Spotlight: Reaching the exiled

ATHENS, GREECE — Like another man named John many years ago, church member John Emeka Ndirike found himself imprisoned on an island in the Aegean Sea. Instead of writing prophetic literature, this John started a prison ministry.
Ndirike, a native of Nigeria, was jailed on the island of Kos for entering Greece illegally, said Dino Tzanetos, minister for the church at Evrou 10, Ambelokipe, in Athens.
Initially, Ndirike asked Tzanetos to help him transfer to a prison in Athens, but in a matter of days he had set up Bible studies with 10 fellow prisoners. He called Tzanetos and said, “Stop anything you’re doing to bring me to Athens, because I believe this is the place where the Lord wants me to be.”
Then he asked for Bibles.
Two months later, a man came to evening services in Athens and asked for Tzanetos. “He said, ‘I have studied the Bible with John and I want to be baptized,’” Tzanetos said.
Ndirike now lives legally in Greece and attends Athens International Bible Institute. The Evrou 10 church also launched a prison ministry and has baptized 25 inmates in the past three years, Tzanetos said.
July 1, 2006