Έλλαδα!!!!!(Greece!!!)

Mars Hill

Hey Everyone,

Holy cow what a crazy time it has been. We left the MTC at 4 a.m. on Tuesday morning to head to the Manchester airport. We were scheduled to get to Greece around 3 in the afternoon.  But our flight was delayed an hour out of Manchester and that then caused us to show up right as they closed the gates for our connecting flight to Greece out of London. So we were then stuck in the London airport for 5 hours until we could get to Greece.

We got to Greece around 8 o'clock at night and from there we drove to the mission home to stay for the night. That night we got our first gyros and they were really good. We got up the next morning and headed out for Mars hill. At Mars hill President had us all bear our testimony in Greek. There were some missionaries that were leaving on Thursday that also bore their testimony and holy cow I have a long way to go with my Greek. Then we went to the church building and had some training, and I got my new companion. Then Me and my new companion, Elder Goodwin, headed home to Ahgios Dimitrios which is the area in the heart of Athens which is crazy. That night we did some studying and a little shopping to get us through the rest of the week.

First Whiteboard

Thursday, my first full day in the mission! We had studies in the morning and then in the Afternoon we were going to visit a member named Manolis. It was interesting, his Greek is really hard to understand for everyone. So for me I understood nothing that he said but the lesson went well and I bore a little testimony, and feel it went pretty well. That night we went and did a whiteboard. We wrote the question "Does something exist after death?" and we would ask people for answers. It was good but we had no success with getting contacts which was sad but we tried so that's all that matters. 

Mars Hill with my area behind me

Friday again was studies in the Morning and then we had a Zone training in the afternoon where we talked about how to find people. Which was good because we have to get creative now with how we do our finding. Then that night we went with the sisters from our area and did some basketball finding. We finally had success my companion Elder Goodwin has a broken toe so he sat on the side. He made a friend with whom we have a meeting on Friday and I made three new friends with whom we are going to play ball with again on Friday. So we count that as some success which is awesome.

Parthenon With Elder Goodwin

Saturday, we didn't do much. We made some cookies to give to our neighbors because President wants us to know all of our neighbors by name. We had good success. We met Sophia and then Vasili.  Vasili is about 65 and he is very Greek but he let us in and we had some juice and just talked for a little about life. He said we should come back sometime so hopefully this can go somewhere. He also offered us some cigarettes. Ha ha the first time in my life I have been offered a smoke was on my mission. I thought that was pretty funny. On this night the assistants came and slept over at our house because they were out with an investigator late and would have gotten home at 10:30. So they came to our house around 9 to stay for the night. It was really fun they were cool guys, their names are Elder Viner and Elder Menis from England and Italy. That was fun to get to know them.

Parthenon With President and Sister Heder

Parthenon with APs and Elder Goodwin

Sunday, In the morning we went to church. It was good. I am assigned to the Greek branch which is interesting but it went good. Sacrament meeting was first and then Priesthood. In between Sunday School and Preisthood meeting we got pulled into a relief society meeting between the Greek and English branch so that we could translate. It was so weird and the ladies were pretty harsh to each other. After that we went to the Parthenon which was so cool. So the story is that it was free Saturday and Sunday. We got a call on Saturday from the APs that said if you want to go to  the Parthenon on either of those days for an hour you can. So we went with the APs to the Parthenon on Sunday. The funny thing is while we were there president called us and asked where are you guys? We told him, then we talked for a minute. Then he said look up. We looked up from the bottom of the acropolis and saw President waving at us. He was there which was cool so we got a picture with president at the Parthenon which is pretty cool and has never happened before.

Sorry this email is so long but a lot of stuff happened this week. I will leave you with a spiritual thought from the week, I have found that throughout 2 Nephi in the Isaiah chapters there is a recurring statement "his hand is stretched out still". That is a really cool promise that we have been given in life that it doesn't matter what happens we can still repent and the Savior will bring us back into his loving arms.

Love,

Elder Halverson