I was reflecting last night that this area of the world has had tremendous Christian history and yet there is little evidence of such these days. The call to prayer from the mosques remind us regularly that this is a Muslim area although we see very occasional Muslim dress. Istanbul certainly had a much more obvious population of Muslims as seen by women wearing various hijabs, niqabs and burqas.
I thought I would search for a church in Bodrum with the possibility of attending today and I found Bodrum Grace Church, next to the Otogar (bus station) which looked easy enough to find and had a service at 11.30AM.
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| Bodrum Grace Church |
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| A humble gathering |
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| Entrance to the room where the church assembles |
Karl, Annika, Luke and I walked in the direction of the church and finally were directed through what appeared to be a private courtyard and upstairs to the tiny church. In an upstairs room there were 9 people singing familiar worship tunes in Turkish. I was overcome by what I would say was a deep spiritual sense and tears streamed uncontrollably down my cheeks for that worship song and the following song of praise which was in English. This tiny fellowship of Christians representing God's people in this old city of rich heritage meet every Sunday. The sermon was Matthew 7:12 "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you" and given in both Turkish and English.
We were welcomed to their community meal which happens on first Sunday of the month - today! There were two English couples who had retired in Bodrum, Susan from Singapore (who did the English translation of the sermon) and is married to a Turkish local and a few Turkish families. We had a lovely lunch and chat to the lovely people of Grace Church and were so glad to have gone there.
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| In the fellowship room - Psalm 18: 1-2 |
The day was lovely, the first day of spring, and we walked down to the shores of the Aegean and around the backstreets.
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| Checking out the clear waters of the Aegean Sea |
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| Dog man again! |
Tim had stayed home to do schoolwork and we walked back up our hill to join him. To make it a "proper" Sunday, Annika thought we needed a treat! So, cheap 1 Lira ice cream cones at Burger King fitted the bill on our late afternoon stroll. Karl and I declined but we all enjoyed the view over the sea from the upper storey at Burger King!
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| Room with a view - Burger King! |
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| The castle and yachts |
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| Grandeur! |
A relaxing evening with dinner on our laps watching: Peabody and Sherman end our weekend. Annika declared that it felt like a real weekend, so I guess that's good!
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| Sunset... |
Hi Hjrkeesman, İ trust that you are well? What a lovely blog about Bodrum Grace Church. İ just wanted to let you know that we have now moved to the Oasis Shopping Centre in Bodrum which is near to Gumbet. The Church is from 11:30 to 13:00 and in order to find the Church just look out for Starbucks and then we are below that in the conferance centre.
ReplyDeleteİ have updated Google places however unfortunately we have not been able to update our old website. Your blog comes up really high on google searches so is it possible to put a note at the beginning of your blog so that people have a better chance of finding us?
OK...title adjusted....hope that helps!! We are now back in Australia. Funnily enough, we just shared about our time in Turkey with our small group from our church as we are studying Ephesians. We took a short side trip to Selcuk and Ephesus from Bodrum as you'll see later in my blog. i actually thought Google plus had taken down my blog a month or so ago. I only wrote it for our year of travels in 2015. Blessings to your church community. We remember it fondly. Helen Keesman
ReplyDeleteHi Helen, thank you so much for adjusting that it really helps us out...
ReplyDeleteOh nice one.. Hopefully we will have some visitors from your church then :) Ephesus is amaizing..
İ think things like this stay on Google for a long time.
Thanks once again