OUR LAST DAY IN TURKEY

We finished up our time in Turkey by visiting two additional churches and one Grand Bazaar shopping area with over 3600 shops in Istanbul. We may have went into two of the most ornate and beautiful churches we have seen on our trip. The first one was the Chora Church and it was built as a church in the 5th century but was converted into a Mosque during one of the war times when the area was turned to Islam. They covered many of the Icons of Christians but they did it in a way that when they went back later to see if they were still there they were able to remove the plaster covering them and there was very little damage - except earthquakes had done some damage. Many of these pictures are using mosaic tiles which would have meant they spent many weeks or months making each picture.

The second church was a Catholic church and that had ornate pictures and areas all over. The most intriguing thing was they have a Column type post they say is a post that Jesus was tied to when he was being scourged on his way to be crucified. We have no way to confirm or dispute this but they have been saying this for many years and no one has been disputing this is not real.

The last photo above we are with our tour guide Nazla. Remember her as she was asking a lot of questions about Christianity and we were able to explain a lot of things to her from personal experience and not just her reading abou it in her tour guide class.

I want to finish this part or our trip by saying that Turkey was out of this World and neither Jim or I could have imagined how friendly the people are or how beautiful the country is. But most of all our host family had everything lined up and could not have picked better locations for us to visit. Our bond and love with their entire family will never go away and we can't wait to see them again.

We flew to Rome Friday night and Jon Liles picked us up at the airport and we are now going to spend time with Jon and Becky and their family. We will also start our tour of Rome Sat. afternoon.