Our New Home — Henk Jan & Allison noindex

Dear Friends and Family,

Warm greetings from Athens, Greece! We are excited to send our first newsletter from our new home. We are thankful for all God's provision and the ways we are getting plugged in to the ministry here, and hope you enjoy this glimpse of what our life is like. 

 
 

 

Thank you again for all your prayers and support that helped us get here at the perfect time!

The timing of our move to Athens couldn't have been more perfect! As you saw in our previous email, the extra time in the Netherlands allowed us to make some important visits before we left. We also arrived just in time for our team planning retreat! We are so thankful to have been a part of the meetings that took place with all the long term staff to discuss the past year, the next year, hopes, ideas, and challenges. As the weeks have gone by, we've been able to understand more and more of what was discussed and feel that it was invaluable to be there and to be on the same page as the rest of the team.

 

During the free afternoon Henk led some of the team on a hike in the mountains nearby the retreat location. It was a great way to get to know our team before jumping into the busy weekly schedule.

Learn With Us:

Allie took some time to do reading research by the sea: 
 "In the Land of Blue Burqas" by Kate McCord


Residence Permit Update

You may recall from our previous newsletter that I, Allie, needed to successfully apply for a residence permit by November. Well, a whole epic could be written of the valiant efforts and determination of Henk to get himself registered and collect the required paperwork for me as his spouse. We are now well acquainted with the deep mazes of Greek bureaucracy. With no small amount of waiting in line, running back and forth between government offices, ignoring contradicting answers from officials and a bit of stubbornness, Praise God I have a temporary permit for this next year! Soon we should get this converted to a 5 year spouse residence permit! 

 

Moving in - Our first home of our own!


 

I'm sitting here writing from our new home on our new couch! Our couch arrived a week or so ago and is probably the reason this newsletter is finally happening. It is amazing what a comfy place to sit can do to make a space feel homey!

Pray for us as we hunt for an apartment this next month!
We are specifically praying for space for hospitality, space for Allie to do some artwork, and something natural .... we are not so used to living in a city, we are nature people. Whether it is simply natural light, a tree outside, or something grander, something natural nearby would be nice :)

Do you remember our prayer request for our apartment hunt......  >>>

...... well, while our temporary place felt a little like the box that came with scissors (mostly because we couldn't figure out how to roll up the giant awning, and the buildings across the street were quite close).  Our new place is quite the opposite!

But first let me tell you a little bit about what hunting for an apartment is like in Athens.... 
 

Part of it is a bit like a giant scavenger hunt: Pick a neighborhood, any neighborhood...
...perhaps the one with the nice cat!

 

 Then, hunt for all the yellow stickers in the city!

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Next try to figure out what it means!

Thankfully the handwriting on this particular sticker is pretty neat.

Does it have the price? address? square meters? AND a phone number? Ding Ding ding Ding! Jackpot!  

Unfortunately the majority of the stickers we found were for studio size apartments (very very small) and/or didn't have good information.

The other method is to search online, call up many real estate agents and hope they call you back sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Amazingly we found one apartment online that didn't have a real estate agent but a phone number, a lower than average price and a vague photo of a sunset.....
 - Sure why not, add it to the list -      
First phone call we got, from a Greek number, Henk picks up and the lady on the other side starts speaking Dutch!
Well with no other call backs we jumped on it and visited the apartment. We were immediately amazed by the view and the space, and enjoyed getting to know the landlords. 
However, this being our first time apartment hunting ever, and it not being right next to the metro or some of our friends, we thought we should probably keep looking, right

A couple weeks and some failed (sometimes sketchy) apartment visits later we decided to go for the place that landed in our lap!
Our new landlords were happy to have us, and gave us an even more generous price for the partially furnished apartment. As the weeks go by we are increasingly thankful we didn't have to start furnishing the apartment totally from scratch! It has saved us time, effort, and money. 

 

Mailing Address:
Henk Oosterhuis
Dodekanisou 28
16342 Ilioupoli
Attica
Greece

 

 

 

So about that prayer request....

