Wow!! Where do we start to summarize our trip. We are writing this
as we fly back from Rome to the US at 7am Tue. morning your time.
First of all, we want to thank our families for allowing us to
take this trip, and for each of you that kept us in your hearts
and prayers while we were in Turkey and Italy. I also want to thank
our host family in Turkey as they had our time there well planned
out and everything went perfect. What we saw will never leave our
minds or be forgotten.

Then we went to Rome the Liles had everything ready for us too and
everything went smooth there as well. Both Jim and I already had
relationships with both of your families, but we can now say our
relationship and love for both of your families will never be the
same.  We love all of you more then ever. We also had a lot of fun
spending time with your kids as well and they made the trip even
more enjoyable for us both. It was so evident that you love your
new countries and feel you are right where God wants you. And as
evident as that was, it was even more evident that you love the
people and look forward to building eternal relationships with them.

One thing that surprised us in Turkey was how friendly the people
were. Being from the US and not being very knowledgeable about this
area and the Muslim religion, we were a little nervous. But everyone
we met and worked with were as friendly as anyone we have ever met.
It is obvious that God will open doors there. We also were in awe
as we traveled throughout the country seeing sights in person as we
read about them in the Bible while standing at that very spot. We
are still amazed with all the cave churches that we went into in the
Cappadocia region. Istanbul was also an amazing city of 15 million.

Rome was amazing just for different reasons. Of course to go
and see the Vatican and Coliseum was amazing as you always hear
about them. Not to mention seeing so many other places that we
have always read about in history as well. But to get to go and
attend a church service with the Liles and stay for a dinner and
get to meet and visit people was maybe the highlight of our time
in Rome. We were also very impressed as they have a deaf ministry
and there were over 20 deaf people in attendance.

I would like to ask you to remember Sadat, Arasin, Nazla and
Anthony as they were our tour guides in different locations
and we were able to share with most of them and just ask you to
lift them up. They are all amazing people and hopefully we can
use them in the future when we take groups back. We do look
forward to taking groups back to both locations in the future
so that many of you can see the amazing things God is doing in
both of these countries.

I could go on and on but I hope we hit most of the highlights
each day on the blog. Thanks again and we hope you could feel
a little bit of what we were so privileged to experience through
our daily posts.

Gary & Jim