Hello everybody! Wow,
it’s been quite awhile since I last posted a blog, and so much has happened
since then! Right now I Squad is in
Swaziland, Africa. We’ve been here for
about a week now, and I love it! We’ll
get back to that later. First I want to
catch you up on what’s happened in the last month since I posted my last blog.
First off I need to tell you about my squad mate, Tara
Reed. After our conference in Brasov, we
had to go back to Bucharest, and while we were there, she fell and fractured her
pelvis. She had to stay behind in the
hospital while we went on to Turkey. She
is still not back with us, and she might be going home to the States. She has been keeping everyone up to date on
her blog, so if you’re interested, check her out at www.tarareed.theworldrace.org.
We spent the first part of October in Istanbul, Turkey. It was a really amazing experience. Turkey is a closed country, and we were not
allowed to go in as missionaries. We
worked with an organization to study ethnography. There are many different people groups in
Turkey, and the organization wants to find out all they can about the different
people groups so that they can best know how to reach them.
Turkey. According to the organization we
were working with, Turkey is the most lost country on planet earth. On a per capita basis, there are fewer
believers, churches and missionaries in Turkey than anywhere else in the world. The population of Turkey is 72 million
people, and of those 72 million, only 3,600 are Evangelical Christians. There are 64 Christian churches in all of
Turkey, which is fewer churches than million people. Turkey used to be the center of the Christian
world , and now there are only 3,600 Christians out of 72 million people.
For the people of Turkey, becoming a Christian can mean
losing everything. They will be disowned
by their family, they will lose their job, which is often connected to their
family, and they will lose money for school, which is provided by their
family. Honour killings happen, and
Christians are still martyred.
These odds are a little overwhelming, and for a lot of
people, that is enough to make them want to give up trying to reach the people
of Turkey. The people we were working
with think along the lines of long term evangelism. They know that they are not going to see the
entire country of Turkey come to Jesus overnight. They know that it is going to take time and
determination, and they are willing to pour their lives into it. In the natural world, it seems impossible
that Turkey will ever be a country that follows the one, true God, but they
have full confidence that God can work a miracle and change the hearts of the
people.
During our time in Turkey, we had a few different
opportunities. Two of the teams got to
go to a gypsy village and work with the people there. My team and one of the other teams stayed in
Istanbul. Part of what we did was doing
ethnography with the gypsies living in the city. My team went into a gypsy community that has
been there for over 200 years, with over 500 people living within that
community. We found them by accident,
but it took less than a minute before we were invited in and became part of the
family. They are amazing people, and I
know that I will always be welcome there.
relationships with the students there. It was a miracle we were even able to get into the university in the
first place. I.D. is required, and
visitors are not allowed on the grounds, but we walked right by the security
guard every time. We met lots of different people on the days
we spent at the university, and we had lots of opportunities to build
relationships and share the love of Jesus. We found that the people are very open, and so many of them are
searching for truth. We didn’t see any
miraculous conversions, and there was no lightning bolts and thunder, but we
were able to pray into that country and gain some ground for heaven. The walls of lies and deception are still
very high and very strong, but we definitely made our mark, and I believe it’s
only a matter of time before they come down completely.
