Wednesday – we travel from Istanbul to Çanakkale

This morning (which seems so long ago right now) we ate breakfast, said goodbye to the Chillout Hostel, loaded all our belongings onto the top of the van, and headed out of Istanbul. We drove through some beautiful countryside, with the Sea of Marmara on our side on and off throughout the day, It rained a couple of times, but not for too long each time. We stopped at a memorial/cemetary for some Turkish soldiers who died defending Turkey from the Invading British, who in turn were lead by a young man named Winston Churchill.

   
       We had a picnic lunch (between rain showers) and then boarded a ferybot to cross the Dardenells. Halfway across the Dardenells we crossed from Europe to Asia and landed in a cool little college town by the name of Çanakkale. We checked into our hotel, laid out our damp clothes, put on some dry ones and walked through town to meet half a dozen members of a local church called Kurtulus Kiliseleri Dernegi. Ryan shared a short message with the believers there, Blake shared his testimony, two of the Turkish believers shared theirs, we sang a song togther (in English and Turkish, simultaneousl,y) and the pastor there prayed to close our time together.

We then invited them to join us for coffee and a little fellowship. We’re at the coffee shop as I type this (I was across the street buying some laundry detergent (our rooms in this hotel each have their own washing machines.) When I got upstairs to join them, there was only one seat left, near the window, overlooking the street (which are MUCH quieter than the streets in Istanbul.) I ordered a banana smoothie (most of you know how little I like coffee…) After coffee I think we’re gonna try to find some dinner.

   
           BTW, thanks for the prayers as my stomach stopped being queasy by mid morning! 

The van rides are good times for getting to know one another. Each day, on the van ride, we are supposed to have an hour of quiet time, which we can use to study, journal. read, nap, spend time quietly with God—pretty much anything other than make noise. I tried catching up on my reading homework, but the road was just winding enough to make reading an uncomfortable prospect.

Our assignment for tomorrow is to come up with a song (choreographed) that chronologically lists the major civilizations that ruled what we today call Turkey.

1. Egyptian
2. Hittite
3. Assyrian
4. Babylonian
5. Persian
6. Greek
7. Roman
8. Byzantine
9. Ottoman
10. Modern Turkey

This will be an interesting assignment to complete as it’s already 9:43 and we haven’t moved from coffee to dinner yet, there doesn’t look to be any place at our hotel to figure out and practice a song, and I hear we are checking out at about 8am tomorrow.

We have seen some historical places and learned the backstory behind much of it. We’ve tasted a little bit of the culture (we haven’t eaten at any Burger Kings or McDonalds or other western spots.) Our meals have been fairly ethnic in nature. We met some interesting characters at the the hostel in Istanbul, hopefully some of our talk about had a positive impact on them.

Most of our learning about the peoples of Turkey however seems to be from observation rather than interaction. Though today we did spend a couple of hours with fellow believers here in Çanakkale