Brent Jones, Phd Student at University of Virginia, sharing his experience in Turkey during a trip with RumiForum:
My name is Brent Jones, I am a PhD student at the University of Virginia in American Religious History. Like Mike I agree that, I imagined mostly a group of the Christians or even secular intellectuals travelling around a Muslim country having conversations occasionally with Muslims; but one of the biggest strengths of this trip is that actually we were a blended group in a lot of ways: Muslims, Christians, and different types of Christians, and even secular intellectuals, and so really the good dialog I felt like a lot of best dialog happened on busses and planes, and sitting around talking as we moved between places and that I guess was the biggest strength of the trip. The good news was we were doing that as we were seeing some incredible places. And so anyway that’s what I got most out of the trip. I also really appreciate, this is an odd compliment to give I guess but, seldom do I see things like this where people willing to pay you to have an experience like this without then turning around and asking you for your money in some way (laughs). The down side to that is support one thing, my money is another thing. In America typically request for money comes at some point, and I was expecting that, not upset about it, it was interesting to me that Gulen Movement or RumiForum wouldn’t accept it. Anyway, that was very interesting to me. I was gonna be appreciative anyway but it also made be appreciative to hear that. There wasn’t some sort of an ulterior motive I guess so I appreciate that…