Sister Gale in the Greece Region of the Adriatic South Mission

THESSALONIKI HAD A BAPTISM!!! IN THE OCEAN!! 1st one in 5 months! It was the most perfect day for Ahmed, an investigator that Elder Kirkman and Hawkins have been teaching! He's way cool and has been talking about getting baptized for a long, long time. So we were beyond excited for him. It was also super last minute and we were able to throw everything together in about 12 hours for the special occasion after we found out the night before we'd be having his baptism the next day. But yeah, if there's any place to get baptized, well, the gorgeous waters in Greece are ranked pretty high up there. Just take a look at the pics if I'm not convincing enough. 😍 Sothiris, our investigator, gladly came to Ahmed's baptism and afterwards he wouldn't stop talking about his baptism hopefully next month! Monday was a little sad since it was Elder Kirkman's last day before he was getting emergency transferred to Cyprus...aka ET-ed to the non Greek speaking country. We...

Hey guys! Really crazy week, mostly for the not so great things, but we gotta start with the positives 😉 There's been some big thunder storms passing through throughout the week. And if you're caught in one, well, ya know how that goes. Luckily for Sister Merkel and I, we LOVE them! We had just gone out to do some finding a late afternoon and it started to straight up downpour on us, all warm rain thankfully. Most everyone who was outside started to take cover but we were both enjoying ourselves, while getting DRENCHED. We struck up a convo with an older guy hiding with his bike under a bush, ended up getting a contact from him! Then we walked to the beach and did the classic, "hey can ya take a pic of us" finding trick. Some people thought we were crazy but most just laughed and gladly took our pic and then saw our tags which of course led to the gospel convos we were aiming for 😎  Wednesday was a whirlwind. Started off super good. We met with Σωτήρης and h...

HEY ALL! Out for 4 months already?! Crazy to think about honestly. The work here in Thessaloniki is hard to say the least, but I'm still loving being a missionary and serving the people here! Strengthening our members was basically what our week consisted of! We got to visit with a lot of our recent converts as well as the 2 families, less-active and active, in our branch. I remember back home how much I loved having the missionaries over to my home and I'm so grateful to feel that same loving welcome whenever we visit our members!  Greek 101 for the week! Φιλάκια (fí-lak-ía),  directly means "kisses". Basically everyone says it  when saying bye to someone. But a very closely pronounced word, Φυλακή (fí-lak-í), means "prison" haha. It's funny how close some words are, but can be polar opposites 😂 Elder Cook was in Athens! He held a special meeting with the missionaries in our mission! It was so cool, an actual apostle of the Lord giv...

Γειααα σε όλους!! *Heyyy everybody!!* We had kinda a crazy week because we went back to Athens for Zone Conference! But besides that it was pretty much normal. Busy busy as always 😉 We got to meet with Μιλένα (Milena) with the Elders again! She loves loves LOVES the missionaries like her own kids! 😇 She also always asks about the members in our branch here, she is so cute. We prepare our lessons in Greek but then she reads everything in Russian because she understands that better, it's so cool! She's a recent convert so we still visit with her as often as her job allows us to. She invited Sister Merkel and I back over the same night to have dinner with her because she wanted to make us a Russian meal, it was different for sure but also really good! 😋 More and more BYU students keep showing up everywhere I swear! Nobody EVER recognizes the missionaries here so when we hear a group yelling, "MISSIONARIES! MISSIONARIES! MISSIONARIES!", and turn around to a...