Day 5 - Adana to Konya

I'm pretty worn out, so this post will be pretty short. We stayed the night in Adana last night, then our first stop was in Tarsus. Tarsus was the city that Paul was from (Saul of Tarsus) It was cool, they have uncovered a road there that is from the 1st century, Paul probably walked on it at some point.

There is also a gate there called Cleopatra's gate. Tarsus has a gate named after Cleopatra because Tarsus is the city where Cleopatra and Mark Antony met. Shakespeare describes their Tarsus meeting at the beginning of Mark Antony and Cleopatra. There was also an old mosque in town that the muslims say has the grave of Daniel the prophet. Muslim tradition says that he died and was buried in Tarsus.

Then we drove on through Iconium (modern day Konya) and on to Lystra. The drive from Adana through Tarsus to Iconium is about 350 miles. And the road runs along pretty much the same path that Paul woudl have taken. But instead of by bus, he did it on foot.

The drive crosses over a mountainrange and runs along inside the mountians for most of the trip. It was beautiful, there was snow pretty much the whole way. Growing up in Tarsus and living in Antioch, Paul must have been a guy that liked the mountians.

Iconium we will see most of tommorow, it was a place where he and Barmabas stopped on his first jouney. The were run out of town by the Jews and they went on ot Derby and Lystra. Lystra is the town where the people thoguht they were gods and they brought out animals to sacrafice to them.

Ok, so I fell asleep writing this last night, and I only have a few minutes to post this before we load the bus. So up top is a picture of the mountians that we drove through and Paul would have walked through. Two more interesting things to say, Lystra is in the middle of nowhere, and it was in the middle of nowhere in the 1st century. But Timothy was from Lystra, so no matter where you are from, God can use you. And second interesting point, Konya smells like a fireplace, even inside of our shower.

As always thanks for reading,

Daniel