Festivals

Hello All!

For the past few weeks our mighty group of ten has been working with the Community Center, Center 68, to put on festivals and tournaments for the families living in one more impoverished neighborhood of Greece. This neighborhood is primarily Albanian immigrants. As many of you know, Albania was a Communist country which was highly oppressive and had closed borders. The President of the Bible Institute was telling us today that the Greeks were praying for the opening of the borders and the freedom of these people. When the borders were finally opened and Albanians came flooding into Greece, the Greeks did not know how to accommodate to this population spike. This caused many initial problems between the Greeks and the Albanians. In addition, many of the first Albanians that entered Greek society were convicts who had been released from jail and so upon their arrival in Greece, the crime rate spike dramatically. Previously Greece was a very peaceful society with little crime but when the first wave of Albanians arrived, the murder rates greatly increased. Because of this, a sort of racism began to fester in Greece that still remains, though not as prevalently, today. The Albanians inhabiting Greece today are just like the Greeks; they are families that are trying to make the best possible life for their families but they are handicapped by the criminal stigma that was established years ago. To further complicate things, much of Greece is Orthodox and if you are not Orthodox, you are harshly judged and sometimes discriminated against. Because Albania was a Communist state, many do not have any religion that they practice. For all for these reasons, Albanians are facing tough obstacles as they try to coexist in Greece. Children are negatively affected even though many are exactly like their Greeks peers except for their last name.

Many of the Albanians we are working with do not speak English. Only the teenagers speak English because they are taught it in school. This has not proven to be a problem for us, however. These festivals and tournaments have been mostly games that we oversee. Many of the kids are familiar with these summer programs from the past couple of years and are more than happy to play amongst themselves and laugh, lovingly, at us when we attempt to speak Greek. I have about three phrases and six words down. On the upside, I do know the word for orange, portokali, which is the most commonly used color when children are asking for balloons, face paint and bracelet colors. Alright! I was tasked with working the diablo station which is essentially making sure that the kids stay in roughly the same vicinity as I am in. What I found was that the kids actually preferred to walk all over the square, the main park/central area of the city, and I would just have to round up the supplies at the end of the night. The diablo is a rubber hourglass shaped object that is spun and thrown and caught with two sticks and a string. I was the only one familiar with the game because I had done it in my seventh grade circus unit in P.E. so I was put in charge of that. Some of the other people on our team did face painting, stilts, balloon sculpting, hula hoops, and general help with the group activities which mostly involved water. As the week progressed, we all sort of moved around and helped with different activities but I found that I was not exceptionally talented with face/body painting. The kids politely thanked me but looked less than thrilled with my rendition of a dinosaur. I was pretty good at painting butterflies and hearts, though!  I tried to send all the boys to Elise, one of the girls on our team, who was much more gifted in the art of face painting. In the last few days we have also been semi-assisting in the soccer tournaments. There is not too much for us to do here because the older boys and a few men run these tournaments so we mostly just marvel at all of these kids talent. There are younger boys and older boys’ brackets and all of them are tremendously talented. I love to see the little boys get so excited when they score a goal and all of their friends in the bleachers rush the field and jump on them. The older boys are a little more collected but are still stoked when their bicycle kick results in a goal. It was neat to see all of our talents, or at least enthusiasm, being utilized to make these festivals a success. Elise was master face painter, I was proficient at the diablo, Trevin was quite talented with the stilts with Kelsey's assistance, Camille had fun leading Twister with the help of her trusty translator Ana, Rachel got a kick out of leading the little kids in hula hoop games, Joanna, Tyler, and Jaimeson were great at following around Alex, the big boss in charge, and helping set up and run all the group games, Christi was our fantastic photographer and her son Carter was our mascot (drawing in all the parents and grandparents with his noises and faces). We have an awesome team and it has been such a blessing to work with Courtney and Alex in their efforts to put on these festivals and tournaments. Their passion and excitement has been such a motivator and we are so fortunate to be able to work with this community through simple things like water balloon tosses, hula hoop contests and soccer tournaments. I would love for all of your prayers for our success with these tournaments and that our efforts would bring joy to this community.


"Love what is sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving in the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality...Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud..." Romans 12: 9-16