Syria - Third times a charm
The Syrian immigration official and I squinted at each other, ‘don’t I know you?’ written across our faces. It was more than likely; it was the third time in three months I’d been in Syria. It had become the black hole I kept getting pulled back into.
“How many days?” he demanded.
“Only three”
“OK” Bang! Stamp and off.

Return to Turkey
The last time Nathan and I crossed throughg Turkey it was the dead of winter and I had never been colder in all my life (and that’s saying something coming from a country so cold that in winter sheep have been know to fall over and stick to the road unable to get up due to the hard frost). I wan’t expecting it to be so cold now - quite the opposite - but I did remember the extremely high petrol prices (about $3/litre).

I was told the high price was due to the oil embargo placecd on Turkey by the USA after it refused to host American warplanes for the current Iraqi conflict. Taking advantage of the comparitively cheap petrol in Syria I converted the bike into a mini pertrol tanker, loading it up with 60 litres of fuel to help me along in Turkey. At the border the customs official took one look at the bottles strapped to the bike and said “No benzene in Turkey, take it off!!!” Well I wasn’t about to ditch all my precious petrol so I refused and seeing as neither side was willing to budge we both went and sat down.  After a little time a crowd gathered around asking why I was just sitting there. When I explained about the petrol a small bidding war broke out as other people wanted to get their hands on my precious petrol. The customs official seeing the ruckus came marching over and said ‘“Come with me!” Thinking I was in trouble I cancelled all bids and followed him. ‘Give me you papers!’ I gave him my papers, bang! he stamped them “Go!”

Alright I got to keep my petrol :o)!!

Feeling very proud of myself for overcoming the system I headed for Tarsus, the birth place of Paul. Modern day Tarsus isn’t much of a place. I couldn’t find a room for less than $30 so decided to give it a miss and headed off in search of a place more in my budget. Sure enough, after hunting around, a friendly Kurdish-Muslim fellow invited me home to his place and I was the focus of the evening’s entertainment for the whole neighbourhood. Everyone marvelled at my collection of Bibles. Maybe they though I was some book salesman that was lost as I didn’t have any Turkish ones, only Arabic, English and French. Every time they picked them up they’d kiss them and touch their forehead with them. You wouldn’t see that too much in Austalia on any given Sunday.

Antalya
In Jordan I had heard about a family that ran a cafe ministry in Antalya, a city on the Mediterranean coast in Turkey. The cafe also housed a church, both an English speaking one and a Turkish one. I thought I’d better go and check it out on the way for a couple of days. What I found when I was arrived was a funky little cafe that was a hive of all sorts of activity.

It must have been peak ministry season as there were teams from all over the globe basing themselves in and around the cafe. There was a YWAM crew from Mexico hanging around, a bunch of Finnish guys who had been getting out on the streets and a Candian outreach team, the leader being the brother of a man I stayed with in Jordan (small world). I also met a few independant people serving the good Lord out of their own volition so we connected immediately. There was heaps going on and I found myself among other things re-wiring the place to improve the computer system they had.

The church service on Sunday was really buzzing with so many different faces. The pastor, Jim, is an easy going American guy who conceived this ministry with his wife and runs an ever-expanding operation that includes, besides the curch and the cafe, yearly camps for international kids, Turkish classes, English conversation classes, and organising ministry groups coming to serve. It’s really the one-stop shop for people coming to Antalya with a view for reaching out to the people.

Seeing as the Sunday I was there was Pentecost Sunday, the church had been invited to run a service at this inter-faith place where there was a church, a synagogue and a mosque on the same ground. We all piled into buses and headed out there. A local hotel put on free food and we ran a service that was aimed especaily at people who happened to wander in off the streets. All the teams had a part in it. I considered doing a repeat performance of Nathan and my stirring rendition of ‘Once in Royal David City’ that we did at a church in India on Christmas day, but without him there it just wouldn’t have been the same.

So a couple of days turned into a week and after a few days the motorbike and I had become a semi-permanent fixture at the cafe as I took to sleeping outside on some cushions in the evening when everyone had gone home. By night I’d hang out with the teams who were here or at Pastor Jim’s house and after come back to the cafe to hang out and chat with the nightwatchman. We became good friends.

In the end I just had to leave. A month could have slipped by quite easily, such is the easy feel of this place and the great work that everyone is doing there. You can’t help but feel the buzz of excitement and want to get involved.

There are always opportunities to serve at St Pauls - in the cafe or as part of a team. Maybe you are looking for a place to take a buch of people for outreach and to serve? Check out their web site for more info. I’d talk to Avery; she’s the lady in the know. Who knows, you may come and never want to leave.

Gallipoli and On
As is customary for all New Zealanders and Australians, I made the pilgrimage to Gallipoli to see the place where we fought all those long months.

I’d read going there was a moving experience but it was even more so than I expected seeing those rows and rows of headstone and reading the names on them. On so many of them were Bible quotes. What is it about death that makes us remember the Lord? To really get more of a feel for what it was like I camped out at Shell Green, a memorial named because of the frequency with which it was shelled during the campaign. No shelling that night, but the sound of dead quiet broken only by the putt putt of little fishing boats trolling back and forward along the shore.

My next stop is Romania passing through Greece and Bulgaria on the way. I worked with a Bulgarian man for two years who extolled the virtues of his country. I’m not sure what exactly will happen, but as surely as the Lord remains true, it’ll be great.

From the road,

JP