September 21-23

Hello to you all! This is Erika Hufford writing in addition to Joseph Adams. Before I began, I will preface this blog by mentioning that Joseph has amazing attention to detail and can create blogs with a great memory. I will include all I can recall and my perspective at this point.

I first would like to share my perspective at this point of the trip! I am still (Day 8) overwhelmed by the public use of drugs, large diversity of the people here in Athens, and how dirty the city is. We have seen a few of the more authentic areas apart from the bad areas though. We can share most of the first-hand drug use evidence we have seen through our specific experiences. One important thing to note though is that we have not witnessed any violence. People seem to keep to themselves.

The other aspect of this area that breaks my heart is the large number of brothels in the city. For those of you not knowing what this means, they are basically a housing area with a white light out front distinguishing them from typical resident homes. These homes possess women who are prostitutes. There is one not far from us that almost every time we walk by, there is at least one man (or more) walking in or out. From talking with the full-time missionaries here, many of these females have been brought to Greece guaranteed to have other jobs (cleaning, food service, etc.). Once they arrived here, they were then deceived and can have a very difficult time leaving. It is so sad . . .

While working at the Athens Refugee Center (ARC) there are so many opportunities to serve there. There is work in the kitchen (washing dishes, serving tea, preparing food, etc.). There is also a childcare room to serve in. The children are so cute and precious. It can be difficult to communicate with them and the mothers because of the language barrier. It forces us to be creative and have the children write up name tags so we can at least call them by name. My heart’s desire has been to pray for these children and God’s protection of them due to all that they have seen and experienced already at such an impressionable age. There was one little boy named David (ironic huh?) that has really grown on me. He is about 2-3 years old with the biggest brown eyes and eyelashes! He has the cutest little smile. I walked into the childcare room the other day and he was sitting on a little seat with wheels. He had one shoe off on the floor next to him and plump tears falling down his cheeks. I walked up to him and he handed me his shoe to put on. I wiped his tears, patted his head and started pushing him around the little seat. He captured my heart and later ran up to me to pick him up and swing him around.

The guys left Friday morning for their men’s retreat. The women had some spare time that afternoon before preparing for family night began. We split up into 2 different groups. One of the groups headed out to find a place to purchase a birthday cake and gifts for Jean Young’s birthday (Saturday). The other 2 of us went with Jean to get her away while all this went on so she would be surprised. We met back at the house around 3:00 p.m. Friday afternoon for a quick refresh and change of clothes. We then all headed together to the ARC to prepare for family night. Upon arriving, we met Kate, another full-time missionary here that had been gone with her husband Illir on vacation the first part of our trip here.

We began preparing dinner for the family night that evening. We made falafel. It is made from chickpeas. Those pieces were wrapped with tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, tsatziki, and then put it in a large pita. We prepared about 60 of them, packed them up, and prepared apples to take also. Around 5:30 p.m. some of the women and children gathered at the ARC and all of us walked to a park together. It was a group totaling approximately 30 people. We had our first social interaction at that time with a man who was affected by drugs. He approached a few people towards the front of the group. As they tried to ignore him, tell him to leave us alone, and go, he continued to persist. We came to an area close by where there were some Greek police standing talking with some young men. One of the women tried to get their attention but the police seemed too distracted to pay any attention. Finally we reached the metro area where there were stairs to take us down to the metro ticketing and loading area. We lost him at that point. I was toward the middle-back of the group and did not interact with him. A few of the women were flustered though as he was unpredictable in his behavior.

After getting everyone on the metro, we went a few stops, got off the metro, and walked a little further to the park. We were there for about 45 minutes to an hour playing with the moms, talking with one another, etc. There were many mothers there that did not speak English, so it made conversing with some of them difficult. Soon before the park closed, we distributed the prepared food, apples, and cups of water to the women and children. There was little time left before we were asked to leave with the park closing. We all headed out together and went our separate ways. Our group of ladies stopped for ice cream on the way back. Upon returning to the guest house we soaked our feet while doing our Bible Study. Four of us are part of the Women’s Bible Study back home at Southside Fellowship. We took some time and discussed that together to stay somewhat connected with missing 2-3 weeks of the group study there.

Saturday morning we got ready, had breakfast, and then headed to the ARC by 9:30 a.m. It was a Tea House day, so we started first off by preparing the food sacks to be distributed. They contained a large piece of pita bread, some olives, banana peppers, a hard-boiled egg, and tomato. We then all gathered shortly before opening the Tea House to pray for the day together. We took assignments for the day. I worked in the kitchen this time serving tea with another young missionary named Sara. She is from Colorado and is here serving for another year. We had 2 phrases to ask in Greek asking the people if they wanted tea with a lot of sugar or little sugar. I served there for 3 hours and had to look up at the sign for about half of the time. I would get into a groove for a short period and then step away to help somewhere for 5 minutes. I would forget the Greek that quickly. My favorite was when I would ask the person in Greek and they would say “huh”…I would then continue by saying “a lot of sugar or a little sugar”…they would then say “ohhhh yes…I will take…”

We wrapped up serving around 2:30 p.m. and cleaned up until 3:00 p.m. Afterwards the women split up into 2 different groups again. Two of the women went back to the guest house and other 3 of us went to the bakery to pick up Jean’s birthday cake. A few of us worked on cleaning out the expired drugs for awhile until the men returned from the retreat. That evening most of us went out for dinner together to debrief what experiences we had during the time apart. We watched a missions video that evening, and then called it a night.

-Erika