Getting to Athens

Next year I will be working in Athens, hence why I'm currently learning Greek.

As we're in a recession, I thought I'd check out the cheapest routes to get there. By foot, Google Maps says it will take me just over 14 days to get there, but they seem to imply I'll have to take some lessons from Jesus at for the sea stage of the journey...

Here it is, the cheapest route from Manchester to Athens.

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Happy independence day Greece!

Καλήμερα σας!

I was spending the morning learning Greek, when I realised today is Greece's Independence Day! How exciting!

Independence day celebrates the Greek declaration of independence from the Ottoman Empire on March 25th 1821. It signalled the start of their war of independence which they eventually won.

Apparently*, it was then that Ελευθερία ή θάνατος became Greece's motto. It literally means freedom or death, and was their rallying cry as the country rose up to fight against oppression and tyranny. The nine stripes on the modern Greek flag are representative of the nine syllables of the motto.

This is all lot more interesting than the vocab I've been learning this morning. Even thought the sense of satisfaction of completing another list on BYKI is pretty good, when the most exciting word you've learnt is "airport" (το αεροδρόμιο), most other things are way more interesting.

Here is a picture to celebrate:



*from what Wikipedia tells me...

Sweet relief

Today I had a parcel delivered that's about four years late. It should have been delivered to me in Lesotho (I was there during my gap year) but it must have got lost somewhere en route.

Anyway, it contained a pack of fruit pastilles and some postcards from my family when they were on holiday. I strongly advise against eating three year old fruit pastilles and I'm lucky to have any teeth remaining after the first chew.

It's a great little surprise and this little time capsule from the year 2005 reminded me just how much I enjoyed getting parcels out in Lesotho.


This is what I where I was on March 12th 2005. Good times.

There should be some mission week and Relay updates coming sometime early next week, and you never know, I might even get round to putting up some of the posts that I promised months ago...

Dawkins to launch Secularist societies in university campuses

Apparently Richard Dawkin is launching a campaign to start secularist societies in every UK university. UCCF have stated that it "will excite CU members, who are keen to share their faith and raise the spiritual temperature amongst students."

Read the full press release.

Salford goes FREE

This is a slightly belated update on the happenings of Salford Christian Union's events week.

Salford CU held three events during the week:

Tuesday night was the JazzCake event with talk on "Free to all". Salford University's favourite jazz and cheesecake night returned for the third time and about 60 students attended. Tim Hanson talked on how the good news of Jesus Christ is free to everyone. We looked at two facts from the Bible, firstly that human beings matter and secondly that we have all sinned - they've fallen short of the standard that God expects from us. He then showed us that there is a wonderful third fact in the Bible - that in Jesus, we have a solution to the problem. It was a great evening with about 45 non believers present, and many had great conversations afterwards.

Thursday night was the Grub Crawl. We went to three different locations to eat each course in our meal, and Tim did a talk on "FREE but at a price". We learnt that the price of the solution to the problem that was discussed on Tuesday night was the death of Jesus Christ, God's son. We saw that on the cross, the sins of many were put onto Jesus and Jesus righteousness was given to them in return. In essence it's a giant swap - Jesus was punished in their place and they recieve Jesus' obedience to God - and it's free to anyone who believes and trusts in Jesus. Six people attended.

Friday night was a talk on "FREE but costly". Ten people were there as Tim showed us that even though the benefits of the swap that occured on the cross is free to anyone who believes, living in the light of it is costly. Jesus sayst that the believer will repent and believer - that the new way of life is to be lived with God treated as God. This is the opposite of sin: sin is essentially living with ourselves as the most important person rather than God as the msot important person.

Each day CU members met for prayer, which I found really encouraging. It's great to see students really expressing reliance on God during mission weeks rather than drifting into the wordly way of thinking that more work makes things better. As it's God who does the work of saving unbelievers, it makes sense to ask him to work during evangelism!

All in all, it has been a wonderful two weeks of mission in Salford University. In those two weeks about 1100 gospels were given out and at least a couple of hundred students heard the good news about Jesus explained by students, friends of the CU and Tim. During this mission I have seen CU members who have become more confident in evangelism and have been encouraged by the openness of non believing students at Salford to talk about the good news of Jesus.

As is the way with most university missions these days, this mission was much more about sowing seeds rather than about seeing many people come to believe in Jesus. We're in the same situation as described by Jesus in the parable of the growing seed in Mark 4:26-29:

And he said, "The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come."

We won't know when these people who have heard the good news and received gospels will begin to believe in Jesus, but the seeds have been sown and there will be an effect at some stage in the future.

There will be an update on the Manchester Mega Mission Week coming early next week.