Oh by the way I thought you guys might be interested to know that there was an article written about us by the Associated Press during our time in China. Some of our team met journalists and were interviewed by them.

This is the article for those who are interested in reading it:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ja-R0Ux5dua90x8bStw8LCQsUC9QD92MQP580

Well our vacation is drawing to an end; we are leaving within the next 3 hours to go back to Bangkok. It is sad but at the same time exciting. This time has been greatly needed for all of us and it has served our tired bodies well. Now I am ready to go back and tackle what the Lord has for me back home, back in reality. So many times when I’ve looked out at the see with the white sand and amazing view and it’s just seemed like we’ve been on a movie set getting ready to film and desert island scene. This just doesn’t seem real. The Lord’s creation just never ceases to amaze me.

We’ve also done a bit of sightseeing while we’ve been here. We went to Maya Bay (where the movie The Beach was filmed) that was pretty cool, and an actual movie set LOL. We also went to a bay called Monkey Bay where we saw wild monkeys and fed them watermelon – now that was probably my highlight. They were so absolutely cute and cuddly the only problem with them was that if we got too close they could potentially bite and give us rabies – well I don’t think so! One of them though, took my hand a couple of times and wanted to jump onto my lap. We also swam at a point called Shark Point where apparently sharks show up although, sadly, we didn’t see any. We saw a plethora of fish though and as the crewmembers of the boat fed them rice in our vicinity we were able to gaze at them and their multitude of colors. Like I’ve said it’s been a wonderful time, but now it is time to go back home and get back into life.

Good bye Phi Phi island, thanks for everything! I'll definitely see you again.

Hey guys!

I’m in Phi Phi island and it’s absolutely fantastic! The scenery here is amazing, the weather is good and the company is great; making for a great vacation. I don’t even know if I can describe what we see here every day. The sea is a turquoise blue with sand as white as it is soft. There are islands all around us, reminding me a bit of the Cyclades, with such thick foliages that it makes one think of patches of jungle. The food here is so amazing that you just don’t want to stop eating – I’ve experienced that a couple of times, you just don’t want to leave that last piece of meat on your plate for fear that you will regret it later on in life. On every street corner there are places to get the most amazing Thai massages you could think of while looking out at the sunset. Have I described paradise yet? Because if I haven’t this is what it truly feels like – paradise on earth. As we are swimming we just keep thanking the Lord for this most amazing treat. It feels like the Lord is looking down on us smiling and saying “Enjoy my children” It just feels so good to have nothing to do and not to feel guilty about lying around doing absolutely nothing but sleeping, eating, reading and swimming. We’re on our second day and I can’t wait for the next 5!

Well guys, here I am in Phuket on holiday. These past few days, weeks actually, have been absolutely amazing. I've been to the middle of the Himalayas, where I stayed in a small, and I mean small, village called Haba; I've stayed in a place at an altitude of 3700m - higher than the highest mountain in Greece (Mount Olympus); I've been to Beijing; I've spent countless hours traveling (hours to be disclosed at a later time when I've figured that out); and through all of that the Lord has blessed me and my team incredibly. Throughout the next few days, as I'm slowly processing things, I plan on writing a little bit every day telling you guys about my amazing adventure in Asia, one that is not over as I am still in Thailand. For right now I just wanted to let you know that, yes I am still alive, yes I am well, and yes I'm back in civilization - not that Beijing isn't civilized but you know what I mean. Like I said at the beginning, I'm in Phuket on my way to Phi Phi island, yes it is pronounced Pi Pi, for an incredible vacation on the beach. It truly feels like a reward from the Lord and I can't wait to just sleep and see amazing sights in a gorgeous place.

