Words from John Wesley

O why is it, that so great, so wise, so holy a God will use such an instrument as me! Lord, 'Let the dead bury their dead! But wilt thou send the dead to raise the dead?' Yea, thou sendest whom thou wilt send and showest mercy by whom thou wilt show mercy! Amen! Be it than according to they will. If thou speak the word, Judas shall cast out devils.
-John Wesley

Thessaloniki Sunset

I don't know if anybody still reads this, but I just got back from watching the sunset over the water in Thessaloniki. I thought people might enjoy some pictures. I fly home June 7th, so I'm trying to enjoy it while I can.

Pictures of My Apartment

View from outside my window. It's a bad picture because of the screen, but I was just trying to show that there's a turf field right outside my window.

You can kind of see the red track in this one.

Here's a picture from in my room. My bed is to the left.

My school desk

The other bed

Looking out the doorway from my room

The apartment is a hallway. That door at the end is the entrance. Ivan (my roommate's room) is right to the left, and the bathroom is to the right. The kitchen is straight behind me, and behind me to my left is my room.

My massive mirror that all the girls are jealous of

The bathroom

Bathroom sink

Looking down the hallway the other way, that is the entrance to the kitchen

In the kitchen

The kitchen table, and a cake, courtesy of awesome Balkan Grandparents

Our microwave and plug-in grill

Kitchen window

Other side of the kitchen

One side of Ivan's room

I realize this is about six weeks overdue, but better late then never I suppose... These are the pictures of the apartment where I live. I have a flatmate, but we each have our own room. You'll notice I have two beds in my room, that's because they put an extra one in for my brothers when they came to drop me off, and I asked them to leave it. I only have one picture of my flat mate's room so far, because he wanted to clean it more before I took pictures. He didn't know I was going to take pictures so his room is a little messy, but in his defense, my room was much more messy, I just cleaned it all right before I took the pictures. I'll post pictures of the rest of his room later. 

Pictures from Mount Olympus Hike

I climbed Mount Olympus last weekend, and it was a great experience. We hiked three hours the first day, and then spent the night at a refuge, part way up the mountain. The next day we hike about three more hours up to a plateau at the top. We spent some time at the top taking pictures and such, and then we climbed down after about two hours or so. It was around six hours to the bottom-so twelve hours of hiking in all.We were really blessed because it didn't rain. When one is 10,000 ft in the air, the weather is extremely unpredictable. Storms can come and go in a matter of minutes. Generally it is rainy on the way up so you have to walk six hours in a poncho, and then it will be foggy at the top. However, for us it was perfectly clear! So we had some great views at the top. I already posted some of these on facebook, but to those of you who don't have facebook here are the pictures-I've also included many more that I didn't put on facebook. Thank you all for your prayers! It's hard to find time to update this blog, but I'm trying to as much as I can so please be patient with me :) God is really blessing me by helping me to find friends that I can feel comfortable with, and who aren't raging partiers. So that is a huge answer to prayer. Thanks again for all your support!

At the bottom. We had a 30 minute drive to go part way, this is where we started hiking from.

This is the best water in all of Greece. Fresh mountain water.

Mules take the supplies up to the camps. Most of them don't have riders, they go by themselves.

Rest stop part way up.

The views got better and better with each turn of the trail

Almost above the cloud line

The fog was pretty intense at times, even though there wasn't rain

Fog

Then randomly, there was snow everywhere

It felt like Christmas. I switched to Christmas Carols on my IPod

Of course I made a snowman!

Base Camp

It looked beautiful after all the hiking

The mules beat us up. We got passed twice by them.

Base Camp

At the top. It cleared up the next day.

Inside the lodge

No shoes were allowed, everybody walked around in slippers. It was cold outside so we huddled around the campfire, drinking hot choclate and telling stories. The only thing missing was a card game, so we began to deal, and then one of us looked at the wall.

WHAT?!?!?! Apparently Gambling is illegal in Greece, so that means no Card games!?!?

LOTS of Feta, Feta Everywhere on everything

Group beds. It stretched the length of the room on both sides. About 20 per coed bed.

Above the Clouds :)

Cool Icicles

Camera mess up that turned out cool

Sunrise at 6:30

Looking down over the valley at Sunrise.

It took it a while, but the sun finally climbed over the mountain

The valley looking down from base camp

Where I watched from

The hiking Terrain

About 3/4ths of the way up

Looking back at our group

Trudging along...

The Valley at the top of the mountain

Climbing the hill where the second camp is

The Mythological Seat of Zeus

Camp #2 at the top.

We made it :)

They have really epic Lord of the Rings style fires on the mountain peaks. We didn't get to see one unfortunately, but we saw the remains of many.

At the top

Inside Camp #2

Looking down at the clouds creeping back over the mountain.

The Cloud line

One person decided to sleep outside...

Going back

Climbing down from Camp #2

Almost down, looking back again

12 hours of walking later, we made it!

We walked through the gate to the right, stepped on to the bus and then slept for the 90 minute ride home :)