Hello again,
This is not the “yea! We have
our container now e-mail”, but we are making progress. The trucking
strike ended the same day I sent the previous e-mail (May 15th), so
within 48 hours, the gas stations had gas again, planes began flying and the
grocery stores are beginning to look less sparse. Best of all we
were not stuck in Patra with no way to get home (for lack of gas).
The team retreat went
well. The speaker had me concerned the first day, as this was the first
time he had presented this material, but he was very qualified and by the time
he finished, we were all wishing we had more time to hear what he had to
say. The hotel was in a beautiful location and had great
food. The weather could not have been better. No
retreat is ever perfect, but our regrets were few. Thanks for
praying about this. It is really just the beginning, we now need to
meet as a team and decided what to do with what we have learned and how to make
it work for us as a team.
As our container, we have the
release from the shipping company for the container to go to
customs. We have had some difficulty getting our papers stamped
that authorize the customs broker to act on our behalf. The office
was inexplicably closed yesterday and today we had unexpected guests from
Israel (who were a delight—it is always fun to get to know your “heros” and,
David Bivin and Randall Buth are 2 of ours) so we didn’t get it stamped again
today. There is hope for tomorrow. At 5 pm we put David and Randall
on a ferry to the island of Kos for 2 weeks to speak only biblical Greek while
they have time of intensive study. They will be back with us for a
few days before they leave. Hopefully by then we will have our
container. Really it should just be a matter of days before we see
our stuff, but it isn’t over until it is over.
We’ll keep you posted. It
is good to be back in a routine. We served food at the ARC on
Tuesday because we had a short term team here to help. It was fun to do
that again and to see refugee friends I hadn’t seen for a few weeks. How
I missed those babies and their messy kisses.
Blessings,
Lisa and Kenn
