While most college students spend the summer catching up with friends or dedicating their time to part-time jobs, certain members of the Baptist College Ministry (BCM), however, took a twelve-day trip to Greece.
This trip served educational and spiritual purposes as the attendants completed mission work along with immersing themselves in Greek culture.
The BCM is a Christian organization on campus that is supported and funded by the Louisiana Baptist Convention as well as local churches and associations. The BCM holds outreach events on campus to minster to students and faculty. The BCM tries to plan trips for its members that can offer education and spiritual enrichment.
The trip began on July 3 when the group of 14 students, ranging from freshman to graduate students and four adults, departed the United States. They arrived in Greece on July 4 and traveled to Delphi, Greek Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Beria, Philippi, Neapolis, Meteora, Athens, and Corinth.
The group traveled from the southern tip of Greece to the northern tip. They traveled every day and sometimes spent five or six hours going from one place to the next.
The tour guide that was assigned to the group had a special connection to them because he was a very strong Christian. He rejected the Greek Orthodox religion that is the majority religion in Greece and embraced Christianity. The tour guide brought the group to sites that were mentioned in the Bible.
“We would walk through the archeological sites. We would set foot on the exact place where Paul was preaching,” BCM Director Johnathan Lafleur said.
One of the most impactive moments for Lori Meador, administrative assistant of the BCM, was when they visited the spot in Philippi where Paul was beaten and punished before the people.
“Seeing those things really made the Bible come alive for us. At each site that we went to, we would pull out our Bibles and read the scriptures that correlated with the location. It was powerful in the sense that we felt like we were living through it.”
Dallas Guidry a general studies sophomore shared his experiences on the trip: “It was an amazing trip, life-changing for sure.”
The group also spent a day with Helping Hands, an organization that works with refugees from other countries. Greece has a large refugee population because it is considered a gateway nation to entering the European Union. According to Bloomberg Business Week, Greek authorities apprehended 31,000 illegal immigrants during the first 11 months of 2012. The already-struggling country has not found a way to house this large influx of refugees.
Helping Hands seeks to help these refugees as they adjust to Greek society. The BCM group volunteered at Cosmo Vision Center, which serves as a day camp for refugee children. They ministered to the kids, participated in recreation activities, fed them, played games and even helped to clean the kitchen at the center. They were in charge of about 100 children who mostly spoke foreign languages.
 “We were there ministering to them, just trying to show love to them,” Meador said.
The BCM group was taken to an area populated with brothels that is known as “the red light district.” When Greek authorities legalized prostitution in Greece in 1999, this allowed for the practice to become the norm in Greek society. The purpose of this trip was to perform a prayer walk throughout the area.
 “There were literally blocks and blocks of streets that were nothing but brothels,” Meador recalled. The group was divided into smaller groups of two, walking about 20 feet away from each other. They were told by their tour guides to try not to draw too much attention to themselves or to the fact that they were praying.
“That was definitely an overwhelming time,” Guidry said, referring to the prayer walk through the red light district. “It was a place where this is actually happening, where trafficking is real life. Where you walk down the street and you see brothels 20 feet from each other. It’s definitely an eye-opening experience.”
Meador explained how the saturation of the market offers different price ranges for clients.
 “You will see men coming in and out of the brothels. You may see a man go in then come right back out. That usually means he doesn’t have enough money, and he will go to a different one,” Meador said.
According to the Human Rights Report on Greece generated by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor it is estimated that about 1,000 women are legally employed in prostitution while about 20,000 women illegally work in the prostitution field.
“Because prostitution is legal in Greece, the women grow up believing that this is just another way of income for them. Because it is legal, it is perfectly normal in their minds to believe this is just a job. Those women are there by choice, they just don’t see and understand how degrading it is,” Meador said.
Still, thousands of women are illegally trafficked into the country under false pretenses only to find out that they will be forced to work in the sex industry. With lack of resources, these women find themselves under the mercy of “pimps” or “madams.”
As the group proceeded in their prayer walk ,they witnessed the quality of life that people lead around these brothels. According to Meador one tour guide told them,
“Don’t be surprised if you see young boys or little boys with their fathers. It is kind of like a right of passage for fathers when their sons are about 10 years old to take them into a brothel and allow them to have sex as a coming-of-age type thing.”
Meador shared that there would be men using drugs in the street as the group continued their prayer walk.
“There was a certain location where the lady who worked for the ministry said ‘don’t touch anything, don’t lean against the wall, watch where you step,'” Meador said. “I was kind of oblivious to it until we got to that point but when we looked down there was literally blood everywhere on the ground, everywhere you looked just because people shoot up and their blood is everywhere. There were syringes all around us, drugs and all kinds of stuff. It was a horrible scene.”
The overall experience of the trip made a big impact on one student who has decided to return to Greece to attend a Bible college in Athens, the only Bible college in all of Greece.
“It’s really exciting to see that a student is so inspired that he wants to go back and serve there as a missionary,” Meador said.
Meador was grateful for the impact the trip made on the students. “Spiritually, my desire was to see them [the students] see the Bible come alive. I think for all of them that’s what happened,” she said. “Just to see that there is some truth, we can believe in it and have faith in it, but seeing it and being there and kind of living and walking in the places they walked really changes your whole thinking and it deepens your faith. We saw the students grow deeper in their relationships with Christ.”
The trip made a definite impact on Guidry. “Going to Greece was an amazing trip. It was amazing to do ministry there, to get to know people and to have our eyes opened,” he said. “I want people to know if they want to come on a trip with the BCM, definitely do it. Your life is never going to be the same again.”