We visited the Acropolis today and also went to the museum which was very interesting.
The Parthenon
Above is the Panathenaic or Olympic Stadium in Athens, Greece. This was really cool to see and listen to different stories of the olympian games that went on here. The street in front this stadium has a river underneath it that they used to overflow into the the stadium where naval battleships would fight to the death (like Gladiator kind of) as the whole stadium was filled with thousands and thousands of people watching for entertainment. Now that river is covered by a road, but our guide, James, said that when it rains everyone then realizes there is a river underneath the road because it overflows.
This is Mars Hill. The 1st picture shows the stone that reads Acts 17 in modern greek. The 2nd is me standing on Mars Hill. This was an incredible experience. Once I could get past the below freezing weather, which was easy to do considering the things I was seeing, I was able to sit on Mars Hill looking over Athens as Dr. Edwards read Acts 17. It was incredible. This made it so real to hear Paul's words where he most likely actually said them to the people of Athens, extremely smart people that had to be intimidating to Paul. For Paul to have the courage to do that really inspired and deeply reminded our whole group of WHY we are on this earth. WHY Jesus came to die for sins and WHAT we are supposed to be doing with our lives. We need to stop trying to be successful by the worlds standards and try to hold each other up to GOD's standard. Over the next couple of months I have the most awesome opportunity to go back to Mars Hill whenever I want just to talk to God and reflect on Paul's life and the fight he fought on this earth for the Lord and the church. I want to have zeal like Paul so Lord willing, I can focus on that the next few months praying for courage and wisdom to do the work of the Lord, worrying only of the Kingdom of God and the lost souls around me. Today was so inspiring, uplifting, convincing, and ...real. It made the Word I was holding in my hands that I have based my entire life on, REAL. Paul was a REAL person. Everyone knows that, there's no trying to deceive people of that fact, you see "St. Paul" everywhere in Greece. He made a 180 turn in his life for only one reason, only one thing can do that to a person, THE LORD... just really proving and making it real that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God and I am walking on the same grounds HE walked. There aren't words for the experience and the reality of it. I'm so excited to see what else God has in store for this group and I can't wait to visit more places that we read about in the Bible.
There are dogs everywhere in Greece!!!! I mean EVERYWHERE. Now in Athens the government has put colored collars on them to tell whether they are male or female, fixed them, and gave them shots to make sure they don't over popularize or harm the people of the city. We have dogs in Porti Rafti that sit right outside the Harding doors and act as guard dogs for us -- we haven't done anything special for them or anything, they just like us.
The same thing happened in Athens today with our group -- it was hilarious. These dogs in the picture along with about 3 others flocked to us and chose our group to follow and hang out with all day. We would go in a museum for hours and come out seeing them there just waiting to greet us. As we walked through the street they would walk in front of us and literally bark everyone else out of the street chasing them so that none of those random sweet people would even get near us. I mean we laughed so hard we cried. 3 of the dogs saw this man in front of our group on the side of the road with a hose and they ran after him and chased him 30 feet scaring this man half to death. I mean he had the most frightened look on his face because these dogs would bark and growl at the people, but they never tried to bite, thankfully. It was so funny because they weren't meaning any harm but they were serious about protecting us. I honestly felt like royalty the way the dogs treated our group and cleared the streets for us. I mean I felt bad for all the people they were scaring half to death, but the dogs thought they were doing good. They chased this one lady in front of us to her car... she was so scared that she sprinted to her car and got in and locked the doors. Again, they weren't meaning any harm just mostly the barking was very scary. The way they barked reminded me of somewhat of trumpets announcing a king coming throughout the street, clearing the road for the king.
These guys were really good! Fun music to listen to while walking around the market place after lunch with the dogs in Athens. :)
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