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.

Today we start our second week in Turkey. Had a lovely breakfast on the patio, in the warmth of the new day sun. In a few minutes we’ll be loading up the van and heading to Ankara. The internets are really slow at this hotel in Pamakkule so I’ll try to get this out, though it won’t have any pictures and just a little text. I will try to journal a bit of my thoughts while riding on the van.

I’m  looking across the valley as we drive out of Pamukkele and  imagining where Laodicea might have been – according to the book I was perusing last night, you were supposed to be able to see it from Hierapolis. I also read that there was a 60th canon aded to one of the Councils (can’t remember which it was and my book is on the roof) that listed the canon of the Bible, listing all the books we have in the modern canon- EXCEPT Revelation. That makes me wonder if they excluded it because of their prominent place in the begining of John’s apocalypse?

    
This is supposed to be a 6-8 hour drive so there should be plenty of time to collect some thoughts. As I wrote earlier, the geography and flora of Turkey have totally surprised me. The valley between Hierapolis and Laodicea is fairly green. They’re growing lots of crops, mostly corn and fruit and nuts. It reminds me of the Italian countryside between Venice and Rome. Just passed some grapes and wheat…oh, and…there’s a mosque over there! 

The friendliness of the people we’ve encountered (albeit most of them are in service-oriented positions) continues to impress me as well. When I told people I was going to Turkey (wait, there’s a mosque over on the right!) they often expressed concern for my safety. I haven’t run across any fanatics waiving AK-47s or planting IEDs or sporting the latest designer explosive vests. People often look at us, sometimes in seeming bewilderment, when we pull in town and then start unloading our luggage from the roof of the van (there’s a mosque!). But when they do it’s out of sheer curiosity – we are quite the sight to behold.

BUMMER! I had several paragraphs here that disappeared while I was uploading the photos. The only part I can remember this morning is how grateful I am for being a part of this study tour. I miss Cathy and wish she were here with me. It’s really cool to have one of my sons here and to experience this together with him. We may have to do a family vacation here one day…Lucy wouldn’t t like it though as there are too many (tame though) stray animals for her comfort level.

We pulled in to Filipus in Ankara at at 6pm and checked into our rooms. Five members of our team are staying at the Filipus building itself. Three girls are staying in a home about 3 blocks away and 3 guys (myself included) are staying in a home of a young British family about 2 blocks away. We made french fries (using potatoes we bought about an hour outside of Ankara) and a salad. The SMU team, who flew here back on the day the PoT class drove out of Istanbul, got back from their day of work in the city as we were getting dinner ready. They went out to get us some drinks and we ordered some Pollo Loco. We ate together, along with 3-4 of the Filipus staff, in one of the Filipus classrooms.

After cleaning up from dinner, the Peoples of Turkey class met to share three of our stories and go over the plans for Monday, the first day of July.

Gonna wrap this up and try to go back to fill in any blanks on my prior day blog entries…

We’re checked out of our hotel, the luggage is mostly secure on the roof of the van, every seat is packed with a set of buns, and we’re observing our daily time of silence. I tried reading but got about a mile on the windy roads before that had to stop, not even all the way out of Kuşadası and had to put the book away. My paper journal is in my suitcase on the roof which is just as well as I don’t think I’d be able to write very legibly (sitting in the back of the van once again – which for those of you who have been on the bus in Siliguri, I can describe this ride like sitting in the back seat of that bus, but with no room to do anything but breathe basically.)

As I think back on this last almost a week, I can easily see past these momentary afflictions, as the reward, though not as glorious as eternity in heaven, is definitely worth the temporary discomfort. Not only are we getting to see places  and things which play important roles in my spiritual heritage, but I’m getting to experience a culture and people which are an amazing amalgamation of contradictions: East and West, religious and secular, friendly and reserved, ancient and modern.

We’re sitting down at dinner at an almost normal time tonight (9pm) and having some very delicious mushroom soup and fantastic mushrooms with cheese in a clay pot. Now I’m waiting for lamp kebob cooked in a clay pot with potatoes, eggplant, peas, cheese, mushroom, onion, mild peppers and special spices. Ok, back to this morning…

…after a couple of hours on the road will pulled over to the side for lunch at a little place with a fence around it. The sign said no un-authorized entry. So we paid and they authorized us to enter. As lunch was being prepared, Blake walked around one building and saw some ruins, including a theater, maybe a quarter mile away. After lunch we walked to explore.  

Here’s some photos of the ruins we “discovered” in Nysa on the Meander…

I’m not sure exactly where to start–these days have been so packed that I am struggling to find the time to both sleep and blog(journal.) It’s currently 10pm. I’m sitting in my hotel room…no, now I’m in the lobby. Murray and Ryan just returned with Cassandra, one of the new interns working with Ryan here in Turkey. In a few minutes, once everyone else gets down here, we will do our “oral exam” (singing our song about Egypt, the Hittites, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, Byzantine, Ottoman, and Modern Turkey.) if I can stay awake after this, I’ll try to type up a blog entry.

