Our time out of New Zealand has been diverse and amazing, with a little disorder mixed in to it!
We spent three painful and amazing days traveling from New Zealand to Turkey.
We spent a cold night in Sydney, where I got to see my best friend for the first time in almost a year and God provided bus tickets for all of us, so we went to bondai beach for dinner!
After encountering quite some difficulty in customs, and nearly missing our flight, we boarded the plane for a 15 hour plane ride to the amazing city of Dubai. We spent 21 hours there, exploring the skyscrapers, the amazing buildings and architecture, and getting baked in the desert heat.
This was followed by another night in an airport and an early start for Istanbul.
After our arrival in Istanbul and a domestic transfer to Izmir, where we arrived late in the evening, we promptly did not know what to do!
I had my instructions as to get a bus or taxi, so we headed out to find out if we could get a bus. We soon encountered a language barrier, and had trouble getting across what we needed. We ended up missing our bus, the last one of the day, and the taxi driver could not understand me! We ended up standing there in quite a prediciment, at a loss as to what to do!
I stood there praying quietly, then I heard a voice speaking english behind me. I turned around and saw a young man approaching Douglas, at teh same time he carried on speaking to the guys, and both his accent and his looks said loud and clear "Kiwi/maori".
It turns out that he recognized Douglas' style of dress and approached us, he was also he found out that we needed to get to our hotel, and had language problems. He introduced us to a turkish friend that he had made on the plan that would help us out. he asked us why we where here, and we told him why and he turned around and said, " so am I!" He was staying in Istanbul for the night and was going to meet us in Odezre in the morning.
His friend took us over to the taxis and soon got us some one who would drive us there for quiet cheap. So we piled in to the taxi - on the wrong side I must note - and took off.
We wound our way through strange and beautiful landscape for nearly an hour, by this time the sun was starting to set. just as I sarted to despair that our trip was ever going to end, we rounded a cornerr and we got a perfect view of the place we where going to stay.
A beautiful place, as we drew up, I was in awe of the place, I had never been any where so grand...
We checked in and found our rooms, I dumped my gear, and as sweaty and tired as I was, I was going to explore!!
I soon found out that many of the people in the hotel where from the Netherlands, and I got to bask in the sound of the language again and to practice it. I soon found out where everthing was, and explored the pool area, the pool lounge and disco room, the bar and the resturant, then I found the stage show....with music dramas and dancing, wich I joined, I knew that this was going to soon be my favorite!
The next day I managed to rise fairly early in the morning and attend the AMAZING spread that was put out for breakfast, I then proceded to explore everything in the day light.
Soon I was convinced to join in with some of the competitions and games set up by the entertainment team. We quickly made friends and I spent the rest of the day hanging out with them, and alot of my spare time during the week aswell.
I joined in with the zumba and the dart games, proved my hand at table tennis. I swam in the pool and filmed crazy times on the waterslides, along with swimming out to the platoons in the adriatic sea, and got my groove on at the disco!
This of course was in my spare time! The conference started the evening of the first day there, and always had one session in the morning and one in the evening after dinner.
It was an amazing confrence, we learnt a lot about the history of Turkey, and the dealings of Australia and New Zealand with Turkey. We also learnt quite abit about the turkish church history .
We also spent a lot of time in worship, and prayer and intercession for the country and it's people.
We also got to go to the Selcuk museum, though there wasn't enough room for me to go, that's all good, because we then got to explore ancient ruins of Ephesus.
There was also a lot of reconciliation, firstly between the turks and the Anzacs, brought on by a powerful haka, lead by Ray Toterewa, our national director in NZ. This lead to repentance of one nation after the other first to the Turks, then to others, on behalf of thier armies and what they had done to each other. God was present strongly through so much of the entire thing.
I learnt, so much that I hope to retain, though it was a lot of information cramed into such a small amount of time.
I also got to make some amazing friends with the some of the outreach teams that where also there at the confrence.
I love the turkish people, my room mate was an older turkish woman and she bacame a mother figure to me, she said she loved me like her own daugther. The guys on the entertainmet team where awesome, language barrier or not, we had lots of awesome long talks, as they put up with my endless amounts of questions about thier culture and country. They where alot of fun and I hope to one day see them all again some time, especially my turkish "mamma".
After a week at this beautiful little corner of the world, we said our sad good byes and headed for the airport.
Another night in the airport and on to Israel! The promised land, WOOOH!
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