Greece- Youth For Christ Conference in Athens...

Wow! 

I am actually speechless, and I have been this way since the conference ended yesterday afternoon. I was sitting in the airport in Athens, Greece on the verge of tears. I am just dumbfounded on how the Lord works and how He chooses us to do things we never thought we would be doing.

So let me give you a backstory, because you are probably wondering what the heck I am talking about. 

About three weeks ago I was invited by my very good friend Cay to give a workshop for an international youth organization called Youth for Christ. I agreed to do it without knowing too much about the organization, except my little involvement with them in the United States. She informed me that the conference was going to happen in Athens, Greece. I was excited. I started to pray and fast for the upcoming conference.

Anyways... I showed up on Friday afternoon at Athens... It was sunny and blazing hot. I felt like I was back in Texas. It was a radical change from the Austrian weather (It was 50 degrees F and raining the previous week).

When I showed up at the airport I was greeted by two awesome members of YFC (Annes from Nice and Zsa-Zsa from Monaco). They were also waiting to be picked up. Our ride showed up about an hour later and we headed straight to the conference center. 

We showed up and were immediately greeted by a service crew that had been preparing for the conference an entire week in advance. They were all so friendly and welcoming. I was overwhelmed! I must have met nearly a dozen people from 5 different countries in the first 30 minutes of my arrival.

They put me to work immediately as I had to do soundcheck with the band. The band was so cool. Many were from France... I love French people... which is good, considering a bad experience with the French earlier this year.

After the check we started the conference... wow. So much energy right off the bat. You could feel that the teens had such a yearning for Christ. They brought a lot of baggage to the door. The speaker (Sherwin from the UK) was phoenomenal. He spoke on the love of God. It is such a simple message, but so essential. We all forget sometimes about the Lord who loves us in a crazy way. 

After his talk, I played a reflection song called "Magnificent" by Hillsong. After the song, I was given the ok to lead them into a little worship.  I just started singing "Glory, Glory, send Your Glory..." It was a powerful moment, because the Holy Spirit began to move throughout the crowd. 

We ended the night with a team meeting that must have lasted for over 2 hours. The thing about Europeans, which is so fascinating to me as an ignorant American, is that when they discuss things they discuss them at great lengths. Very different from the American mentality. 

We finally slept.

Saturday was filled with so many things, I can barely remember what happened. There were sports competitions early in the day (another thing that I have never seen at a youth conference), and then we started the sessions. The session had a number of Euro youth sharing how Christ has influenced them over the past year... very cool. After lunch I gave a workshop on worship, it was called "100% Worship." I felt it went well. 

The evening session was lead by Dun, a missionary for YFC from the US. Dun I miss you bro... We bonded over the weekend... it was cool. We then moved into the worship session of the night. It was powerful, because the actual session was lead by a missionary from Malta, JP. What fire he had. The Holy Spirit was definitely leading this guy. The whole hall was set ablaze and many healings and conversions happened that night. We went to sleep well that night...

Actually I lied. I didn't sleep at all on Saturday, but Im sure that everyone else besides Cay, Dun, Sherwin, Annes, Ivan, and myself slept great. We felt that the original line-up of the Sunday session was different from the Lord had planned. We spent some time in prayer and discerned that the Lord was moving in a different direction. SOOOOO... at the last moment, we changed the entire session and speaker line-up. We were up all night rewriting the session.

At 7am, we were exhausted, but at peace. Mass was at 8am and we were all dozing off. But I think the Lord understood. At 9:30 the speaker went on stage and gave the teens a final talk, which was fiery, yet practical. "You will go back into the world, and it will be difficult... be prepared and don't listen to the lies that this world will tell you. It will tell you that what you experienced this weekend was not real or that it doesn't matter. But don't listen. Stand firm to the faith and we, with God's grace, will change Europe!" Wow... what a powerful message. 

Lunch was bittersweet, because I had to say goodbye to all my new friends. I want to especially thank the community in Greece for being such incredible hosts. I want to give a special shout-out to the community in Malta! I love you Malta, and I'm excited for the next conference in Malta next summer! May God be praised...

Now its time to recover. I spent nearly all morning sleeping in and I plan on doing the same tomorrow. Next week work at Gaming starts, so I better enjoy it now... May God be praised!!!!