Thank you for all your prayers.
Blessings

My journey to Asia started uneventfully by me loosing my passport. I got home after my last yet long night from the office to not knowing where my passport was. Umm, considering the fact that I was leaving within 24 hours the panic was minimal. I searched my house in every crook and cranny, wherever I thought it could be, praying fervently but not finding it. Out of sheer fatigue, since it was 4 in the morning, I resolved to go to bed, having a sneaking suspicion that the darn thing might be at the office. The next morning at 9, as I woke up 2 hours later than I had planned, I called the office and sure enough, Jenny our secretary, found it in one of my folders. Praise the Lord! Now all I needed to do within the next 3 ½ hours was pack for a month, shower, exchange Euros into Baht and RMB, buy small gifts for the Chinese, buy some personal necessities AND get my passport from the office (a journey that usually takes an hour each way) – no sweat! Let’s just say that it was a lot of running around but by God’s grace, and lack of traffic on the roads, I managed!
The rest of the trip was really relaxing. Sarah, Debbie, Noel and I, got to the airport in good time, we had a good and healthy lunch at McDonalds and were on our way. The airplane was really nice. It was a 9 hour flight that went by really fast as we each had our own personal screen. I watched like 3 movies and had a grand time :o) We arrived in Bangkok and boarded our next airplane within the hour. I love Bangkok International Airport. It’s huge, and I mean HUGE, we walked a good 20 min to our connecting flight. The second ride was shorter but equally as sweet as I slept through the entire thing! I fell asleep before takeoff and slept all the way through till about 15 min before landing. Then all of a sudden we were in Chiang Mai. It’s so weird, you board a big, white contraption, you sit still for 9 hours, watch a few movies and all of a sudden you’re in a new country with new sights & sounds and definitely new smells. I love Thailand with its lush vegetation and exotic foods.
I’ve just come back from a wonderful day that has just felt like a reward for all the work this summer. I have just spent a day riding elephants and a bamboo raft down a river. I absolutely loved it. As we were riding the elephants I was just gazing at the jungle, listening to its sounds mingled with the clinging of the equipment on the elephants and people’s laughter in the background. What made it even more interesting was that it rained the entire time, resulting in us fighting gravity, trying to stay on the elephant and not land under it, as our seats were so slippery! LOL It must have been a funny sight seeing so many white people on elephants, pulling strange faces trying to keep from falling. It was amazing, though, sitting on the back of such a big animal walking in between the trees surrounded by God’s serene creation. What an experience.
The second thing we did today was bamboo rafting down a river. That was probably my highlight. We spent 45 min on a raft constituting of, probably around 10 big thick bamboo shoots, floating down a river. It was awesome. As we slid down the river my thoughts went to ‘The Jungle book’ when Mogli was floating down the river on Baloo’s stomach right before the monkeys came and took him, lol! We were 4 people on my raft, the driver, a couple from South Africans and myself. We stood the entire way, ducking for branches dangling over the water, trying to stay balanced on the raft as our driver tried to make us fall overboard, while having a water fight with him. Like I said we had a blast! We ended the night by going to Chiang Mai’s night market where we had another amazing meal constituting of curry rice with cashew and pineapple, pork with greens and rice and then sticky rice and mango for a desert. My stomach is very satisfied and happy right now.

Oh, I’ve got to share one major praise before I end this. I was leaving on Thursday mid-afternoon for Asia, on Wednesday morning I still had no idea how I was going to finance my time there. I had bought my tickets, with some money on my credit card but had still to pay my participation fee and have some kind of spending money. Well, I’m not going to go into all the details but by the end of the day I had paid my fee, given money I had promised to other people and had loads more money to spend and use during my time in Thailand and China! Praise the Lord Jehovah Jirah, our Provider, He did it again. Why do we ever worry about finances? The Lord promises that as we seek Him first, as we put Him in the driver’s seat, He will provide for all that we need. It is a promise I have clung to during my last 4 years in Greece yet it never ceases to amaze and stress me out at the same time. One night, as I was sitting out on the barge at Proto Astro worrying about how I was going to pay for all of this, the Lord rebuked me and basically told me that I didn’t trust Him. That was painful to realize. I’ve been living by faith for the past 4 years, I’ve seen Him provide for me time and time again yet I still worry about this. Why are we so fickle? Am I just like the Israelites who, after witnessing and living through all of the miracles the Lord did, turned right back to their old ways again? I’ve seen Him provide for me, I’ve never gone hungry, I have everything I need and then some how I still worry about what I’m going to eat, what I’m going to ware and where I’m going to sleep. Why can’t we just let go of our fleshly nature of doubt and desire of relying on oneself instead of the Lord?
I just want to leave you with this quote that’s helped me more than any other quote I’ve ever heard:

    If you’re worrying you’re not trusting and if you’re trusting, you’re not worrying

I don’t know when I’ll be able to write again but until next time,
Blessings

Hi everybody!

