Dear praying friends,

Thank you SO much for your regular prayers for us. They were definitely needed this past week.

Within 90 minutes of arriving in Athens, Greece - before we even made it from the airport to the hotel, my wallet was stolen in a way that one can only say proves the ingenuity and skill of the professional pick-pocket. Lifted from my front-facing cross-body sling in an incredibly overcrowded train - as I was watching my luggage, attempting to avoid whacking people with my backpack, and with contact from people on all sides - this skilled thief managed to unzip my pouch, remove my wallet, and rezip the pouch - and I did not even notice my wallet was missing until it was time to check into the hotel.

I still had my passport - but my German visa, my drivers licenses, some cash, and my credit cards were all stolen. Last year, I had purchased a tracker for my wallet, so I pulled up „find my“ on my phone, and saw that my tracker, at least, was not far away. We rushed our suitcases up to the room, attempted to connect to hotel wi-fi to freeze my credit cards, and set off - accompanied by another Alliance worker we saw in the hotel lobby - to see if I could find my wallet.

Along the way, I was receiving regular updates from my credit card companies about attempted charges, not being rejected, on my frozen cards (after several hundred Euros had already been charged.) We followed the tracker‘s signal to a trash can in a square at the top of a subway exit - and inside the can with my tracker were all of my identification cards. Never has the inside of a trash can looked so good!

Of course, it would have been better to recover my wallet and the credit cards as well, but in that scenario, recovering my id‘s was wonderful. As I talked with police, they told me that having my identification cards really was a best-case scenario.

So, here I sit at a table in our hotel room, typing this email before I set off with our son Joshua to his visa appointment with my passport and visa in my possession. Replacement cards are showing up. What could have been an awful situation was redeemed - and I credit God‘s faithful answering of your prayers.

Prayer Requests:

1. Pray for Joshua‘s appointment this morning! It may be done by the time you are waking up and reading this, but what is time to God?
2. Pray for our coming week as we accomplish some needed tasks in Berlin before flying back to the US with our boys on the 14th and start to move into our second US place-of-stay over the weekend.
3. Pray for Alliance workers and leaders as they return home after the Global Leadership Conference. Thank you for praying - the conference was encouraging.
4. Pray for sleep! With all of the chaos, traveling, and important morning appointments - I have not been sleeping well. When I wake up in the night (as one does post 50…) I am finding it difficult to return to sleep.

Thank you, friends - We appreciate your prayers more than you can imagine.

Blessings,

mike