4/17/98: Up at dawn for a very sad farewell to Homeros Pensione and Selçuk. Dervish and his family run this hotel like guest are cousins staying in their home for a visit. I hope we get to come back here some day.
4/17/23: Dervish’s mother and his sister Oye, along with her daughter Ezgi, rose early to see Ruth and I off. They packed us a brown-bag meal for breakfast, full of fruit and bread. As we walked out the door and down the street, Oye followed after us sprinkling water on the pavement where our footfalls had been. She followed us around the first couple of corners, calling after us in her limited English, “Don’t go, I am make much crying…” and “Don’t forgetting us, coming back you are next year maybe?” as well as “You can’t leave yet, tomorrow is my birthday!” It was very touching to be so well liked. We felt like we had been adopted by two new families in Turkey, and I still tear up thinking about them all.
We made the ferry in Kuşadası on time. On board we met a family from New Zealand, Roy and Judy T. and their daughter, whose name I can’t recall. Like us, they are Christians doing a brief tour of early Church history while in Turkey and Greece.
Once we arrived on Samos, we set up in a pensione named “Dreams.” We hadn’t planned it this way, but it turns out we arrived back in Greece during Orthodox Easter. So, we found a Good Friday service, but were too intimidated to go into the church. However, we did attend the late night service, called The Epitaph, where each church in town parades to the town plateia, or square, with a mock funeral bier and cross. We marched solemnly along with the parade, and though we couldn’t understand any of the ceremony conducted in Greek, we understood the symbols and mood of Good Friday. In spite of not knowing the language, or perhaps because of that, I felt like I was able to worship and give thanks for Christ’s sacrificial death in a fresh and meaningful way.
