River Cruise

Delightful worship time in the morning. I was especially touched by this large group from all over the world singing "We are One Body, One Body in Christ." We ARE a modern group. The preacher asked us to open our apps to the Bible passage. I only saw one person with a print Bible.

There is a lot more to meetings like these that sitting in sessions--for instance, all those conversations over coffee and wonderful Turkish snacks.

And then conversations on relaxing outings. After lunch some of us took off for a river cruise. An alternative was to visit the ruins of Perge, but since we will being seeing plenty of ruins on our five days of touring the seven churchs of Revelation, we decided a river cruise would provide more variety. If we had realized that the river was almost two hours away by bus, I probably would have chosen a nap on the beach instead, but the trip was pleasant enough. We got to see the mountains that we missed on our way here because of darkness. We laughed that we had no idea where we were (somewhere east of Antalya city) or the name of the river, but here we are getting on the boat.

Antalya Province has LOTS of  tourists in summer. A lot of these river boats have pirate themes, especially Pirates of the Caribbean.

Did I mention that there are a LOT of boats?

Wherever we were, we ended up at the Mediterranean Sea.

Popular with the local fishermen.  Fisherwomen?

I'm sure we will have more time to see Turkish culture, but here is a shot of a local mosque. Notice also the solar hot water heaters on the roofs of buildings.

We came home to a delightful cultural evening when the different regions presented their own "cultures". This included more sharing together with humor as well as priase to God. Makes you look forward to heaven.