Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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Hi Everyone! Well, I am happy to announce that the blog ban has been lifted! So… I will now attempt to summarize what we have been doing this month in Turkey and Israel. Here goes…
 
We spent a wonderful two weeks in Istanbul, Turkey. I had no idea how amazing and beautiful Istanbul is! It was  definitely one of my favorite stops so far, and it wasn’t even on our original race route. While we were there, we were assisting our contact with “ethnographic research”, which is a fancy way to say that we were helping them study the culture so they can figure out effective ways to reach the people with the Gospel. We basically went out into the city and formed relationships with people and talked to them about their culture. Our contact also has permission from the Turkish government to hand out Bibles and copies of the Jesus Film (which is pretty amazing), so we were also given “media packets” to hand out. My team spent one week in Istanbul, and then the second week we actually went to a city about two hours outside of Istanbul. It was a city that our contacts had actually never been to before, so it was really neat to get to “spy out the land” in a sense, and help them get a feel for the culture so future teams can be prepared to go there.
 
        
 
   

I was surprised to learn that Turkey is “the most lost place on Planet Earth”, as our contact put it to us. Per capita, Turkey has less evangelical Christians, less missionaries, and less churches than any other country on Earth. However, during my time there, I fell in love with Turkish people. They are amazingly friendly and surprisingly open when it comes to discussing spiritual matters. I hope that you will join in prayer for the country of Turkey, that the people will be effectively reached with the Gospel of Christ.

After our two weeks in Turkey, we flew to Tel Aviv, Israel. We then traveled to Jerusalem, where my team has spent the rest of our month. It has been amazing to get to spend time in the Holy Land, and we have been fortunate enough to get to see alot of the Holy sites. We are staying within walking distance to the Old City, so we have been able to spend our free time seeing what there is to see. We were also able to travel to Jericho and the Dead Sea, which was really fun.

 
     
 

Our ministry contact here is focused on reaching out to Palestinian
refugees. The ministry has churches in Jerusalem, Jericho, Bethlehem,
and they are even starting a church in Gaza. We have been primarily
involved with their church in Jerusalem, but we were also able to go to
church in Jericho, which was really neat, as Jericho is a Palestinian
territory. The ministry actually just received a huge shipment of rice
to distribute to the refugees, 26,000 pounds of rice to be exact! We
helped move the shipment into the ministry center, and we have been
helping to prepare packages of the rice to give out to the people. Each
package of rice also has Scripture in it, so pray that the people who
receive the rice will also receive the Word of God!

Also, for those who are unaware, my birthday was this month! I feel amazingly blessed to have gotten to spend my 23rd birthday in the Holy Land. My day was wonderful from start to finish. When I woke up, everyone had made me cards and taped them to the door. That afternoon, we all went to Hezekiah’s tunnel, which is an ancient tunnel, back from the days of King Hezekiah, that runs under the city. You can now walk through the tunnel, and we had a great time exploring. We also went out for a nice dinner and ice cream that night. I am so grateful for my friends on the squad who made sure I had a great day!

 
  


So what’s next? We are leaving tomorrow morning for Cairo, Egypt, which yet again, was not on our original race route. But hey- you don’t here me complaining! We are actually just stopping in Cairo on our way to South Africa. We will take a bus to Cairo tomorrow, and then we will be there all day Friday (I’m hoping to see the pyramids!),  and we leave Saturday night for South Africa!!  We will actually be spending the month of November in Swaziland, which I am really excited about. I can’t believe that we are almost halfway done with the trip. Africa always felt like it was really far away, and now we are going there in three days! I want to thank you all so so much for all of your prayers and support. I am so grateful that I am getting to have the experiences I am having, and I would not be here with out your support. I love you all!

On a side note- I made a video of our month, but the internet here is so slow that I can’t get it to upload. I am hoping to do it in Cairo if I can, but if not, it might have to wait till Africa. But it is coming!