Everyone,
Sorry I have not been very good about my updates. We finished the Christmas parties and I intended to write about them and then came down very sick with an awful cold/ flu thing about mid week last week. Yesterday I finally felt well enough to shovel out the house a bit - I had done nothing for a week. I was pretty tired but decided to mop the floor because there were a couple of coffee spills that had been mocking me for days. This may have been a mistake or it may have happened anyway due to the fact that I have not been able to take my Enbrel for 2 weeks because of being sick but whatever the reason, my back went out. By the time I managed to shower, I couldn't even stand to dry my hair. I had some pain medication from my knee injury so took some which allowed me to get up and down without actually screaming - just a lot of sucking in air between my teeth and doing my Lamaze breathing. I am a bit better today but still taking pain meds - hopefully I will be better tomorrow because we are planning to have a houseful of team mates and refugee friends on Christmas.
Christmas Parties: There were a few near disasters along the way but the parties went of wonderfully with the refugees having no idea of the drama going on behind the scenes. The first problem came the day of the first party. Kent and I and Dirrims went to Jumbo (our version of Walmart) to pick up the 500 Christmas gifts (of about 5 items each) that we had ordered. They were to be ready by 10am. This is our third year doing it this way and it has been no problem. They are prepaid, so they just have them bagged up and ready to go. When we got there no bags were sitting by the door or behind the counter. The guy at the desk did some checking and finally said. " It's no problem - your things are here they are just downstairs and we need to get them together for you. We can have them ready by 1pm. " We said "No that IS a problem because we have to take them in to town which takes an hour and then wrap them all and our party starts at 5pm. We MUST have them by 12 noon at the LATEST". They said okay and Kent said now don't say okay and then decide you'll just have them later we need them by noon for sure! They kind of hemmed and hawed around but finally said okay for SURE by noon. When we arrived at noon - no packages. We kept bugging and bugging and finally at 12:30 they told us to go up to the cash register and our stuff was there. To get upstairs you must walk through every aisle of this huge store on both floors. They have made it so you cannot cut through at any point so we took off at a run dodging our way around Christmas shoppers. We got upstairs and there were lines stretching across the store at each cash register. We say them taking our stuff on carts down to the end where there was an unused cash register so we thought since we had already paid they would just print up an invoice there. We stood there for a few minutes and finally the manager came over and said "Now you will go through register #6." We said "You are NOT going to make us wait in line behind all those people after we have been here for almost 3 hours are you!?" But indeed he was so there was nothing to do but get in line with these huge carts. When it was finally our turn they rang everything up and it came out to the right amount but I mentioned to Lisa that they were ringing it up from a list not from what was on the carts. When we had the invoice they said "Now we must count the items" Come to find out these were just boxes of our items and needed to all be opened and counted to get the amount we had ordered. There were extras of some things, not enough of some things, and some things were missing altogether. What a nightmare! At 1:45 we asked if we could start loading the stuff that had already been counted into the cars. He said No - just wait a minute. At 2:00 our Greek director got on the phone with him and said we MUST load the things that were ready and he said it would only be a few more minutes. I grabbed a cart and Kent grabbed a cart and we just took it outside and started loading it up. We finally arrived at the ARC a little after 3pm. The gifts all had to be sorted and bagged and our church was coming at 4pm to set the tables and prepare the food. The doors opened at 5. We finished the gifts at sometime after 4 but miraculously by the time we opened the doors at 5 the room was beautiful and serene with candle lit tables and soft music playing.
Our second disaster happened on Thursday night. There had been some miscommunication with the church and they had not brought sodas so some of our men had gone out to buy and carry back 24 large bottles of soda. Other than that things were going okay and Ilir (who is our general maintenance guy) said "I'm going to go out and run an quick errand with my wife since there is nothing I need to do here" I said "Sure". About 5 minutes later someone came running out of the kitchen saying "Where's Ilir?" I told them and they said "The oven isn't working" This was a problem because we were serving chicken and to cook enough for 180 people we do 3 batches of 60 pieces each. The last batch was about 1/2 way done cooking. When Ilir got back he got the repair guy and called the parts shop and asked them to stay open late - he was then running back and forth for parts in order to get the oven fixed so we could use it the next day for the party then. Out in the main room once again the candles glowed, the music played and refugees relaxed and smiled. Inside the kitchen the stove was pulled out in the middle of the kitchen while the kitchen workers madly fried the rest of the chicken in a big pot of oil, dished up salads and served desserts. We always tell people flexibility is key in this ministry and we prove it over and over!
Despite our near disasters this is always such a special day. One young girl told Tasha - This is the best day of my life! Another women said "I will keep this with me always". Their lives are so hard and if even for this one day we can give them something to remember all the hustle and bustle and frantic planning just seem to melt away. As I tell the Christmas story and relate it to THEIR story - the long journey, the need for rest, looking for shelter - in short remembering that Jesus was a refugee, I am always reminded anew that these people understand much better than I do what Jesus gave up and went through - for us. Kent dressed as a shepherd this year to talk about how Jesus came as a Shepherd to carry us home to God.
There is one last party this week in Patras - some of our men go up regularly and help out at a church that is reaching out to refugees in this port city about 2 hours from here. Kent and I were able to help with buying the gifts for the about 40 men expected at this party. Each month we set aside a small part of our salary to go for something special for refugees - this is what we used for this. We also bought a warm coat for a refugee friend of Kent's, helped with groceries for a family and rent for another friend. This is another way that you, our financial supporters supply the needs of refugees here in Greece. Thank you for making this possible. Thank you again to all of you who gave for Christmas and for sleeping bags. We love you all.
Serving Him Together,
Kent and Myrna Morley
Tripoleos 76
Elliniko 16777
Athens Greece
011 30 210 96 38 625
backhoeboy1@gmail.com
http://kent-uniquelymorley.blogspot.com
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