I've started a new webpage! Please go there to see what I've been up to and more recent news:    www.totaxidi.org

Hey you guys

I just realized that it's been about a month since I've written anything! So I though to myself it's about time that I did so. So here I am writing. Well it's been kind of busy these past few days. I commonly leave the house at around 8:30 or 9:00 to come home at around 22:00-02:00! So needless to say I have had no time or energy to write anything. If anybody is waiting for me to write to them I'm sorry I haven't, I just haven't been able too. So what's been taking up all my time? Well in short ministry and fellowship oh and finances. Since it's the end of the year we need to go through our books to make sure everything is in order and since I'm one of the people in the finance department this has now become my priority. This priority has been accentuated by the fact that my Christmas vacation depends on it. It will start only when the finances are done. I wouldn't mind that so much if I wee spending Christmas in Greece but well I'm not! I leave on the 18^th to go to France. So please pray with me that everything will get done by that date so I can actually leave on time! I am spending Christmas with my family!!! Which I am really excited about! The only thing shadowing my joy is that my dad will not be joining us. But Shirley, my sister, will be there all the way from Denmark and da dada dah! My mom. It's the first time that I'll be spending Christmas with mom, Shirley AND my grandparents since I was 6 or 7 years old! So you can imagine how exciting all this is oooh and the best part is that my mom and I are meeting up in London to then travel together to Marseille and spending 3 days there together, just the two of us It's going to be a good time of catching up and getting to see a city, that is new to me, but that my mom partially grew up in. 

Anyway you guys I have got to go but know that I am thinking about most of you and I hope to be able to write to you soon. I really want to find a day where I can just sit down and write e-mails and not only that I want to send out my December newsletter! Hey if anybody wants to receive my newsletter and isn't e-mail me your address and I'll send it to you :o) The only reason why you're not getting one is because I don't have your address.

Anyway I hope to be able to sit down again soon and write about my trip to Scandinavia.

Blessings,

Hey guys

Well I'm back in Greece after two weeks and a half traveling around in Skandinavia. I went to Finland for the anual Skippers' Conference, then on to Sweden for a visit to the Shalom ministry - which is another mission boat, and then finaly I took some time off (my long awaited summer vacation), 10 days to be more exact where I just relaxed with Shirley, my sister, in Denmark. So yes I did 3 of the 6 nordic countries in two weeks - it felt like I was 16 again interrailing with some of my very good friends, Colleen and Per amongst others. Anyway I'm going to tell you all about my trip when I have more time.

Anyway what I really wanted to tell you guys about was that last Sunday my pastor, Steve Duton, started off his sermon in a rather interesting way. He gave an illustration that I thought was quite shocking actually. His sermon was on integrity and gave this example to jumpstart it:

Now would you really like to work for a company where those people would be your co-workers? That's 373 of 600 of your co-workers, or 62%, would be part of those affore mentioned, probably not right? Well what if I told you that this company actually exists and those are actual facts and numbers about the employees there? Shocking isn't it? What's even more shocking is the name of that company....can you guess it? Well it's the United States Congress!!! One of the most influencial countries, if not the most influencial country of the world has 62% of its leaders with such characters! I find that actually really scary! Forget fraud and bad credit but spousal abuse, assault, drugs, SHOPLIFTING (don't these people have money?!!), and drunk driving!!! These are not exactly upstanding citizens. I think that this gives us all something to think about. People I think that we all need to get on our hands and feet in prayer for our governments! Now this is the US government, but who are we kidding, other governments are no better! I bet we have just as much corruption in the French, English, German etc. governments. What would happen if we started praying for our governments? For our leaders? I want to believe that we would see changes.

I have a question to all the leaders out there - How can you expect your people to be upstanding and follow the law when you don't even do it? Set examples for everybody and the world might actually become a better place.

Someone once said - if you want to change the world start in your own backyard. Well that's what we need to do! Let's clean up our governments, our leaders, our nations, if everybody would clean up in their own houses there would be no need for others to do it!

Anyway I just really wanted to say this. I was really surprised and really shocked as well as sad when I heard this. Let's think about this people and let's think about ways we can change and clean our backyard.

