Apparently girls are better

When we had the last scan in January the doctor told us that Bod (baby number 4) was a girl. We’d had a thing in our family that Joel and I needed a boy so we’d be even, but that of course we’d be very happy with any kind of baby. Expressing this to the doctor at the time, he said we should be totally happy that we’re having another girl, because (so the saying goes) if you have a girl she’ll bring you a plate of food or a glass of water, but if you have a boy all you’ll get is a kick.

At first we told this to others thinking it was mostly ironic with a grain of truth, but given the number of times our Greek friends have said pretty much exactly the same thing since, I’m now thinking that it is spoken as absolute truth without a hint of irony! Just this morning our neighbour said the same thing to me, and elaborated with illustrations from her own family (one boy, one girl, now both grown up and both thoroughly nice people) and from her mother’s home town, Sparta, where ‘only the boys are children’ – i.e. the girls are expected to pull their weight from the off but the boys are princes. Houses are passed down always to the boys, the girls leave home with nothing.

It’s another illustration of just how ‘eastern’ Greece is.

Here’s another one, while we’re on the subject – we’ve spoken to a couple of older students this week about possibly joining us on some kind of fledgling Relay scheme. Both are positive initially, though we’ll see what comes of it. One, however, said something that you’d never hear in the UK. ‘My parents will be supportive [that you might hear] but the rest of my family might not be [i.e. uncles, grandparents etc].’

So what you might ask? Well, which graduating students in England would consider the opinion of grandparents as decisive in such decision-making?

It's not that this is either a good thing or a bad thing, though it might be one or the other, but that it just makes the whole process of influencing the decision-making of students more complicated and definitely slower. (We make no apologies for that part of our work! I needed influencing when I was a student - and still do - and it's no controversy that Athenian students also need influencing for the gospel. The influence of the extended family, however, is so much more significant than northern Europeans are used to.

Implications for us? It reminds us of the value of close family, because we are not islands. It reminds me of the need to become wise as I grow older so that I can be of good influence on my nephews and nieces and grandchildren, as well as my own four children - the alternative that I will be of no influence or actually bad influence.

(And that's the subject for another post - how much help do we get in our churches regarding our growing old? Almost all of us will do it and are doing it already, but how many of us will do it well?)

Other implications: we need more patience for it takes longer for people to change their minds or make up their minds. We need to see people not as individuals but parts of a wider network. And we also need to see how the gospel should critique (not criticise) the extended family culture, because the students we work with are still to be held accountable in the end for their choices and opportunities and effectiveness and productivity in their knowledge of Christ.

The harvest is plentiful, but...

We've just been talking with our friends and team mates Joel and Bekah, and did a quick sketch of the needs and opportunities in student ministry in the Hellenic world. I thought I'd jot it down before bed.

Let's imagine that we had in our house this evening five people or couples or families who were:

1. Willing to set aside 5-10+ years
2. Up for learning a notoriously tricky language (especially for anglophones)
3. Flexible enough to learn the ropes of life and work among Greeks
4. Committed to Christ and his gospel word
5. Keen to proclaim him among students (most of whom don't want to listen) and disciple the small number of those who already know him
   

then we'd hire a big van and drive from Athens to Patras to Ioannina to Thessaloniki to Volos and back to Athens, leaving one in each place with the remit to get stuck in for the long haul. We'd also put one on the plane to Cyprus.

And that's just scratching the surface.

The reality is that, even if we did make God's plans for him, we don't have any of those people at the moment, either Greek or non-Greek. In 10 years time we hope to have some Greeks but perhaps in rather fewer years we might have some non-Greeks (ξένοι) and so I thought I'd put this up here, to begin actively floating that boat...among those who might read this...perhaps this little thought might enter your minds, or the minds of faithful people you have influence over...perhaps...

Be prepared, in season and out of season

I was at class this morning (increasingly rare due to other pressures, not least uterine) and at last had the opportunity to greet a chap who's joined since the beginning of the year. His Greek sounds perfect (he's half Greek) but his spelling is atrocious, as I could see from the amount of red ink on his spelling test. That's not important. What is important is that through a simple introduction, and his (to be expected) surprise at our being here, I was able to explain what we do in simple terms.

His immediate response? 'I've never read the Bible but I'd like to! Something about it interests me.'

What exactly interests him I don't know, and maybe it's purely intellectual curiosity, but I'll be giving him a Greek NT on Friday and have asked if he'd like to read it it with me. I think one thing that roused his curiosity was when I said that we meet with students wherever they are - at uni, in homes, in town centres - because there are no restrictions to reading the Bible!

We'll see what comes of it, but I was reminded of Paul to Timothy in 2 Tim 4 - be prepared.

For our encouragement

I just read this post from the Gospel Coalition blog as it had been 'liked' by our team member Tim. As you'll see from the title, it's all about ways to encourage missionaries (though we don't like that word very much!), hence the title of this post.

It's not that we're feeling particularly discouraged at the moment, but almost all of the advice strikes a chord with me (as long as you read UK for USA) so, for our encouragement, which we need and value, have a read of it!

A new year, a new effort to blog

It's now an embarrassingly long time since we wrote anything on here. However, it's a new year, I'm writing a new prayer letter, and it suddenly became crystal clear that this would be a useful and easy thing to do.

