Spiritual Drewl

A work of God cannot be stopped. It's amazing to think when we leave the house in the morning and feel the hot Turkish air, that God is doing a work here in and through us. We could be drewling, spiritual drewel of course, but he would still be doing his work!
"The foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men!" 1 Cor 1
Here's a quote P. Joseph Marion shared with us this morning from Spurgeon:
"Little faith will bring your soul to heaven, but great faith will bring heaven to your soul." Amen!!!!!!

(Jediah)

Here's a story, investing in some Turkish friends! It was just amazing how God put this group together. The guy in the middle with the guitar is Taha- (that's the guy who gave us a gift from Egypt last week) So here we are with him and two of his friends from college (the girls- one is a pharmasist and one is a lawyer), one of their brothers just randomly found us sitting there (The guy with the hat) and Ilhan (on the left, the guy we met after getting lost on our way to church). Guess how Ilhan got in this group, we had the wrong phone number for him, but on our way to meet Taha he walked into us in a city of 15 million people. We found out this night that his parents were killed 5 years ago in a car accident.

After drinking a cay (Turkish name for tea, read "tchay) we walked along the water for quite a while and half way there the guys decided to teach me how to danse their traditional danses. It was a blast!

Body life in the office! :) Having fun with P. Joseph Marion-

We have been looking for a team house, please pray for that!

baban nasil?

adinizne, nasilsiniz, kac yasindasin, ................. our head is spinning with turkish!! but what's so cool is that everytime Niyazi teaches us something new, no matter how simplistic, we somehow end up using it that same day. Like this 19 year old young guy that doesn't speak english but jediah, by asking him the 1 new thing we had learnt, ("how is your father?") found out both his parents died when he was 14... so jediah told him he could be his big brother. You should have seen the smile on his face.

... WE FOUND joe murphy’s not so look alike person.

(P.S. Joe requested we make a precision: he looks better than this friend on the picture)

'Kindness of a stranger' continued

last night we met with the guy that 'randomly' gave us a present he had bought in Egypt. Tons to say about how it went, will post soon!!!

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

it's been a while i know... the good thing is that

it made some of you actually WRITE to us!!!

;)

will be posting soon!