Bethel Stu­dents and Fac­ulty Pre­pare for Trip of a Life­time

MISHAWAKA—Bethel Uni­ver­sity of­fers its stu­dents many op­por­tu­ni­ties to travel abroad and see the world, and each one is unique and amaz­ing in its own way. But oc­ca­sion­ally, a trip comes up that is es­pe­cially dis­tinc­tive, and sev­eral stu­dents are plan­ning to em­bark on just such a trip this sum­mer; from May 23 through June 9, they will be ex­plor­ing sev­eral lo­ca­tions in Greece and Turkey. 

Dr. David Mc­Cabe, as­so­ci­ate pro­fes­sor of New Tes­ta­ment, will be co-lead­ing the trip with Dr. Chad Meis­ter, pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy.  

“It started back in 2016 when I first did my first Is­rael trip,” said Mc­Cabe. “I knew from there I wanted even­tu­ally to do Greece and Turkey as well.” 

Mc­Cabe vis­ited Greece and Turkey once be­fore on a sur­vey trip, and he can­not wait to re­turn. 

“Through­out Greece and Turkey, you get the clas­si­cal world,” said Mc­Cabe. “You can be­gin to see some of the ma­te­r­ial cul­tures that shaped things in the Bible.” 

In prepa­ra­tion for the trip, Mc­Cabe is im­mers­ing him­self in read­ing. 

“I am study­ing ga­lore,” said Mc­Cabe. “I’m read­ing both pri­mary and sec­ondary lit­er­a­ture, I’m read­ing an­cient fic­tion... I’m read­ing about the im­pe­r­ial cult, I’m read­ing about an­cient are­nas and am­phithe­aters and try­ing to un­der­stand how sports func­tioned, sports be­ing races or even glad­i­a­to­r­ial com­bat.” 

Mc­Cabe is thrilled with the num­ber of places that they will be able to visit. Some of the high­lights of the trip will be Corinth, Eph­esus, Is­tan­bul and a ferry ride to the Isle of Pat­mos. 

“It’s a longer trip than many we would do for a study trip,” said Mc­Cabe. “I was shocked that we got every­thing that we did get for our itin­er­ary.” 

Mc­Cabe hopes that Bethel will be able to do this trip again, but he be­lieves that this trip will still be once in a life­time. 

“We’d like to do this again, maybe make it an every other year, some­thing like that, of­fer­ing,” said Mc­Cabe. “But I don’t know if we’re go­ing to have an itin­er­ary as rich and full as this one again.” 

Alayna Wort, a ju­nior dou­ble ma­jor­ing in phi­los­o­phy and bib­li­cal stud­ies, is plan­ning to go on the trip. She pre­vi­ously went on the Is­rael trip.  

She said she is look­ing for­ward to mak­ing con­nec­tions be­tween the Old and New Tes­ta­ments. 

“I think it will make (the Bible) come to life more,” said Wort. “I can kind of know what the land­scape was, so I think it will ac­tu­ally en­hance my read­ing of Scrip­ture.” 

She is look­ing for­ward to the tourist side of trip as well. 

“I’m just re­ally ex­cited to see all the dif­fer­ent things in the mu­se­ums, try the new foods, kind of ex­pe­ri­ence what would life have been like for them back then kind of a thing,” said Wort. “What would they have been do­ing, are these the roads they would have been walk­ing on, what would they have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing?” 

Wort be­lieves that every­one should go on a trip if they have the op­por­tu­nity. She said she finds the ex­pe­ri­ences of trav­el­ing to be help­ful for her own per­sonal growth.