So do you ever have those thoughts that simply will not leave your mind as hard as you try not to think about them?
Well that happened to me…
The Lord kept on impressing the University of Cannakle on my heart.
“Shelby I want you to go to the university”
(this was on repeat for 2 weeks)
Why? I had absolutely no idea…
But now I do.
I had debated going to the university because it was pretty far away from the place that we were staying. One of the church members who is also a professor at the university informed us one must have a student “i.d.” card to get in, but the Lord had continued to put it on my heart. So I decided the next free day for ministry I was going to go. It just so happened last Tuesday was that day.
MAN, it was quite the adventure with the one, the only, Andrea Potter.
So below is the series of the events that happened yesterday… Probably one of the most epic days I have had on the race.
8:00 – Breakfast
9:00 – Prayer & Worship
10:30 – Started our adventure by heading to the downtown area (I had an unfortunate incident with my phone, so I was going to go get my screen replaced) (and holy heck was it cold outside)
11:00 – Drop off my phone and head to prayer walk.
11:30 – Arrive at a local café and chat. While we were there we prayed over the shop & the people who socialize there.
12:20 – We continue to prayer walk. We walk by a shop that we think has baklava (which is a delicious dessert), we decide to go in and get free samples! It wasn’t baklava but cheese and bread (which was still really good!)
12:30 – Actually find a sweets store and decide to go in. We end up meeting a sweet lady who works there that studied in England for 4 years. She sat down and talked to us while we ate our treats. During that time, she showed us pictures of her home village near the black sea.
1:00 – Go to pick up my phone, and everything is in working condition! (PTL!!)
1:10 – We decide to head towards the university but find out its going to be a two hour walk. (But hey, who doesn’t want to get some extra steps in?! Gotta hit that 10,000 mark) We continue to pray, this time asking for the Holy Spirit to be in us and to lead & guide us.
1:45 – Andrea really needs to piddle so we try to find a bathroom. An older gentleman comes out of nowhere, to say he can take us (just to clarify, all through hand gestures, he speaks zero English). So he proceeds to take us to a mosque and pays for Andrea to go. In the mean time he snaps some quick selfies & then we continue on our merry way.
1:52 – (My phone dies, which is my primary way of directing us the right way)
2:20 – We continue to walk and pray, and I start praying some bold prayers… “Lord, provide us a way to get to the university.” “Lord let people be drawn to the Holy Spirit within us.” We end up running into a free zip line, so of course both of us jumped on the opportunity.
3:00 – We continue walking and see a building that looks like it could be the university. We walk up to a girl at the bus station and ask her if it is the university. She nods her head and says yes.
3:05 – We contemplate a way to get in because we see a security guard and assume you need a student pass to get in.
3:07 – Security guard is distracted!! (Score!!) We slide right on into the building.
3:10 – We begin walking around the building, seeing if any of the students speak English.
3:11 – We approach a girl who tells us that this is not the university, but actually the dormitory in which the students sleep. So we decided to walk around for a bit because there was a reason that the Lord wanted us here.
3:20 – Andrea suggests we walk into “j” block because automatically that makes it “Jesus” block. We begin to pray over the students living area, their lives, and their sleep. (SO POWERFUL)
3:30 – We meet Cigdem. She is a girl walking out of her dorm. We approach her and she asks us what we are doing there… (all through google translate, she does not speak one bit of English!) We tell her we are looking for the university. She says “come, I take you to security”. (Me and Andrea start praying, Lord we trust you… please don’t let us get in trouble)
3:41 – We get to security, and one of the security guard calls her husband to translate for us. (They were all super nice!) They asked Cigdem to escort us to the bus station to get us to the university. (Thanks Lord for answering my prayer!)
3:42 – Outside security finds out we got inside (they weren’t happy)
3:43 – Cigdem walks us to bus station, but voices that she needs to go to work. So she saw two girls heading to the university and asks if they can get us to the university. They immediately agree! Their names are Kirebe & Tuba! (They also speak absolutely no English)
4:01 – We arrive at the university and the girls translate on their phone- “What are you going to do here?” We responded, we don’t know – Just walk around and see the campus! They looked a little confused but then asked if we could follow them. So of course, we did.
4:11 – We arrive in one of the cafeterias on campus where they ask us to wait for 5 minutes. During those 5 minutes, we had two people approach us and sit down at the table with us. (no doubt, HS moving!) They also speak no English (common theme, I know) s/o google translate!!! We chat with them for couple of minutes and exchange contact info.
4:17 – The girls arrive back with one other friend. They proceed to tell us that they are skipping class because they want to spend time with us (which of course we highly discouraged, haha) but they insisted. They also realized my phone was dead & one of the girls had an external charger which she asked if I wanted to use! (PTL!!)
4:25 – We arrive at one of the coffee shops on campus where we meet two of their other friends! So now we have 5 new friends in total! We chatted through google translate for 2 hours – about life, Turkey, dreams, boys, work, friends, religion, and everything in between. Andrea shared with them that the Lord had brought us to them! We even met two of the girl’s boyfriends!
6:30 – Andrea and I know we need to start heading back to meet up with the rest of the team, but we also know we are HECKA far from our destination. Probably 2 hour walk away… We tell the girls we need to go back, and they offer to escort us back and even show us the right stop to get off at!!
6:45 – We get on the bus and head to our stop. While on the bus we snap a couple of selfies & exchange contact info!
7:00 – We arrive at our destination, and while we were getting off the bus one of the passengers noticed that we spoke English. She then proceeded to ask if she could meet up with us sometime! We exchanged phone numbers and then headed on into meet up with the team!
HOLYYY COWW. The Lord was soooo faithful this day!! He not only provided us with absolutely everything we needed for the day (right down to a phone charger!), but blessed us with so many beautiful people along the way. I have no doubt so many people were drawn to us because of the HS within us. We actually got to meet up with the girls we hung out at the university the following week, and have plans to see them again before we leave!
My encouragement is when the Lord puts something on your heart, follow it. He will not do so if He is not going to provide the way. Delayed obedience is still obedience. Put your full trust in the Lord and He will blow you away with His power!
That person He asks you to talk to? Do it.
That mission trip He has put on your heart? Go on it.
That vision He has put on your heart? Go for it.
Take a leap of faith and see what happens.
Below are some pictures of our day, as well as the second meet up with the girls!
VV
