Sunday, April 3

Egypt plane drama ends: hijacker arrested, passengers freed

Well, we had a little excitement at the first of the week.  An airplane flying over Egypt was hijacked and forced to land in Larnaca.  The hijacker said he had a suicide bomb vest on.  Over the coarse of a few hours, all but a few passengers and crew were released.  The airport and surrounding areas were shut down.  Finally, it was resolved when they found out it wasn't a terrorist incident but a man upset over his wife. WOW!  But, really so relieved that it wasn't as serious as we all feared at first.  We have been following the updates on the missionaries in the Belgium bombing.  We are praying for them and are so grateful that they are improving.  Such a scary time for everyone!

On Thursday, we went on our last outing with the other senior couples. We went up to the Trodoos mountains to the small village of Kakopatria and then on to the Kykkous Monastery.

An original 'doggie' door.

A lot of the pictures are actually mosaics and are amazing.

The chapel which holds the "Holy Icon" of the area.  Said to be from 1300 AD. 

This is inside the church,  The icon is the the center but hard to see through everything else.  Very ornate and ceremonial.  So different than what we are used to - glad we made the trip! although it was high  up in the mountains on a windy, windy road.  Can't imagine how they built it so many years ago.

Friday morning at 6:30 a band started marching and playing drums (for a full hour) to celebrate independence day from Greece.  A nice pleasant wake up for the neighborhood!

There were laying wreaths at this statue.  This whole event took place a couple of blocks from our flat.

We check the weather back home every day.  Our temps are almost exactly the same - the humidity is vastly different.  We are usually 80% compared to about 20% at home. 

We got to watch conference today (at least the Saturday sessions) and loved it.  Since most members do not have access to it the branch records the sessions and we watch a session each Sunday through the month of April.  They also translate the sessions into Greek for our Greek speaking members.  The mission office in Athens does this so we have to wait a week so we will start watching next week.  Bill & I were able to watch today on the internet in our apartment.

Thought for today:  What are you going to do today?