Mar Mattai and Jerwan

 Mar Mattai

This was a beautiful Christian family that we met in the Mar Mattai Monastery.

They live in Mosel and said it was very safe for Christians. The lady standing to my left spoke very good English and was an English teacher at the University in Mosel. Little did they know that in just a few week they would be driven from their homes by ISIS terrorist under threat of death. They lost every material thing they owned and had to flee with nothing but the clothes on their back. My heart aches for them. 

Walter and Peggy are visiting with Mosel Christians who came to worship at the Monastery for the Holy Day.

We stopped for a few minutes at the Christian Church in Mir Ki to see our friend Zaka. We brought him a picture of the Savior and the Book of Mormon in Arabic. He received it very well and Jon gave him a and his family a lesson on Lehi and his family. 

Zaka was so enthralled with the Book of Mormon that he totally ignored us while he read the first few pages of the Book of Mormon. It was an incredible experience and I hope that the Lord will watch over them in this dangerous time.

We had a nice visit with Zaka and his family and then he took us into the church to see the little class that was being held for the children.

Jerwan 

After a visit to Duhok to see the Tiari's for the last time we stopped at the Jerwan aqueduct. It was in the middle of nowhere and recently considered safe from land mines.

Jerwan is a locality north of Mosul in the Nineveh Province of Iraq. The site is clear of vegetation and sparsely settled.

The site is famous due to the ruins of an enormous aqueduct crossing the Khenis River, constructed of over 2 million dressed stones and using stone arches and waterproof cement. Some consider it to be the worlds oldest Aqueduct, predating anything the Romans built by five centuries.

The Aqueduct is part of the larger Atrush Canal built by theAssyrian king Sennacherib between 703 and 690BC, to water Ninevah's extensive gardens, with water diverted from Khenis gorge, 50km’s to the north.

An inscription on the Aqueduct reads:

"Sennacherib king of the world, king of Assyria. Over a great distance I had a watercourse directed to the environs of Nineveh, joining together the waters.... Over steep-sided valleys I spanned an aqueduct of white limestone blocks, I made those waters flow over it."

Some scholars, believe the legends of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were actually Sennacherib’s extensive gardens in Nineveh, not Babylon. 

Walter and Jon on top of the aqueduct.

 Cuneiform writing