The Fountain of Youth, Pristine Untouched Waterfalls, and Birds of ENORMOUS Size.

I'm really late "editing" this. Sorry.

These incredible pictures which David has posted are from our Sunday trip to Turgen with young pastors from all over the "-stans." Turgen is a mountainous area about an hours drive from Almaty by bus.









Our first stop was the spring called "The Fountain of Youth." How's that for marketing? Appearantly it's quite a tourist destination. Ancient legend claims that an old man and woman became young again after drinking water from this spring. Send me your credit card number and I'll ship you some.
Our second stop was the waterfall. After a climb that really separated our the trekkers from the city slickers we all enjoyed the water and posing for pictures.





Then it was on to the fish farm where you can catch your own fresh fish for $8/lb and have a picnic right there. We hiked away from the people to the back of the property and ate our lunch beside the river. We also took the opportunity to pose in some of the ancient monuments to transportation that were just sitting around.










Our last destination was an ostrich farm. It gets quite cold here and I really felt sorry for these African natives but they seem to have taken to their new environment just fine. I guess their eggs and meat bring in a good profit but charging tourists to see them is probably their biggest moneymaker. While we were there an ostrich laid an egg right in front of us. David and I took the opportunity to pose with the egg. Look mom! Our very first egg!



Finally, the very best part of the trip was spending time with our incredible brothers. On the bus trip back they began singing beautiful Russian hymns. They come from places like Uzbekistan and Tajikstan where all the believers in the whole country would not fill a small church and they live under constant threat of persecution. But there is religious freedom in Almaty, if they cared to sing about Jesus on a public bus they could, and they did. We English speakers could not help joining in when we knew the tune. It was a very blessed weekend.






















Hello Family and Friends. Gina will of course edit this in a few hours but for now I need to get the pictures from our latest journey onto the blog. Enjoy!!!