We just finished our exam though I’m not sure I know what kind of grade we might have received. Now I’ve been sitting, staring at the screen for 15 minutes, trying to remember the beginning of this day…

…ok, we started the day on the roof for breakfast. There was a restaurant up there, so that actually makes sense. After breakfast, we drove 30-40 minutes through the beautiful countryside to Selçuk (Ephesus). Let me write a short little sibebar here about Turkey itself…I am not sure where I got this picture in my head, but for some reason, I thought Turkey was a semi-barren place, kind of how I also picture Israel. I didn’t think it was desert, but maybe something like Southern California, if we received no rain – wait, we may be heading there now, huh? Anyway, The first few days–Istanbul and then the drive from Istanbul to Çanukkale were fairly green–something like the MIdwestern states of the USA, but with some different vegetation here and there. The drive from Çanukkale to Kuşadası seemed to evolve to a decidedly less lush habitat. As we drove down into the vally where Kuşadası sits, at the edge of the Aegean  Sea, it actually looked quite a bit like Southern California. Up at the elevation of Efes (Ephesus) it seemed similar to Big Bear, but with very different species of evergreen trees. As a further side note,we also saw a few storks while in Selçuk,

OK, back to our regularly scheduled blog…when we pulled into Selçuk, we picked up our guide at a local coffee shop and then headed to Ephesus itself. Here are a picture of the coffee shop and a store near the upper gate (Magnesium Gate) of Ephesus, from where we started our tour (oh, and the rooftop breakfast.)

Hey! At least they’re honest about it!!
I’m sorry, but the internet in this otherwise fantastic hotel is VERY slow tonite and it took me about anout hour to upload those three photos. I’m heading to bed and will try to finish this tomorrow…Saturday morning, on the roof, eating some hard boiled eggs, french fries, tomatoes, cucumbers, toast with honey, string cheese, and salami with my commanding view of the Kuşadası Harbor–doesn’t get much better than this, unless my wife is with me-in which case, there’s NOTHING better, at least this side of heaven! A cruise ship docked sometime between when I went to bed last night and woke up this morning. I’m not sure they disembarked anyone yet though as at 5 minutes till 9am, it’s still a sleepy litte seaside town-much different atmosphere than Istanbul for sure.

  
Sometime last night they also seemed to have changed the password for the internet as I can’t log on, so I’m not sure when I might be able to post this updated blog entry about Kuşadası and Ephesus. Where was I?…

…oh yeah…Ephesus was one of the most meaningful ancient sites I’ve ever had the privilege to visit. The apostle Paul spent a couple of years on one of his missionary trips. We got to walk the same streets that Paul would have walked, see some of the actual parts of the city mentioned in the bible (check out Acts 19.) When Paul arrived in Ephesus he found a dozen disciples who had been baptized into John’s baptism and not in the name of Christ. Paul laid hands on them, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus and received the Holy Spirit. As was Paul’s practice, he went to the synagogue and preached the gospel. He did this in Ephesus for three months. They have not found the synagogue (I think only about 10% of the city has been excavated so far) yet, but we did see evidence that there were Jews in the city.

The menorah was carved in one of the steps on the Library. The “wagon wheel” is evidence there were Christians in the city as well. It was used as a sort of code to let visitors to towns all over the empire know that Chrisitans lived there. Back to the story…as Paul continued to preach and more and more people came to faith in Christ, some Jews grew hard and Paul took his disciples and started teaching them in the school of Tyrannus (which he did for 2 years.) This disciple making was so effective that “all who lived in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.” Paul’s work in Ephesus had far reaching effect as the city (likely about 250,000 people at the time) was the capitol of of the Roman province of Asia. Ephesus had many visitors each year who came to worship at the temple of Artemis, which if I read correctly, was several times larger than the Parthenon in Athens. This brought a lot of people to the streets of Ephesus, people who did business in the Agora-thriving businesses which opened the door for sharing of the gospel, which then was exported to the places these pilgrims and clients returned to and called home.

While in Ephesus, God was working mightily throught Paul, performing “extraordinary miracles” – so much so that “fear fell upon them all and the name of the Lord Jesus was being magnified.”  As Luke wrote, “the word of the Lord was growing mightily and prevailing.” Ephesus, because of its exalted place as the home of Artemis worship, also had a thriving trade in idols for worshipping Artemis. There was a silversmith in Ephesus, Demetrius, who felt threatened by the prospect of lost business due to people becomeing followers of Jesus rather than of Artemis. He stirred up his fellow idol craftsmen and literally started a riot, which filled the city with confusion. The rioters rushed to this theater, bringing two Christians with them.

