Ruins, Magnum Bars, and other Turkish Adventures

This past week we got to go to Turkey!! We flew out on Sunday Morning and arrived in Turkey Sunday afternoon. We went on a Tour of the Seven Churches, places where Paul preached during his travels. The first day we visited a beautiful local mosque and then visited the beach of Anzac. Anzac is where a lot of soldiers died, but I do not remember in what war.

At Anzac

From here it gets a little hazy...honestly I am the worst at remembering what we did which day, as well as remembering the names of all the places we visited. So I am just going kind of jumble everything that we did into one. We saw a lot of ruins which were very cool--my favorite of which being the city of Ephesus. John lived in Ephesus before being exiled to the island Patmos, and returned there after his exile. Paul wrote letters to Timothy who also lived in Ephesus which we find in the bible. It's so amazing to be able to actually be at these sites that people we read about in the Bible lived and taught, and try to imagine what their life would have been like back then.

Heather and I standing in Ephesus and pointing the exact same picture in the Bible

We also visited the city of Troy! Obviously Troy is where the Trojan War was fought. The soldiers hid in the giant wooden horse to get past the gate of the city...we all know the story. It was cool. And we got a picture with a giant wooden horse.

I am in the bottom right window...Lane and I struggled to fit in one window

 Throughout the rest of the trip we saw more ruins, visited both the famous Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, and ate a ton of delicious food! My new found love are Magnum Bars. Magnum Bars are delicious ice cream bars that come in many different flavors. My favorites are the Double Chocolate (chocolate ice cream, a layer of chocolate fudge, and dipped in delicious thick milk chocoate), and the White Almond (cookies and cream cream cream with white chocolate and almonds covering the outside). Delish! Just a heads up...please don't be shocked when I come home 20 pounds heavier than when I left.

Magnum Bar!!

Outside the Blue Mosque

And that was our Turkey Adventure!! We took a red eye flight back to Israel last night, slept in, and had a short sacrament meeting with just our group this afternoon. It was sad to leave Turkey because seriously it was such a blast, but it was nice to sleep in my own bed again!