LOCAL STUDENTS HELP PREPARE FOR GAMES.

Byline: Carol Rock Staff Writer

NEWHALL - Several students from The Master's College had their Olympics moments just before the athletes took the field in Greece, traveling to the country to help prepare for the games.

Michelle Demidow, a junior at the school, said it was a work-study project she'll remember the rest of her life.

``Out of 8,000 tour guides in Greece, we were lucky enough to find one of the two Christian guides,'' she said. ``We were there to work, but we were able to visit some of the places that have so much significance in the Bible.''

She said they were inspired when they walked where apostle Paul was sent from the city of Corinth or saw a centuries-old marker proving that Erastus built a road.

Demidow was joined in the journey by fellow students A.J. Woodsum, Tommy Bosworth, Jenn Hogue, Nadine Ames and Christian Moore, as well as high school senior Esther Hamme. They left Los Angeles on July 24 and returned Aug. 14.

During their visit, the students did their own version of ``Extreme Makeover'' for the Greek Bible Institute, to help it get ready for the hundreds of evangelists coming for the Summer Games. They plastered and painted showers, cleared rubble, cut and laid carpeting and helped institute officials work on a library expansion during their two-week stay.

In their downtime, they had the opportunity to see the sights, visiting a monastery built in 945 A.D. and the Acropolis, where they walked through the Parthenon and viewed other relics. During a visit to the stadium at Delphi, where the ancient games were held, Demidow couldn't resist posing in the starting blocks.

``I used to do track at Saugus, so I just had to put my feet on the starting blocks,'' she said. ``It's just so inspiring to be where so much history actually happened,'' Demidow said.

The students spent some time working at the Helping Hands refugee ministry before it closed for the month of August, loading bags of rice and feta cheese to give away and teaching English to some of the children at the center. They also participated in the Lost Coin ministry, which does outreach to prostitutes, many of whom are smuggled into Athens from Nigeria.

Last semester, the students prepared for their trip by researching the area and customs so as not to stand out from the crowd. They learned a worship song in Greek, which they performed twice at the Bible center.

``On the first Sunday, our pronunciation was incorrect, but by the second Sunday, we had worked on it, and they were impressed.''

Part of their work at the center included washing chairs and cutting squares of carpet for the evangelists they were expecting. They also raked and weeded the National Gardens to help Athenians put on their best botanical face for the Olympics.

``Athens looks a lot like Santa Clarita with a lot more green,'' she said. ``It's not as humid as you would think. And we were warned not to talk about politics because the Greeks are bitter about America not coming to their aid when they were under a dictatorship. They don't think too highly of Americans.''

Still, the students were welcomed almost to the point of being overwhelmed by reporters asking them how safe they felt.

The closest they came to participating in the actual Olympics was attending soccer games between the women's teams from Germany and China and the men's teams from Argentina and Serbia and Montenegro. Demidow said the Greek national pride was evident when a roar went up from the crowd during a quiet moment at their game; a closer look revealed that most of the people in the stands were wearing ear pieces so they could listen to the game between Greece and another team being held in a neighboring stadium.

A total of 12 teams from The Master's College did international service projects, visiting Uganda, Thailand, Japan and Samoa, among others. Some worked with children and others were medical missionaries.

The Athens trip had special meaning for Demidow, as her great-grandfather came from the country in the early 1900s.

``It opened my eyes to my heritage,'' she said. ``But our work showed me the difference I could make in just one day. There was a lot I couldn't do, but as a team, there was a lot of good we could do. I know I want to get involved and go back to Greece.''

Carol Rock, [phone]

carol.rock(at)dailynews.com