Luke tells us that while this was going on, Paul heard about it and wanted to go to the theaer to reason with them but that the disciples would not allow him to go into the assembly. Some of Paul’s friends in Ephesus were political/religious officials of the province of Asia and “repeatedly urged” him not to go to the theater. There was so much shouting and the rioting so confusing that many didn’t even know what the riot was about in the first place. For two hours they were there shouting, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesiians!” The town clerk came and quieted the crowd, reminding them that if word of a riot got back to Rome, they would lose their autonomy as troops would be sent, garrisoned in their city and Ephesus would change dramatically from the city they loved and lived in. But that if they insisted, the matter would be settled in court, in the upper city. The location of the Agora, the Theater, and the civil center of town explained why it took two hours for the city clerk to hear about the riot and come speak to crowd in the theater (the civic center was uphill and out of hearing range – the theater facing away from that part of the city.)

This theater is the civil one where they would have had a trial if needed.

Time to pack up and head to our next destination…

It’s actually 1am on Friday as I write this. This wil be short as I want to get some sleep and then try to Skype with my life group in about 5 hours or so.

We toured Çanakkele in the morning-praying for the city. The 6 locals we met the night before are from the church of about 20 in Çanakkele. The only other believers they have met are each other. The closest church to them is about 5 hours away. We were the first believers they have ever worshipped with that were not from their local fellowship. Think about that for awhile, imagine that being the case in your life and then spend some time in prayer (thanking God for the fellowship you have and that He would keep these believers strong and encouraged in their faith.)

 A couple of our guys got haircuts at a Turkish barber, complete with the burning of hair off the ears. We packed up the van and headed south for Kuşadası, with an hour or so stop at Troia (ancient Troy). A little time in the belly of the horse and then a quick spin through the 5,000 year old ruins (most of it in the rain) and we were back in the van, heading once again for Kusadasi. Unfortunately, my iPhone was locked up in the van so I didn’t get any photos-I’ll have to get some from one of my classmates and post them later.

We stopped for lunch in a little town famous for its cheese and have some tasty little meatballs (more like medalions (which we are going to count as our homage to National Hamburger Day (they were actually more tasty than most hamburgers I’ve ever had.) Back on the bus and heading southward once again.

We finally checked in to our hotel (on the beach) in Kuşadası at 11pm, put our luggage in the room then went out for dinner. I’m sharing a room with Blake tonight and it has a commanding view of the Aegean Sea. There’s lightning and thunder in the distance to help us go to sleep by.

Gonna sign off now and then head to bed. I’ll try to add photos tomorrow.

Check out biolaturkey.wordpress.com for the blog our professor is posting…

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

We started our day with traditional Turkish breakfast (kind of a thick soup like thing I can’t remember the name of. Most of them had meat in them, though I think there was a veggie option or two as well. I chose the chicken. It came with some good bread and was fairly tasty.

Then we took a ride down the street on a trolly which has been in operation for over a hundred years. A short ride on the tunnel down to the Galata Bridge and then a train ride to the Hagia Sophia. I didn’t take the normal pictures most people do (as I was there last summer with my beautiful bride, the Langs and the Petersens.) I did take some pictures of the students (all, I believe, who had never been there) experiencing the incredibleness of this amazing (former) place of worship. I suspect that, even though it is now a museum and that they have resumed holding Muslim services on Mondays, that quite a bit of worship of the one true God actually takes place at this place.

   
            
After the Hagia Sophia, we took a short walk to a place that is supposed to have the best coffee in all of Turkey. I personally can’t testify one way or the other about that as, in my opinion, even the best coffee isn’t good. But, to each his (or her) own. While at this coffee shop, Ryan told us about the coffee business they have established to support the work he is involved in here in Turkey. I’m impressed at their creativity at finding a way to support their efforts with indigenous, rather than foreign, resources.

After coffee, we walked back to the Blue Mosque (the group headed while a couple of us were still in line to borrow the facilities.) This wasn’t that big of a problem since I visited this marvelous city just last summer and knew my way around that part of town. Elijah and I got to the mosque and there was no sign on the rest of our group. We walked around a little bit, several cruise ship tour groups in line to get in, but no sign of the rest. Ejijah and I went out to the Hippodrome and still no sign. We decided we’d go on in to the mosque and catch up with them after. About 40-50 people from the end of the line was our group so we got to all experience the mosque together. Then we found a short wall in the shade at the Hippodrome to have a bite of lunch.

After lunch about half the group went to the cisterns and the rest walked to the Grand Bazaar. I don’t have pictures from the shopping center, but here are a few of the cisterns (including one of Medusa’s head on the bottom of one of the columns near the rear. Notice the full-grown goldfish swimming around in the first photos.