God bless

A lot has happened in my life lately that has made me examine it and I haven't seen passion in it. Then Mr. Costas passed away and it got me thinking even further – if I die tomorrow will I die without regrets? So I started praying to the Lord for passion, a passion that I used to have but didn't have any longer. All this happened during the time I was at Skippers' Conference in Finland. I saw so much passion in the other skippers and their crew but didn't see it in me. So I started thinking – what is a passionate life? What is it to "live with passion" and then I came to realize "mediocracy is passion free" To live a mediocre life is to live a life without passion. So from now on I want to try to live above mediocracy I want to live on purpose. Yesterday I saw a movie called "A Love Song To Bobby Long" it's a really good movie – on of the best I've seen in a long time. It's not good in the sense that it's an action movie or a cute love story but it shows three characters that have hit rock bottom. Two middle aged alcoholics and a young eighteen-year-old and how they start helping each other. They start giving each other purposes. The girl, Purslane, gives them a reason to drink less and they get her back into school. It's a very crude movie but it's excellent if you watch it with the purpose of seeing lives being changed. It makes you think that if two alcoholics and an eighteen-year-old dropout can do so much for each other what can we, as Christians, do for each other and others? If everyone in the world would start caring for one another what kind of a place would this world be? I believe it would be a better place. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 says that we might have faith, be prophets, be wise, speak in tongues but if we don't have love then we are nothing. The chapter ends with "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." And then in Matthew 5:46-47 Jesus tells us "If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?" We are not only to love those who love us but those who don't love us and those who are hard to love. It's hard to love an alcoholic but an alcoholic is a broken man or woman in need of love and healing. It's hard to love someone who has wronged us but we need to do it anyway because if we don't then we are no better then that person – Jesus said "love thy enemy" Love is not easy, it's hard but I think that the world has also forgotten that love is also a decision. Love is not fast, cheap and easy – the way the world makes it out to be. You decide to love someone the same way you decide to hate someone. It's easier to destroy than to build, in the same way, it's easier to hate than to love. I want to encourage everybody – love your neighbor no matter what he's done! Love is hard but it's worth it. Love is the only thing that can change this rotten world we live in, and God is that perfect love "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16. There is no greater love than the love of a person willing to die so that another might live and that is exactly what Jesus did for us. Not only did He die for us but realize that He died for us when we where, and still are, his enemies. Imagine the one person who has wronged you in your life – the worst person you know of and that has hurt you the most – then imagine that you had a choice, tomorrow he dies unless you take his place. And that is exactly what Jesus did for us! He chose to die for us, us the people who crucified Him, us who keep sinning – I don't think people realize that every lie we tell, every bad thought we have, every little thing we've stolen, every sin that we have ever committed is the reason the best man that has ever lived died! For He loved us so much that He stripped Himself of all His glory to be a poor carpenter that then died the most horrific death known to man because we lie, cheat, steal, murder, commit adultery. He loved and loves us! Live and love passionately! Do it on purpose! I want to end this entry with 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."

Amen!

On Wednesday the 18th of October Mr. Costas Macris, the founder of Hellenic Ministries, passed away. It was a sad and joyful day. It is sad for us who are left behind yet joyful since we know that he has left his body of suffering and entered into eternal peace with our Savior. He has run the race and now he has gained the crown of righteousness. This is a man that the Lord welcomed by a sentence that we all desire to hear "Well done good and faithful servant!" He was an example to all of us. He lived selflessly and humbly for the service of our Lord. His feet brought the gospel all around the world, from Irian Jaya to Greece and many have come to know the Lord through him. I think that Costas Macris is an example of how mightily the Lord can use one man that has dedicated himself totally to His service. It has been an honor and a pleasure to work and serve with a man such as Costas. Thank you Costas for all you have done for all of us and what an inspiration you have been to us all. We love you and we will miss you dearly my beloved brother.

If anyone of you would like to pay tribute to Costas Macris you can do so by clicking here. Also there are two funds that have been started to accomplish his two last desires; the first one is for the completion and publication of the 'Logos Zontanos' Bible in the modern Greek language and the second one is for a well at Porto Astro.

Also please pray for Alki Macris, Costas' widow, as she is now without her companion of 40 years. It's going to be a huge adjustment for her to make and probably a very difficult one. Praise the Lord thought that she has 6 wonderful children that are more than willing to take care of her.