Dear Friends and Family,
Although it's been a few weeks, Happy Easter from Greece! We enjoyed a few days out of town and got to experience a truly Greek Easter celebration. As always, we have plenty of stories to share with you and it's hard to choose!
Greek Easter
One of Allie's friends at the center tries out the Greek tradition of cracking each other's eggs with her brother.
Easter is the most important holiday in the Greek Orthodox year and is celebrated everywhere. People leave Athens and travel to their home village or take a holiday somewhere. On Good Friday, locals gather to decorate a bier with flowers, representing the grave of Christ. At the sound of the church bells the community gathers at the church for the liturgy sung in Ancient Greek. At the end of the service, rose petals shower from above onto the people and the bier and then everyone follows the priest out of the church for a candlelight procession through the candle and bonfire lit streets of the village.
On Saturday night, a midnight service is held in the church. All lights are turned off, symbolizing Jesus' descent into death. At exactly midnight, a small light begins to shine from behind the altar. The priest emerges from the altar door with a candle. The singing starts off quietly and gradually crescendos as the priest transfers the candlelight to the people in the church. As the fire is passed around, slowly the church is lit up by hundreds of candles, and the sound of the resurrection chorus swells all around. At the same time, fireworks start exploding outside while church bells ring obsessively. At the culmination of the service people begin drifting home with their candle to mark a cross above their door, just as the Israelites marked their door frames with the blood of a lamb. Then it is time to break the 40 day fast for lent, by eating a soup with sheep liver. The next day, Easter Sunday, it is time for a real feast with lamb roasted on the spit. Another traditional Easter food is "Tsouraki", a woven bread with a hard boiled egg dyed red in the middle. The bread represents the body of Christ, broken for us, while the egg stands for Jesus' blood shed for us, and at the same time symbolizes the new life that we receive through Jesus' death.
click the photo to enlarge:
Since Greek families often come together for Easter, it is also an occasion to lay aside previous grievances within families and make peace together. What a beautiful image of how God reconciles us to him through giving his Son! God is in the business of restoring people and relationships, both to each other and to Him. Through our work at Helping Hands, we're privileged to hear and experience some amazing stories of reconciliation. One of these is Fardin's story.
“Fardin is an amazing Iranian guy who has been our most faithful volunteer for the past two years. He had to flee his homeland after the secret police found out he had visited a church for the first time. In Greece, he found faith in Christ, and he has had his share of persecution for that decision. While staying in a refugee camp, other refugees learned about his new faith (and saw the Christmas tree outside his tent) and came and beat him up, hospitalizing him.
Later he was surrounded by a group of Afghan men near Helping Hands led by a man named Ali, who told him he needed to come do his Muslim prayers. Fardin said he does not do that anymore since he’s found new faith, and the men threatened to kill him. Fortunately other people came and broke it up. A few months later one of Ali’s family members was in need of help, but Ali was unable to do anything, and he felt ashamed. Our staff was able to intervene and help Ali. The next day Ali told our team member: “You covered my shame by allowing me to be involved and you restored my honor. I will never forget this.”
Some time later Fardin was leaving our center, when suddenly he heard Ali shouting at him to come over to him. Fardin’s stomach dropped and he wondered if he was going to get beaten again, and asked God why he let this happen. But then Ali threw his arms around him and said, “We are brothers now! I believe, and I love Jesus!” Fardin just stood there with his mouth open, shocked. Ali said, “Why do you look so surprised? God is big! I believe!” ”
We had several special Easter programs at Helping Hands. The same Farsi-speaking believers who organized a Nativity play at Christmas put on a multi-media Easter show, alternating dramatic monologues with sections of a movie based on the gospel of John.
Also, we as staff did a simple drama piece on the story of the Gospel, highlighting God's love for all people and Jesus' work of redemption.
Easter brought up many great questions at Men's Day such as: "How can Jesus forgive all our sins?"
"Will/how can God forgive us when we sin against another person if they don't forgive us?"
There have also been many deep questions and conversations about God's presence in our suffering and about faithfulness in marriage.
In the photos:
Greece is full of wild flowers in spring! For Good Friday and Easter we stayed in two lovely little "unknown" villages where as the only foreigners in town during this special time we experienced some beautiful Greek hospitality. Our host let Allie try her hand at pyrography for the first time. In between Easter celebrations we hiked to some Monasteries that are built into the cliff side.
Prayer and praise
- Thank God for many opportunities to share about the meaning of Easter. Pray that the people who heard will remember, understand and believe in Jesus.
- Thank God for Fardin's faithfulness in helping out in the ministry. Pray that he will experience God's blessing, even as he is a blessing to our work. Pray for his case for asylum in Greece, it is not certain yet if he will be able to stay here or will be sent back to Iran. Pray for his health, he recently has been experiencing a lot of neck pain.
- Pray for men's camp, happening this week. A group of Farsi-speaking men (believers and seekers) are spending a week at a remote camp site on the sea shore studying God's word, having discussions and relaxing and having fun together. At the end of the week, there will be a baptism for whoever wants to commit to following Jesus. Henk is there along with several other Helping Hands staff members, and we've invited a number of our friends from men's day.
- Pray for Allie's relationship with Donna and the other teenage girls and young ladies she's befriended. Recently, she had a chance to explain in depth about God's love for Donna. Donna and her family are being resettled to Germany next week.
-Praise for the increasing number of refugee believers who are volunteering with us us, serving and sharing their faith with their peers! Pray for courage and protection for them.
Thank You!
Henk & Allie Oosterhuis