I’ll have to finish the rest of this later as we are packing up the van and about to lose internet connection.  

(typing the followup without internet and will upload it when I get connected…)

After the cisterns we walked down the street to the Galata Bridge and boarded the Sardine Express (a VERY full train). There was no fear in falling over on this ride and I never even got to raise my hand to grab hold of a handle or rail. We rode to the end of the line then started walking to a place with the reportedly best baked potatoes in Turkey. 4-5 miles later, we were “getting close to the neighborhood” and then another mile and we were “almost there.” The baked potato place was at the base of the Bosphorus Bridge. It was a cool shopping area along the water, kind of like Seaport Village in San Diego. There was a huge 3-4 story Starbuck’s there and a row of baked potato and waffle stands. We picked a potato stand and ordered about 20 potatoes which they prepared with butter and cheese and then each of us selected what toppings we wanted (about 15 or so choices – no bacon or broccoli though…)

A bunch of tired legs and burning feet determined that we would hire 5 taksis to take us up the hill to Taksim Square, at the end of the street our hostel was located just off of. A half mile walk (downhill) and we were back at our Istanbul home away from home. That night a father and son from Bosnia or Croatia (I was too tired ot remember which) broke out their guitars and gave an impromptu concert in the lobby of the hostel.

I’m totally enjoying myself on this trip, but to be honest, I’m struggling a little with making sure I don’t overstep any boundaries because my son and I are on the trip together. I want to (and we are, I think, at least I am) enjoy experiencing these things together and I’m trying had to not “father” him on this trip. Along those lines, I’m also struggling a little bit to just be one of the students and not act like a leader or chaperone on this trip. Fortunately, after today, we’re going to places I’ve never been before and won’t have to fight the urge to compare/contrast this experience with my prior visit here. I’m trying really hard to only make such comments when someone asks for them-hopefully I’m succeeding in that effort.

—–

Please pray for me as I developed a little bit of a queasy stomach this morning. I ordered scrambled eggs this morning and (which came to the table still scrambling…) We’re back at the hostel now, after eating and are saying goodbye to the SMU team, who are flying ahead to Ankara, then we will jump in the van and say goodbye to Istanbul.

I’m taking a class this summer called Peoples of Turkey, There are 11 students from Biola in the class, plus our professor. For the first few days of the class we are joined by 6 Biola students on an SMU trip. My youngest son is also in the class. We left our home at 3:30 am on Sunday morning, leaving LAX at 7am. Other than an issue with one of our students (from Russia) not being able to get a boarding pass because Canada requires a visa from Russian citizens, our flights went off pretty much without a hitch. NO, we did NOT leave Masha back in Los Angeles (well only until she was able to get a different flight going through Germany instead and she arrived in Istanbul to join us later in the same day.)

We arrived in Istanbul on schedule, at about 9am local time. Ryan and Cameron (one of Ryan’s interns) met us at the airport and then we road the trains from the airport to a hostel not far from the Galata Tower across the Golden Horn. After checking in, we walked around Galata for a bit, soaking in the local atmosphere. We had lunch and met with a woman from the Bible Society. If I understood the presentation (I was having a little difficulty staying awake after the long “day” of travel and having just recently eaten lunch) this is the Turkey branch of that organization/ministry. She showed us some really old Bibles that they had translated-one was, I think, a Turkish Bible in the older script, and the other was an Armenian Bible, both from the early 1800s, I think.

   
  
Then we visited a couple of Christian churches near the hotel. The street we spent much of our time on was a pretty old one, likely used by Emperor Justinian (having been a thriving metropolis for year.) After visiting the churches, one, likely the most famous Christian church (still a church-the Hagia Sofia is now  museam, and once again being used as a mosque-closed to tours on Mondays), and an Armenian Orthodox church; we took the second oldest subway in the world (a tunnel through the hill in Galata) down the the water front by the north side of the Galata bridge. We went to a world famous baklava shop near the waterfront and then walked back up the hill (if I had planned this part, we would have walked DOWN the hill and taken the tunnel back UP, but hey…) We did a little shopping (most of it of the window variety) and worked our way back to our hostel just after dusk.

   
         
It’s almost time for breakfast, then I believe we’re headed to the Hagia Sofia (Ayasofya in Turkish), then I think we’ll visit the Blue Mosque, the Cisterns , and the Grand Bazaar (and whatever else we have time for before wrapping up our day Istanbul.

A new blog has been created, generally based on missions at Taft Avenue Community Church as a whole, with specific posts about our India/Adivasi missions included.

I will continue to post my own thoughts here, even as I prepare for and then journey to (and return from) India this summer, but the “official” blog entries will be found at http://taccmissions.wordpress.com

Go check it out – the blog also will keep you up to date on TACC’s mission to Orange and mission to Mexico (as well as our mission to India)…