Tuesday May 27th, 2008

Sabah al-Kheer,

This will be short, but I wanted to answer a couple questions from Jeremy and tell of my new found Syrian friend and his wonderful family.

I do believe Bab Touma is named after the disciple. I will try to find out though. It could have simply been a later saint revered in either Syrian Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, Syrian Catholic, or Maronite churches.

I finally got to meet up with Roy, who is a Christian brother here in Syria that my friend Stefan has built a relationship with and made sure I had the chance to meet. He introduced me to his family and invited me to stay for lunch. His family is so nice and hospitable, and I'm sure I will end up visiting them frequently throughout my time here. Roy's wife Zuka even invited me to come over and cook with her, learning new recipes and drinking Arabic coffee. She was relieved that she has finally found a friend who likes Arabic coffee and with whom she can enjoy it with. After lunch Roy took a couple of his friends and I to two small villages outside of Damascus, Saidnaya and Ma'rra. At Ma'rra I was able to see a cave called Mar Yas which is traditionally the place where Elijah is said to have resided during a long period of time (a different story than when he was said to have been near Mt. Sinai). After that we went to the village of Saidnaya, which means "the hunting of the deer." There is a 5th century monastery which has been restored since then (obviously) which was said to have been built by emperor Justinian. A mosaic within the monastery tells the story of how Justinian and his army were wandering the Damascus region on a hunt and Mary (the mother of Jesus) is said to have appeared and commissioned him to build a monastery dedicated to her Son. He did just that.

The Christian community in Syria is quite larger than what I expected and to my knowledge do not experience too much persecution if any. I would go as far as to say that they practice their faith as freely as the Muslim population here, although on a much smaller scale of course. I hope to be able to find a church to attend soon. Roy has recommended a few and I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of the churches offer night services. This works out great because the Christians has service on Sundays, however my school schedule runs on the Muslim weekly schedule meaning that Sunday is Monday on which I have class.

Salaam,
Jon