Week 89

There can't be too many missions in the world that drive on different sides of the road, depending on which Zone you are in! The Greece Athens Mission's two Zones are Cyprus and Greece. Cypriots drive on the left, Greeks drive on the right!

This Week Elder Teal and Elder Mead flew to Cyprus for a training meeting.

The plan was to go on Thursday but Greek the air traffic controllers were on strike.

"It's been a great week! Our flight on Thursday was cancelled! We found out on Wednesday morning and quickly changed the flights, so we left Wednesday afternoon instead! It was a bit hectic but we got there with no problems. And yeah it's getting much warmer now, we're back to wearing short-sleeve shirts, I've missed it! I think I'm definitely going to miss the sun when I get home, especially as I'll be coming from a Greek July!"

General Conference

"We watched the general women's session and the Saturday morning session, and they were both good. I especially liked the talk about the hymn Be Though Humble (Elder Snow) , and Elder Stevenson's talk about how a car needs keys. Also I liked the talk about how we have to forgive (Elder Duncan), and that doesn't mean that the person who wronged us will have no consequences. It made me think about the repentance process and how if we don't forgive people straight away, it's like we're putting ourselves in the Saviour's position like it's up to us to decide, when really it's not!"

"It was also strange to watch all of the talks in Greek and to have absolutely no problem understanding, like watching in English. I've watched General Conference in Greek every time whilst I've been in the mission, and it's been great to see my progress with the language every 6 months."

"I haven't seen Elder Kearon's talk no, which session is it in? We won't see the Sunday afternoon session in church until the end of April, so I'll probably watch it in the office before then."

We had specifically asked Elder Teal if he had seen this conference talk as he met Elder Kearon when he visited Athens, along with Elder Ballard, to see first hand the refugee crisis. 
(That was way back in week 69) 
The talk speaks of Elder Kearon's experience on the island of Lesbos

In other news

"We received an email from President Heder about absentee voting, as he had received directions from higher up telling him to encourage missionaries to take part in postal ballots if they can. I know there's a couple of votes coming up, including the EU referendum? I was hoping you'd be able to have a look at it for me and register me if possible? And then you'll need to send me some information about the things that I can vote for so that I can make a decision. 
Sorry to put you to the trouble!"

"And we won't get new missionaries now until my group leaves, so we might be a bit down on numbers for a while again! I know my release date is July 28th, but I don't have any info about flights yet "

"Elder Mead and I are doing great. It's been good to have three companions in the same area as I've got to see different ways of doing the same job, and it's kept me from settling in to the routine of doing things in a certain way just because that's the way we did it before." 

Pictures

"With (the former) Elder Johansson visiting the office"

"In the Jacobsens' car on the way to Limassol, Cyprus"

Realising on Pday that he hadn't taken many pictures to send home, 
Elder Teal asked Elder Mead to take pictures on their journey to Lidl !!

snippets from this weeks journals

"Elder Mead and I designed posters for the Restoration and for the Gospel of Jesus Christ that match the one we made for the Plan of Salvation." 

"I caught up on my journal and started the new one. It was strange to realise that less than half of this book will be used during my mission and the rest will be when I'm home and in university."

"On the plane I was sat with a nice old man and we had a pleasant chat during which he offered me some of his wine which I politely declined. At the end I gave him a pamphlet which he gratefully accepted." 

"President Jacobsen did really good training for his last time as they will go home next week. He has a great knowledge of the scriptures. I'm sure that the last training he gave will stay with the missionaries for a long time, as he spoke powerfully about about the importance of prayer and fasting." 

"In the evening we went to Panayiotis's and Georgia's house for dinner and Pavlos was there with us. It was nice as always to be in their company, they really are some of my best friends." 

Week 78 Athens

"We were in Cyprus from Thursday to Sunday, in Larnaca and we also went to Nicosia a couple of times. It was a really good trip, we got a lot done and it was so nice to see everyone over there, both missionaries and members.

It was a lot of fun! We had really good exchanges with the ZLs over there, and also had some really good training both from the broadcast that we watched and from training that we delivered ourselves together with the ZLs and the Heders"

"So we went to the eye clinic this afternoon, and it was all good news. I had some scans and then saw the doctor, and it turns out that the cross-linking worked extremely well, and I'll never have to worry about the condition regressing or my cornea getting any worse in the future. So that's good!

Yeah I drove last night and I'm driving today, so I think I'll be driving from now on which is good, although we don't really use the car that much anymore.

And with regard to my vision, my right eye is now at 20/25 or 8 out of 10, which is up from 6 out of 10, and my left eye has gone from 4 to 6 and both are still improving. The image that I see is still a little blurry which is from the epithelium not having fully healed yet, which the doctor said will slowly improve over the next couple of months. But he said I won't have to wear glasses, and that I'm seeing really well for the early stage I'm at. I have another appointment in 2 weeks where they'll check my eye pressure, as the drops I'm taking can raise eye pressure in some people, and then a second appointment halfway through April which is pretty much the end. 

But yeah, the problem is solved, and everything went great!"

Service Project

At the beginning of the week, the missionaries in Athens got together to put together 800 hygiene packs for Syrian Refugees in the city.

In other news we received this picture saying it was getting cold in the apartment now, but don't feel too sorry for them its probably like a typical English summers day !

Elder Peel looking for something !

World Wide Broadcast

On Wednesday the missionary department of the church broadcast a training meeting for the 85,000 missionaries around the globe. I was fortunate enough because of my current assignment, to be able to watch the broadcast with my home Zone of missionaries (Ashton, England) It was nice to know I was watching the same thing at the same time as Elder Teal. I took a lot of notes which I emailed to him and he returned the favour by sending me his notes. 

We had a lot more pictures this week, if you would like to see more click 

HERE