Monday, August 20, 2007

week 3 updates....

...we have been having nocturnal visitors.....stray cats! (not yet able to decide what our best option is: close the windows and suffocate or take the chance to find an unwelcomed intruder in our bed...) thank God they haven't tried going into our bed room yet, just the LR! we'll talk to the landlord about screens, oh yeah, musquito screens would be great as we get eaten up every night...

P. Jozsi Marian is here (after his trip to Iran, afghanistan etc) it's great to have him around. We are very excited about having him and his family here!!!!!!!

P. Matti is in Italy for a week. (There once was a church in Italy that supported a missionary to Turkey, one day they decided to visit. The missionary called them asking them not to come because of "persecutions and difficulties with the government", they still came to find that there was no work going on, no pastor to be found. After recovering from their shocking discovery, they came accross P. Matti 's number and asked if someone in his church might speak their language. A pastor from Romania 'happened' to be visiting; they connected, and ended up inviting P. Matti to someday visit their church and build them up.)

We are continuing with our Turkish classes, increasing to 2 hours a day when possible. How exciting to learn a new language, and Turkish has tons of borrowed french words. Almost every day we meet a new person that we get a phone number for ("Telefon numaraniz kac?") and plan to meet again at a later time. Turkish people are so friendly and ever so patient and encouraging with our beginners Turkish.

There are 2 precious Congolese who come faithfully to the sunday morning service. Sarah translates into French for them and we sometimes sing the verse of a song in French for them, just to see their faces lit up is all worth it! Africans are so miserable here, it just breaks our heart. We'll have them -John and Astrid- over for dinner this week.

There's also a guy from our neighborhood who used to live in NY. After talking for 15 mn he said he wanted to have us over for coffee to 'hear our stories'. God knows we have 'stories' for him!


Watching wednesday night service!
I had so much fun watching this lady drop down a basket to the local grocer,
and pull it back up a little later filled with the items she purchased!
that's one smart way to shop when you live on the 5 or 6th floor with no elevator!

Jediah painted this view of Ortakoy for our guests
from Baku, Yann and Zlata.

Sadek just entered the meeting room during song service -
his Bible is securely camouflaged in the news paper.

Back of our meeting room


Niyazi giving an intro
Niyazi says: 'I am going to treat you like a 'typical' Turkish husband',
which really intimidates Irada.

Jediah and Niyazi enjoying their day off on the beach.
On our way to one of the Princes Islands

7 comments:

Andrew said...

Photobucket is the easiest way I found to add vid clips to blogger. Create an account in photobucket, upload your video there and share the file to your blog. It's really pretty easy and the instructions are clear. I did it first try with no problem. You can see an example on our blog http://andrewmisty.blogspot.com/. Just scroll down and you'll see my little guy hitting a baseball. Anyway, great to hear about your happenings, "visitors" at night etc. The pic of the gentleman hiding his bible was quite gripping no pun intended. Cool painting Jediah, well done! You guys are awesome!
-Andrew

Dad Tang said...

sprinkle some pepper on your window sills it might arouse their curiosity. Cheese cloth is just as good as a screen. Thanks for the nuts, quite good. You could be a starving artist and after you're dead they would sell for thousands. Read psalm 19

htanguay said...

you've got some great pictures here, i love the one of the lady with her basket the color of the buildings is so different. And the one of Jediah sitting in the ocean is pretty cool, and sarah on the boat. The people there seem extremely friendly, oh ya i do remember that ;)

htanguay said...

oh and i love your painting Jediah! paint me one too ;) you know if you have time, love you guys, im wearing your Instanbul shirt today

Jedi & fam - once upon a time lol - not anymore said...

Hayley, our building is actually painted pink!!!

Jedi & fam - once upon a time lol - not anymore said...

thanks Andrew!!! will try it!

Jedi & fam - once upon a time lol - not anymore said...

thanks Andrew!!! will try it!