Sometimes you don’t realize what you are praying for and how God will answer it. My wife Evangelia had prayed and longed to come to America. She wanted to live there and go to college there. Her dreams were there. God had answered her prayers and brought her to Southern California to go to school at Azusa Pacific University. While there she had prayed for a husband that didn’t just think Greece was cool, but actually loved Greece and the people there. She had no idea that God would use that prayer and send us there.
In college I was adventurous and went to Yosemite for a semester of school on 2 different occasions. When I heard that I could attend school overseas I was fascinated. I wished I could go. God started putting things in my path about Jerusalem University College right outside the old city of Jerusalem. The school didn’t want me to go (they didn’t want me off campus on my senior year), family and friends didn’t want me to go, but this passion in my heart kept growing. After much prayer I decided to go. It was an amazing journey and life changing for me. Afterward I took a Bible lands tour through Turkey and Greece. Ever since that trip I have longed to go back. I did not really know if it would be possible or even if there was anything there that I could do. Evangelia and I got married and we would vacation in Greece. When we were there I never wanted it to end. I desired to live there and do ministry, but I had lost hope that it could happen. I went through a season of feeling really lost. I met with mentors and a life coach and wanted to find where God was calling me. One of my mentors, who had been to Greece and knows Evangelia’s dad, suggested that I could go as a missionary to Greece. He said that God could use me to touch a nation. He sparked that passion in me to rise again. Evangelia was shocked that someone would just spout off ideas like that that would affect our family so drastically. She wanted to talk with him too. So we all met and she saw this wasn’t just an idle thought, but something grounded in the love for the Greek people and communicating the heart of God. It has been years since then and the desire has only grown and God is now opening the doors for us to go. It is time for us to take that step of faith and reach out to the youth in Athens.
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AuthorBoth Evangelia and I (Stephen) graduated from Azusa Pacific University. We were trained in ministry at The Church On The Way in Van Nuys, California. Archives
October 2016
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Larkins In Greece