Lets see where to begin… team Oasis is off to a great start. We have been in a more rural part of Istanbul for the past four days. We have been doing lots of ATLing here. It has been really good. Heather made a great friend that she has now met and talked with twice. They traded stories and Heather even gave her a Turkish bible. In return she got a tea set and a beautiful silk head covering. Paul made a friend at the mall one day and i went with him the following day to have a more indepth conversation. He told us a lot about the Turkish culture and some “do’s” and “don’ts.” After about an hour of that I brought the topic of religion and that is when he began to shut down. He was a very religious Muslim and didn’t like me asking him questions about it and telling him that we are Christians. I was trying to get him to tell me what the begining of the Koran says but he was freaked out when I pulled out my bible. He left pretty soon after that. I think it was a deep seed that was planted though. Erin has been really bold in her faith. She has gone up to three people. One was a woman in a coffee shop sitting alone. She just asked her some basic questions and the lady had to leave for work. The others were at “Ikea”, yes “Ikea.” She has learned quite a bit about the culture for woman in Turkey. Why they wear the head coverings and what their role looks like in the job place, just to name a few.
While we are not hitting the streets spreading the love, we have been doing some team building. Hanging in the free church we are living in and just trying to really get to know eachother. The church is good for us. Small full kitchen, which makes dinner time a close quarters enviroment. When it comes time to eat we have set up a long table so we can share our stories of the day. Also we have attended two church services, Turkish and then English. Tonight we had a bible study that was led by a 14 year old American girl that has grown up here. Her parents have lived here for 20 years and absolutely love Istanbul. They are some really great people.
Tomorrow we leave for Greece. We are on a hunt for a certain group of people that no one knows where they are in Turkey. We have to go to Greece to find them there and try to get them to tell us where their relatives are in Turkey. Kinda odd but yet an awesome adventure. I am siked!! We leave at 10am and have no idea where we are going to sleep or even end up at the end of the day. We have six or seven places we have to visit and ten days to do it in. Some are even in Bulgaria. I don’t know if we will have internet access along the way so please pray that God shows us where to go and breaks the language barrier. At the end of the month the whole squad will come back together for a big turkey dinner in Turkey. Gobble Gobble 🙂
(Thank you so much to our supporters! We are almost to the goal.)
