Days 1 & 2 – Sunday-Monday, September 5-6 – Depart for Greece
Our day of departure finally arrived. God brought together 23 for this revised Greece-Turkey-Italy tour of biblical proportions. Flying out a few departing cities, most in the group met at the Athens Airport, while some met us in Thessaloniki (modern name for Thessalonica). Seventeen of us who met in Athens barely made our flight to this northern city. Aliki, our guide, flew with us.
“I really looked forward to the day of arriving in Greece. I can’t wait to see all these biblical sites that will connect us to the Book of Acts and Paul’s mission journey.” –Tour Member-
Upon arriving, we loaded our bus for a brief city tour of Thessaloniki. This is a town of 1.3 million (Greece has a total population of about 13 million). It is Greece’s second largest city next to Athens (5 million). We drove around the city seeing the White Tower (that dates back to the Byzantine Period (although re-used as a prison much later in the Ottoman Period), the Forum (where we read from Acts 17 about Paul, Silas, and a local resident of Thessalonica named Jason), and the Greek Orthodox Church called St. Demetrius. We’ll see the acropolis of the city at the end of the day tomorrow.
We are all thankful for God’s protection in travel, and we look forward to this “footsteps of Paul” trip together.
