Trek to Moroni Village and Dire Straits

The man holds up the phone in the air, pointing the speaker towards us with a big grin on his face, "You know the music?" as a rock song plays as the ringtone.

I knew it. I had to, but I just couldn't remember the name! I stepped back and struggled to remember the name. It must have been painful to watch, because he quickly said:

"Dire Straits!"

"I knew it! I know them! I like Money for Nothing," I said so he would know I wasn't pretending.

Elder Jenkins invited him to church and he agreed if his schedule permitted. He asked, "Do you all like rock? Like the guitar?" as he played one in the air.

"We like rock," we said.

"Good because if you don't like rock, I don't come." We all laughed.

I can promise you, that missionaries are sent because of who they are, not as someone they are 'supposed to be'.  Nothing may come of that, but I could connect with someone because we missionaries are just people too. With our own interests and passions. We take that on our missions and our experiences of life guide us in talking with others. We could not so much as think that God hasn't been preparing us for things in our lifes since the beginning. God has a wonderful way of doing that. And even if we don't do perfectly, that's what the atonement is for.

Last week, during district council, the Reidheads (Senior Missionaries in Athens) made a remark. "The ball is beginning to roll."

It was an interesting image created in our heads because it emphasises that the ball will continue to roll quicker, which is a special idea, and also nerve wracking. I would say, from what I can tell, is that the work is beginning to pick up in each area of the mission. Not that we weren't doing much before-- but the work has started to shift towards finding and teaching, rather than keeping things afloat. It's special to see. In time, I really feel the work will begin to progress in ways we can't quite imagine. I wonder if that is the spirit we felt here when we arrived. This shift is being comfirmed by the spirit. If that is the case, I guess we missionaries have to get ready! Haha.

THIS WEEK

OH this week... it was the week.

The week we decided to venture to a village.

Not any village, mind you, but THE village of Moroni.
To spoil it to you-- it was small. It was quite small and spread out. Nonetheless, it was very cool to go there.

BUT let me start at the beginning. First off, it was an hour bus ride our drop off point. At least, that was the original plan. We checked Google Maps as the bus veered down windy off-roads and realized. He ain't goin' the way we thought. Soooo, that resulted in us improvising and getting off at the closest stop to Moroni, which was about a two-hour walk. We had planned it to be about 10 minutes to get there. But you cannot let things like that despair you! About 6 miles in and about 3 times as many goats passed, we arrived at Moroni, Crete, Greece.

We sat at the church there for about 20 minutes, and that's when my companion turned to me and said, "It starts here."

"Okay." I said.

I think that statement means more now than it did in that moment. Because, I'll be honest, we didn't convert the whole village. We didn't stand on soap-boxes and proclaim the Gospel. We did everything that we felt we could. But guess what? We went. We went because it felt right. That's what this work needs. The spirit, and you'll be where you're supposed to be.

As first, we had planned to eat at a taverna near the center of the village, but we discovered they didn't serve food until probably a lot later. So we got orange juice and tried to a conversation with the people there. We didn't really force anything because they were planning a funeral and didn't want to derail them to far. If we know anything as missionaries-- it is that planning is important.

However, our timid presence in this small village didn't go completely unnoticed, as a yaya (older lady) from a distance begins just screaming. And wow, is she yelling at the top of her lungs. In retrospect, she had a bone to pick with everyone, but that didn't stop her from making a particular emphasis on us and the few people at the taverna.

I'll be honest, I didn't get much at all of what she said in the moment. But, Elder Jenkins translated later.

"Why are you even interacting with these... children of the devil!!" she screamed.

"Oh.." the others exclaimed in disapproval. I feel sad they had to get grouped with the persecution we missionaries get, but I'm glad they were there. If not, the man wouldn't have stepped into the entrance of the taverna, and she would have walked in and probably started abusing us more verbally and possibly physically. Eventually she walked away, still shouting and pointing at us. I think she was telling us to "Leave from this place!" and things.

I like to think we stuck our ground pretty well, because we were in the village about as long as time would permit, which was about another 2 hours.

We wondered over to the village meeting house and asked if we could eat lunch there, and a man actually came and sat with us. We spoke in some English, since he had been a taxi driver, but mostily in Greek. I will second Elder Jenkins in that we got to know the Greek culture more in that hour and a half than maybe some parts of our entire missions. It was really cool to learn a lot more about the language and the culture. Expecially when 3 others came and joined us. Of course, they offered us really hard drinks, and we politely declined. Which, apparently according to members, doesn't usually go well. He said after we declined, "It's good... healthy..." And that was about all there was too it.

After an interesting conversation and him even confessing he goes to church every week but has a hard time with the leaders, we began our trek 2 hours to the nearest town with bus stops, about 2 hours away.

I really wanna go backpacking through Crete now. It was awesome.

Well, I have to go to bed soon, but I hope you had some fun hearing these little stories! Little side note: we explained that we actually had a prophet in the Book of Mormon named Moroni to every person we saw in Moroni, but it didn't really phase them. It was honesly kinda a funny, most remarks were, "Cool! The church is over there too!"

We'll get there.

Love you guys! The weather is getting nice! Expecially in the evenings.

Elder Dylan Hansen

PS: We went to Knossos for P-Day! It was cool to see the oldest palace (3,500 years old) in all of Europe! Took some fun pictures!