Describing vs Seeing

Cold! Today was really cold! I never expected Turkey to be this cold!

After a sweet rest in our hotel with an amazing view, we started our journey to Ephesus. Ephesus was about only 20 minutes away from our hotel. We left our hotel at 8am and it was freezing. When we arrived in Ephesus around 8:25, it was still freezing. When we arrived in Ephesus, we were amazed by two things. First, there were literally ‘no one’ in the very famous historic tourist spot and second, it was really cold. It was -3 degrees Celsius with strong wind. We tried to keep ourselves as warm as possible and started our tour. But cold couldn’t stop us from learning! And it was so great to have no people around except just us!

Ephesus, the great city during Paul’s time, was indeed a big city. Huge theater, wonderful streets, fancy houses and breathtaking size of temples amazed our eyes and minds. We read the passage from Acts 19, which describes what happened to Paul when he was in Ephesus. The passage came to reality as we read it on the exact spot where it happened. We had students’ presentation in Ephesus on Acts 19. I happened to be one of the presenter. I’ve read 4 different commentaries to understand Ephesus and the background of Acts 19. But it can’t be compared to actually being in Ephesus. Being in Ephesus gave me totally different level of understanding the scripture.

After 4 hours of being in historic site of Ephesus (most of the time, we were the only tourists around the site!), we went back to hotel for worship service. Dr. Weima preached on Letter to Ephesian Church from Revelation. It was so amazing to read what we just saw and walked on.

Overall, it was just WONDERFUL experience in Ephesus with great people and great teacher. Cenk said tomorrow will be as cold as yesterday. But even freezing whether can’t stop us!

- Jinsol