The First Christians

This past week has been filled with fun and encouragement as our dear friend Shelby came for a visit! In honor of his visit we decided to check out a city close to us, Antakya, it is about 2 hours away and most of us know it as Antioch in the New Testament. We had several unexpected adventures, met new friends, and stood in the cave where both Peter and Paul are said to have preached. All in all it was a very long but great day! We started out with a visit to the Orthodox church, there is a small Orthodox community in they city, mostly of Arab descent. It was a beautiful church, however, they were having a funeral so our visit was cut short. We went from there to the Protestant church which is headed up by some Koreans, we left there and went to the Catholic church which unfortunately it was closed until 3 pm! The highlight of our day was by far "St. Peter's Church". It is not so much a church as it is a cave above the city. This is the cave that they believe Peter probably built, but either way both Paul and Peter probably preached here. This is believed to be the church mentioned in Acts 11. In the 1800's they built a facade in front of the cave and added some statues and an alter. There are still a series of tunnels in existence that the early Christians used to escape danger as they met in secret! This is where our adventure of the day begins... We decided to go above the church and check out some of the caves as well a stone carving that dates back before the time of Christ. While we were up there we ran into three guys who offered to "show us around"! They led us to several caves and short tunnels - it was fun crawling around as long as we knew where the tunnel ended. After crawling around inside of the mountain for a few minutes they asked us if we wanted to go to a really long tunnel - we all agreed and began the hike up the mountain. We entered the tunnel hesitantly as it was dark and really small - hands and knees small! We kept on and every so often we would come to a window on the side of the mountain where we could get some air and much needed light. We carried on for another 30 minutes or so and finally came to the way out. I was expecting to just crawl out of the end of the tunnel - but our guides failed to mention that we would need our climbing equipment to get out. When we arrived at the exit we noticed that the only way out was to scale a 20 foot high well! There was no ladder, no rope, not even really any good crevices to hold onto. It is totally by the grace of God that we all made it out unscathed! It was definitely a little scary and touch and go at times as to whether I (jayme) was going to actually go through with climbing out - but we agree now that it was a fun adventure for sure. I have attached a few tunnel and Antakya pictures for your enjoyment!