Home!

We are home to the peace and tranquility of NZ! Last Monday we flew from Kos to Athens to Dubai with an 8 hour stop over. Then it was the 21.5 hour long haul Dubai-Bangkok-Sydney-Christchurch. The flight was normal long haul of cramped boring hours. No dramas. With all that we managed to be kept awake for 30 hours before we hit the pillow at Ben and Caroline's in Christchurch. We took two days to drive to Invercargill staying with Tabi and Adam in Dunedin, arriving in Invercargill Friday afternoon on one of those brilliant warm and sunny Southland days. The picture is of the Oamaru Harbour sea wall.

The house was all intact, the mail piled on the table, the cat still alive and well feed thanks to mother-in-law Ruth who staked the place out while we were away. We had a meal dropped off to welcome us back - and it was so good to be home. We have spent the weekend resting trying to allow the body clocks to reset, which I think we have eventually achieved. It was good to catch up with folk at church, listen to a great message that was relevant to what we experienced in the Middle East.

Helen has started work again going into a new premises with both old and new people to work with, and I am at home about to begin work on my study leave report, which I aim to have complete by the end of my study leave period. Last time I lingered a bit and it took months to finish - not this time.

Summarising our journey. We have both learnt so much about ourselves and we have both changed through our observations and experienes. We were challenged by cultures different to our own. We saw the reality of Islam as the dominant reality in Jordan and Turkey. We saw the best and nearly worst of humanity, and felt the oppression of people hating people that they easily expressed through the desire to see the death and detruction of the other. The shadow of ISIS was always present and no one is safe from their brand of radical Islam. We had the Bible stories we are so familiar with contextualised by seeing the geography and experiencing the arabic way of thinking that is still similar to how the OT characters are protrayed. The Christian Church is a very small minority in Jordan, Israel and Turkey and although their expressions of worship is alien to us, they are resilient in an openly hostile environment as they have survived 1000 years of presecution. It was fascinating to listen to their survival strategies that have seen them survive as they have as they wrestled centuries ago with "do we go to war?" or do we follow the teaching of Jesus and not take up the sword. I think they have a lot to teach us in NZ as politians who have not really been faced by enemies who can't be negotiated with seek your destruction and armchair theologians regurgitate old theories of just war verses pacificism debate whether NZ should join the fight against ISIS - but now I'm getting onto my study leave report.

Spiritually the journey has changed us. Galilee was special as was Patmos. Personally the visit to Galipoli ticked a buckey list box.

This is the last blog. Many have said they have enjoyed travelling with us. This was indeed the trip of a life time.