Monday, June 1

Woke up in the Walton’s flat. Wasn’t sure which room upstairs was the bathroom and there was no noise coming from anywhere, so instead of walking up and opening doors to find the shower, I finished settling in to my room and read a bit of God’s Word.

We walked over to Filipus, I took a quick shower (easy since we’re in a drought in California and I’m used to short ones). After a breakfast of bread and tomato (open faced sammich.) We then set in on a Filipus class session (a couple of praise songs, prayer, and a study of Matthew 1:18-25 – all in Turkish.)

 Filipus is a conglomeration of school and business and monastery. They train indigenous and foreign students on ministry to Turkey, The students can’t afford very much and Filipus only charges them about 100 TL a month to live and study here with them. Most of their churches have trouble raising even this  meager amount. And this amount is only about a tenth of the actual cost of the program. Filipus has a coffee business (started about 2 years ago) which is meant to provide the funds for all this (much like the monasteries of Christendom.) We’re about to go visit the coffee house and the biggest “public” mosque in Ankara.

After this, we’ll eat lunch and then visit the castle and museum this afternoon. Pictures coming later…

Here’s some pictures from our day in Ankara.