Guess what?
No…we don’t have our container, but we are now officially
permanent residents of Greece! We picked up our papers this
morning. We expire in January of 2009, but the renewal process is
supposed to be much easier than the initial application.
About the time we decided to pay the cost to get our
container our of storage at the port 500 kilometers away, the truckers went on
strike and we can’t rent a truck. This adds all sorts of craziness beyond
just our container. Athens is out of gas, as the trucks aren’t delivering
it to the gas stations and the grocery stores are low on food and on and
on. Please pray about this because…
We leave in about an hour for our team retreat in
Patra. We all have full tanks of gas today, but we will not get home
unless the strike ends. Our reservations at the hotel were not
refundable, so we decided to just go, thinking this will surely settle before
we come back on Monday. I would really like to not be struck somewhere
far from home without gas to return as part of the memories associated with our
first team retreat as team leaders, although there could be some sort of
bonding experience that might redeem even that event. L
Please pray that this weekend would be positive for our team
as we learn together from a speaker I’ve never heard (we inherited him with our
new job, he was already booked to come) about biblical conflict
resolution. It is also supposed to be a time of rest and
refreshment and planning for the next 6 weeks.
We returned to Athens from the Philippines last Sunday after
a 3 day layover in Los Angeles. The International Leadership Forum (a
required training event for team leaders) was time well spent connecting with
other leaders from around the world and in learning (especially from Pastor
Joey at Victory Outreach in Manilla). Much of the fun stuff we
missed. Kenn came off the plane very ill with a respiratory infection and
high fever, although he seemed fine when we left California. The
hotel found a doctor and nurse for us that monitored his care for the first 4
days (at no cost to us, kind of like room service only free). About the
time Kenn got better, I got sick. Continue to pray for our
health. While we are not sick right now, we are travel weary and leaving
for another 5 days to live out of a suitcase.
If we didn’t mention this before, we specifically traveled
west instead of east to the Philippines to meet the young man our daughter
Betsy plans to marry in November. It was only about $100 and 14
hours of extra flying to drop by California for a few days each
way. It was well worth it and YES we like him.
That’s about it for news.
Blessings,
Lisa and Kenn
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