CYPRUS TO CAIRO

Alright, time to update you on our trip of faith. To get you caught up from before we all felt that Cyprus was the direction that we were supposed to head but we had no tickets. We were taking a big chance but isn’t that the fun of life.

The first stretch was an eight hour bus ride to a city in southern Turkey called Antalya from 11:00pm-7:00am. We then had a three hour layover and then on to a city called Tasucu. This ride was supposed to take eight hours but was turned into a ten hour trip when the bus broke down on the side of the road. 10:00am-8:00pm. Once in the town of Tasucu, we jumped on a took took (little car/scooter) and headed for the ferry.

When we arrived in the heart of Tasucu, we found a ferry that would leave at midnight running through the night to Cyprus. After some ministering with some local Muslims, we were headed to Cyrus Island but instead of being a five hour ferry, it turned into an eight hour ferry. We decided to once again take the deck and get a little shut eye.

When we were on the ferry, Kimmy had met a man by the name of Huseyin. When we reached Cyprus Huseyin directed us off the boat and told us that we needed to head to his home town to cross the boarder of the Turkey side of Cyprus to the Greek side.

By this time we all were in need of a bad shower but we still had a long way to go. In the bus ride to Huseyin’s hometown he asked us if we would like to come to his house and shower up before we went onto our next leg. Our mouths about hit the floor because nobody said a thing. Thank you Jesus! Was this the reason that we were called to go through Cyprus?

Upon arriving to Huseyin’s house his roommate Ahmet greeted us at the door with a smile from ear to ear. They welcomed six strangers with huge packs on their backs and demonstrated what the true meaning of the word hospitality meant. They directed us to Ahmet’s room where we sat on the couch and just got to know each other. The next thing you know, Huseyin comes in with a hot meal and orange juice. We were so thankful to our Father because of the wonderful men that we had just met. One by one we took turns in the shower.

During this time with Ahmet and Huseyin we were able to really get to know them. They were both raised Muslim but felt that all religion was deteriorating. Ahmet, knowing seven languages and completing a computer science degree within three years, was very knowledgeable in many areas. This gave us all a chance to really push him in the hard facts about Christianity and proof that was in the public eye for him to tangibly grasp. We could all see that Ahmet was challenged through this experience and we will all forever be grateful to our friends from Cypress. We know that this was the main reason that we were directed through Cyprus and we pray that our Lord continues to minister to them.

 

We then crossed over the boarder where we found out that the entire Greece side was on Holiday celebrating the death of Mary. This meant that no buses were running, so we decided to pull up a chair with the police officers on the boarder crossing. After a while and no luck with hitchhiking, we all felt that we were supposed to take a cab to Larnaka that was an hour away on the south side of Cyprus.

When we reached the Larnaca airport we all prayed while Chad went into Cyprus Airlines ticket office. Praise the Lord, the same exact tickets that we were not able to buy over the internet were available to us. Just one thing, we had 36 hours to waste.