Sunday (6/21) - On the Move to Meteora

I'll make this quick, because I want to go to bed. Today we said our final farewell to the Olympus Bay Resort and headed north to Katerini for church at one of the very rare Greek evangelical churches.



We've been learning about the evangelical church in Greece; it's not very large and it's been frequently persecuted by the dominant Greek Orthodox Church--not violently necessarily, but I'm told that they've been systematically marginalized and/or legally pressured. Thus, the Greek evangelical community is often pretty excited when other Evangelicals from elsewhere come to visit and share relational community together. Here we see Dr. Perrin addressing the congregation and explaining who our group was.



We sat together and were given little wireless headsets connected to a translator back in the sound booth so that we could kind of follow along with the speakers and sermon. Of course, the translation was more of a summary, because after the speaker would talk for like 20 seconds, we'd hear three or four words, so perhaps we got the Cliff Notes version. :-) There was a guest speaker who spoke on the topic of fear and not letting fear keep us captive to its lies, for God has called us to freedom. It was a good reminder for all of us.

After the service, many of the younger Greek ladies talked to our girls and there was some swapping of email addresses. We then walked a short ways to a restaurant in the city where we packed in tight and ate wonderful plates of Greek meats and yummy salad for lunch. Finally we boarded the bus and then headed off to Kalambaka and the region of Meteora. This is the second largest community of Orthodox monasteries in the whole country, and we've been told that they are perched up on top of soaring cliffs! Can't wait.

Shortly before we hit Kalambaka, our stopping place for the night, we stopped at a genuine Orthodox icon factory. For those who don't really understand Orthodox icons, read this. It was pretty neat to see all the icons there in the shop with one of the painters there on-site creating one in front of us.



We learned about the full manufacturing process, and then we perused the icons there for sale. It was a fun challenge to try to read the highly-abbreviated Greek inscriptions on some of them, and I was successful in my own search for a good icon of that truly great hero of the faith: St. Mark. :-)

As we approached Kalambaka, we saw the mountains loom in the distance and the rocks of Meteora just on the edge of town. After finding our hotel rooms, many of us went for a leisurely walk around town to see what we could see. It was a wonderful night, cool temps and cooler breezes, and since it was a relatively small town there was only one main street and all the cafes were full of people just sitting there peacefully. It was a great experience. And look at our view! Up there is where we will visit tomorrow.



On our way back to the hotel, we passed by this one fast-food kind of place that had a few funny items on their bilingual menu. It was very spesial.



Tomorrow: Cliff-top monasteries and our journey to Athens!