Jan 9th - letter home

This week, on the drive to Thessaloniki, my companion and I stopped at a place called Thermopylae. If any of you are familiar with Ancient history you know this to be the place where King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans fought off the Persian army of millions of soldiers just long enough to allow the Greek army to assemble and save Greece. In the battle every one of the 300 died but they were able to defeat nearly half of the Persian army. But what we can take from the Spartans isn't that they were just the best fighters but what made them the best. When a spartan fights he doesn't defend himself. He defends the person to his left. The Spartans were always looking out for each other. And that is what made them effective. They were not fighting the battle in front of them but instead for those around them. Now to apply that to us, we must always be surrounded by those people that will fight for us and not just for themselves. We must choose good friends that aren't going to leave us to fight for ourselves against the dangers of these days. When we have these good people surrounding us we can survive the toughest of circumstances and come out the conqueror.