Εβδομάδα 74: trek to Jerusalem

We are down to 9 days people! 9 days until I bid farewell to the most unpredictable, joy filled months of my life thus far. We've got a busy week ahead of us as we say our final goodbyes to our wonderful Thessaloniki members and go back to Athens for our last few days. 

2 noteworthy experiences for ya...

1) We ran into a guy from Canada this who is literally walking to Jerusalem! He says he has been called as a Pilgrim and is retracing the steps of Christ. He began his journey 6 months ago in France and is working his way down to the Holy land as God directs him. Even was out in the wild for exactly 40 days and testified to us of Christ carrying him through that intense period. He has learned through this experience the reality of our Savior's individual love for us. Cool thing is he met the missionaries in Spain and had a really good conversation as well as remembered the Joseph Smith Restoration movie. So he already recognized who we were and had a deep appreciation and respect for our purpose here. Unfortunately we had a lesson with a member and had to go but I had quickly called the elders, who were upstairs in the church apartment, to come and meet our friend (even though he said he didn't have time to talk). In the end the guy told us he actually did want to ask us a few questions add we were able to leave him to the elders who had just arrived. Good thing we followed that little prompting to call em down. They ended up having a really good conversation and even set a time for another meetup and lesson saying our Jerusalem friend was super cool! 

2) Now a fun less active hunt story. So we have this women named Lorena in our area book app, with her address as her only details. It's quite a ways out with the car but we felt very confident we were gonna find her! Take note I started my mission in this area and never have had contact with her nor has any missionary I have ever served with. Anyways we get to the address and find ourselves looking at this giganto metal gate (kinda like the ones you see on Disney castles haha) but its locked with no doorbell or nothing. This entire place is also surrounded with thick shrubbery and trees so we couldn't even peek in to see if there was even a home behind the gate. We walked up the street a bit to find a mini gate wide open and thought maybe this would connect us to the entrance of the giant gate. So we walk into this courtyard and try seeing if anyone is there but nobody is responding after a few minutes of us doing this. Then all if a sudden an older lady comes running out in her swimsuit shooing us away shouting, "ΈΞΩ! ΈΞΩ! ΈΞΩ!"aka GET OUT! We quickly ran out just in time for the gate to get slammed behind us. Oooops haha. We continued our walked up the street and ran into this nice old man who was visiting his in-laws. We asked if he happened to know a women named Lorena and to our surprise he did! He walked with us down to the giant locked gate and said that maybe if we shout someone will open it for us. No luck tho. Then another lady walking her dog came by and the man helping us asked if she knew if Lorena was there with Eva, her employer. The dog lady also happened to know them because she was also neighbors. She told us we'd have to go to the little gate to get in and walked with us back to where we just recently get slammed out. Then she starts yelling for Eva and Lorena telling them there are 3 cute girls that are wanting to say hi to Lorena. At this point we were just praying the angry swimsuit lady wasn't going to open the door to us haha. So it was a miracle was Lorena came! Just who we were looking for! Unfortunately we didn't have much more than a few minutes with her because she was working, but we managed to get her number so we could actually contact her! Later that night we gave her a call and she is just like any other Filipino we've met, just so kind and so sweet! We found out she has a 13 year old daughter who isn't a member yet and missionaries haven't been in contact with her for years! So we got really lucky today finding her, a miracle you could say. With her demanding work schedule I hope there'll be a time for us to meet with her soon.

Alright that's all I've got for y'all. Oh, and a quote. I have that for you too ;) 

I read "What Lack I Yet?" this week by Larry R. Lawrence. He says in his talk "If spiritual growth is not a priority in our lives, if we are not on a course of steady improvement, we will miss out on the important experiences that God wants to give us." 

How do we engage in spiritual growth?? By seeking for things to improve on! Elder Lawrence then quoted Harold B. Lee who said, "Every one of us, if we would reach perfection, must [at] one time ask ourselves this question, ‘What lack I yet?"

We receive direct, personal guidance when we, with true intent, ask the Lord to help us recognize what we lack and what changes we can make in our life to experience more spiritual growth. I am so grateful for his counsel. 

με πολλή εκτίμηση!!

Αδελφή Γκεϊλ 

PICS!

1-3 boat ridin

4 successful LA finding 

5-7 found a lil Greek church after service