interact during the scheduled academy time (5:00-6:00), we played for about 45 minutes before and 90 minutes afterwards. We had a great time and are ready to return tomorrow!