✔ Space for hospitality -  we have a living room with a beautiful, refreshing view and a guest room - it's purple! (yep purple, it came that way, we are embracing it :)
✔ Space for an art studio - YES! a whole room for it! (as soon as we finish unpacking) 

✔ Something natural - ✔✔✔  "natural light" - sometimes I feel like we live in a blimp, it is even bright when it is cloudy! Wonderful! (We'll see how that goes in the middle of the hot summer...) "a tree outside" - below our apartment there's an olive tree, a lemon tree, an almond tree, a fig tree, and the road is lined with orange trees (we discovered it is common to have your own fruit trees in Athens)  "something grander" - the apartment is at the base of a mountain and so even though we are only on the 2nd floor (3rd floor USA), out of our living room sliding door we have a beautiful view of the city, sunset and sea. 

Another prayer request sent out in our prayer email is that we would find a place with fresh air. At our temporary apartment we were discovering the effects the air quality and cigarette smoke from neighbors had on Allie's asthma. The air is definitely better at our new apartment.

We are so thankful to God for this provision and blessing!

It is so refreshing to come home to a bright, comfortable place after a day at work inside the Refugee center in the middle of Athens.

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Before

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After

When you see this type of collection of images, click to enlarge the photos and view the captions:

The panorama from our roof!

 

At the Center

- Clothing Give Away Days - Family Meals - Kids Programs -  Nursery - Adult Programs -

Henk has started an  "English Corner" on the Tea House days for men and women to practice basic English and focus on their pronunciation.

 

WOMEN'S DAY

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Picnic in the Park!

Women (and kids) Only ;)

 

Craft Time!


 

Learn With Us:

I (Henk) recently read the book “Seeking Allah, finding Jesus” by Nabeel Qureshi. Here is a quote from the book relevant to anyone in Western countries seeking to connect with Muslim friends. It challenged me (and I hope it challenges you!) to try to overcome the barriers of cultural confusion and to understand and share life and faith with them. 

“For the most part, eastern teachers have taught the Muslims that the West is Christian, that its culture is promiscuous, and that the people oppose Islam. So the average Muslim immigrant expects people in the West to be promiscuous Christians and enemies of Islam.
“When they come to America, their cultural differences and preconceptions often cause them to remain isolated from Westerners. Like [my mom], many develop relationships only with other expatriates from their country, so their perspectives are never corrected. What is worse, some Muslims do receive poor treatment from Westerners and Christians, and this only serves to bolster their notions that all Westerners and Christians are the same way.
“On the rare occasion that someone does invite a Muslim to his or her home, difference in culture and hospitality may make the Muslim feel uncomfortable, and the host must be willing to ask, learn and adapt to overcome this. There are simply too many barriers for Muslim immigrants to understand Christians and the West by sheer circumstance. Only the exceptional blend of love, humility, hospitality, and persistence can overcome these barriers, and not enough people make the effort.” (p. 80)

Learn some Farsi/Persian greetings:

Farsi Lesson 01- QUIZcast
Chai and Conversation
 

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Praise and Prayer


 

This week we will have 4 Christmas Parties! We will share more about it next time. Praise God for the opportunity to share what Christmas is about with our friends, and pray for meaningful conversations and for God to touch people with his love. 
 

  •  Praise that we’ve felt welcomed into the team and see a lot of opportunities to find our ‘niche’ in the ministry
  •  Praise for our new apartment and for kind landlords, and pray that we would settle here quickly and that it would be a place that God can use to bring a blessing to others
  • Praise that Allie’s visa was approved
  • Pray that God would show us how we can best use our time and energy, and for wisdom with developing our ideas – Allie with art & crafts, Henk with teaching English
  • Pray for several men who have shown deep interest and hunger for God’s word. Henk has started a "discovery Bible study" with one of them.
  • Pray that we would find a good way to start more intensive language study soon.

If you've been eagerly waiting for this update and would like to have more frequent personal and ministry related prayer request updates consider signing up for our prayer e-mail: (Click the black button to do so)

 

 

Blessings, 

Allie and Henk

 

Our US number (815-517-5807) will soon be canceled. We can still be reached on Whatsapp. Allie's is still connected on whatsapp with her old US number for the moment

Henk's whatsapp is +31638310233.

We are also happy to skype with anyone who would like to. Henk's skype ID is henkjjo. 

A note about what we can and cannot share: We are still figuring out the balance between safety, privacy, and sharing our life with you. Names and photos from work may be changed and pictures may not always match the stories. Our newsletter is not indexed and should only be accessible from the direct link. The link URL may change occasionally, see the links in the most recent newsletter email for the current link to the newsletters. For the safety of the people we serve please be careful who you share the newsletter with. If you know someone who'd like receive our newsletter send them to our sign-up page or email us directly. 

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