Moore College student Kathryn Roach shares a blow-by-blow account of her extensive tour of Turkey and its Biblical sites, in the company of historian and theologian Dr Paul Barnett.
"You want to come with me to Turkey, don't you?"
I
t didn't sound so much as a question as a half-command. Sound asleep up until the shrill call of the mobile jolted me upright, I confirmed to myself that no, I had not been expecting a call, (and definitely not one so early as 7.00 am, a time when all humanity ought be sound asleep for at least another hour), and had certainly not expected a call requiring my presence on an overseas trip.
Blearily I checked the caller ID, and yes, it was who I thought it was. A 4th year Moore student who'd forgotten the three hour time difference between Sydney and the most isolated capital city in the world, otherwise known, oft scathingly, as "Perth". Even more blearily I dragged open my second eye to try and decipher what the time actually was. Yes - 7.00 am. The time of waking the dead.
I turned my still decidedly foggy focus back to the insistent voice on the phone "It'll be fantastic, you'll love it, you have to come!". Will I?, I pondered. Getting vertical and going to work in clothes was about the only "have to" on my list at that moment. "Seriously, you'll love it," the disembodied cheerleader continued to holler down the line. "Who's going?" Again with the enthusiasm, "It's a Moore College trip that Paul Barnett is taking to Turkey. You have to come. You'll love it!". I was starting to see "have to come" as a fairly fundamental part of the conversation.
Dragging myself semi-upright in bed I demanded some more information as to why I was being asked to do something "I would love". The response was heartening. "Well Karen and Michelle [two former Moore graduates] can't come, they're going to China" [BTW What is it with Moore grads and travel to China?]. "So I thought you might like to come. I'm on my own and they're making me pay the single supplement if I don't bring someone." At this point the penny dropped through the fog. Not only am I number 3 on the list, I am a mere source of removal of the scourge of the single supplement. I tried to get it straight in my mind " I spend several thousand dollars, to save Polly several hundred dollars. Well, that seems fine, my sleep deprived and deeply still-in-shock brain decided, so I said "I'd love to", then promptly hung up and went back to sleep.
Later that day, after I had regained the use of all my faculties, I seemed to recall a bizarre conversation involving the principal ideas of "Turkey" and "You'll love it". I checked my phone log, and sure enough, there was a call from Polly, so I apparently did have a conversation involving those ideas. "But you'll love it". I snorted. I knew nothing about the trip, the reason for it, or, more importantly, Turkey itself. But hey, why should such trivialities stop me I thought? So I texted back confirmation of a response given while three-quarters asleep and with no further information than "you'll love it". Things were starting well.
While Polly got the tour info ready, I tried to get me ready. I went to the table beside the bed to get my passport out. I found the 1979 passport, the 1984 passport, the 1989 passport, the 1994 passport, complete with Canadian student visa and temporary residency permit, but not the 2004 passport. Strange. I had had it out recently to get my car registered in WA and to get a WA driver’s license, and in that process had had to prove all sorts of things, up to and including production of my maternal grandmother (well, almost, but you get the picture). But I couldn't for the like of me find it. So I rang DFAT to cancel it, and was asked if I had sold it to a terrorist organisation. The response "not recently" was on the tip of my tongue, but with a nanosecond to spare I decided against it. Two days later I found the (now irrevocably cancelled) 2004 passport hiding at the bottom of the mound of paperwork required for registration and license transfers. I was not happy. Four forms, three photos, one elusive guarantor, one interview, a lost fee, a priority fee and a re-issue fee later I had a new passport - which I was not going to lose.
Then after forking out thousands to the travel agent to save Polly paying the single supplement (I still don't see how that works), I finally got the itinerary and tour notes. At this point I really started to believe "you'll love it". There's going to be fantastic opportunities to see places like Ephesus and Colossae, which I'd always dreamed of doing one day. Places which are very familiar to me in a one dimensional sense from reading the epistles were suddenly going to become living, breathing, three dimensional places. I became more excited as I read through the list of places we'd be going to. Colossae, recipient of Colossians; Laodocia, evangelised by Epaphras and one of the churches of Revelation; Ephesus, where Paul preached the great gospel of God to the gentiles, where John published his gospel, and one of the churches of Revelation; Patmos, the cruel exile of John, but also where the unspeakable glories of the new heaven and the new earth were revealed to him, and then through him to us; Pergamon, another church of Revelation; Psidion Antioch where Paul preached and established the local Christian church; Sardis, yet another church of Revelation…
Suddenly I though, yes, I really will love this trip. That's if I can manage to make it to the airport at 3.00 am, which is definitely not a time I am likely to be vertical and lucid. Whether I manage to escape the sizeable risk of missing the plane altogether and start on my Turkey adventure will be the subject of the next installment.
Trust me, "you'll love it".