In the letter I'm currently writing is the above family photo. We're inside a church which is inside a tree!

Here is the only webpage we've found about it, and be warned: the blog from which this is taken is an enormous archive of all sorts of articles about Greek Orthodoxy. We are not responsible for the content of other websites!

However, I thought I'd put this up as a useful insight into the wonderful (sic) world of Eastern Orthodoxy at a folk level. The information on these pages is not 'official' teaching, but may as well be in that it is all accepted as part of the fabric of the faith. Have a look if you're curious!

Ah yes, we have a blog

What can we say? We are so sorry for having written zip in recent months. It's not like it's difficult, or like we've had nothing to write about: there's no real excuse.

So here's a little one to get it going again.

We have our good friends the Callows from Oxford with us for three days. They're here to try and find an apartment ahead of their move to Athens in September to join us in our work with the Greek student movement. In the last few days we've spent many hours looking around our neighbourhood for possible places for them. At the same time we have had on our minds the thing we've been toying with for a few months: whether we ought to move ourselves. You may remember reading about this if you receive our prayer letters.

Today we set foot in a few places with Joel and Bekah to help them, but it has stimulated much thought (in me - Jonathan - at least).

We love our place: it's big, it's perfectly located (not least in relation to our favourite fast food outlet aka the World's Best Kebab ShopTM), it has all the flexibility we need for family and student work and it's home. However, it's increasingly expensive.

So, as we've looked in on these apartments, two or three of which are viable for both us and the Callows, I've been wondering exactly how to prioritise where to live (not that we have to move - just that moving would make it easier financially). What do we lose by moving? What do we gain?

Just thinking aloud.

The great thing is that the Callows have good options and we are a big step closer to our team being in place in September, as we have also sorted out accommodation for the two volunteers (almost for Nicky, totally for Tim) nearby.

Ioannina: the city

I’ve visited this north western regional centre (Greece’s fifth or sixth city I think) twice now, and we’re planning another trip (this time with the whole family) in May, via Patras on the way there and Meteora (the scene of some James Bond filming years ago) on the way back. I digress.

The reason for these visits, apart from a general desire to encourage students in living and speaking for Jesus, is a specific request from the pastor of the evangelical church there to support the six or so Christian students. For the previous several years there had only been one or two at the most, so this is a veritable flood. None are from the city – Cyprus, Patras, Crete and northern Greece are their homelands. This is significant as the normal pattern is to study in one’s home city. This has implications for church life, social life, priorities, timetables and so on.

The city itself has the feel of a gentle regional centre rather than a bustling capital, making it a pleasant change from Athens. There are hardly any tourists (although I’ve only been in the winter, so I’d better withhold judgement on that) despite it being a good place to wander around.






























It has a nice old quarter, loads of cafes, restaurants and bars and a medieval walled city with a couple of Ottoman mosques. It's built on the shores of a lake and is surrounded by imposing mountain ranges, which is good enough on its own, but behind some of these mountains lie some of the most spectacular and rugged moutain scenery in the country. (It seems to be true that the British are unusual in our desire to slug our way up these mountains for 'leisure', but I couldn't stop thinking about how long it would take to get to some of the snow-covered peaks I was gazing at...)

I took this photo of the plane I was about to board - at a very small airport - moments after a shiny black car whisked away the very frail-looking Archbishop of Greece. I didn't have the presence of mind or paparazzi instinct to snap him.

To drive from Athens takes 6 hours by car, 8 by bus, and there are three flights a day. It’s not the sort of place you pop to for a day, but once there it's good to stay longer and really get to know it.

Ioannina has a reputation (apparently) for being somewhat more refined than Athens or Patras, with a long history of learning and cultural achievement. The university is said to be one of the best in the country (which doesn't say much for the quality of the signposting elsewhere - see below). But, of course, it is desperately needy as far as the good news is concerned.

This signboard on campus shows, in the middle, the Centre for the Study of Greek Language and Culture. I wanted to find this to make enquiries about a hypothetical IFES worker based in Ioannina, to see if this would be a good option for language learning. I think it will be, but it took me AGES to find it. After this sign, there are no more...and it's another kilometre to the building, which no one else on campus seems to know about.

This photo is the view from just outside the student union, looking southeast towards Athens, a mere 460km by road beyond those peaks.



















There's one evangelical church, made up of roughly 10 mostly elderly believers, plus the students, not all of whom ‘attend’ regularly, and no families with school age children. I understand, from Pastor Leonidas, that there is also a pentecostal church, consisting mostly of immigrant African workers. This is in a city of ~100000 people. Can you imagine, first, living as a Christian there? And then, can you imagine how to set about the task of reaching that city – not to mention the hundreds of surrounding towns and villages?

That is Ioannina, in brief. I thought I’d blog about it as a small illustration of the progress of the gospel in Greece. Apparently, 30 years ago or more, the church there was full, with many families – between 80-100 people. Then, fairly rapidly, she dwindled to what we see today. Some people left the city, some abandoned the faith, many died and were not followed in the faith by their children. It’s tough in places like that, it really is.

I was struck by this verse in my reading this morning: ‘All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing…’ (Colossians 1). It is, but in some places there is much more planting to be done before significant growth and fruit is seen. You know what is needed for this to happen? Nothing complex, nothing sophisticated, nothing impressive: just people to go there and get about the business of living and speaking for Jesus.