Central Asia: Day Three

Today was a way busy day. The Institute team was back together today, and after devotion we went to prayerwalk the bazaar. During the van ride there, we learned to count off in Turkish! It was very exciting. Bir, iki, üç, dört, besh, alti! We also had some good food and talked to some contacts some of our team had made yesterday. Excitingly, today I began to like çay, which is the tea they serve all the time. I don't like tea, but I've been drinking like 7 glasses of this stuff a day, because it's really rude to decline it when it's offered to, and I was really hoping I'd learn to like it, and I finally am! I really wanted to able to be an engaged part of their culture on that front, and now I can be! I think I just usually put more sugar in it than they do. Ah, well. Such is life.



After that we went to the Grand Mosque in town. It was really . . . overwhelming. It was beautiful - gorgeous architecture. But it was such an empty beauty. A temple built to an idol. We took our shoes off and went in, the girls getting scarves to cover their heads on the way. We all went into the men's side of the mosque, which was okay because we were obviously tourists, but I would have rather gone in the women's side, just to get an idea of what it's like for them. Our guide said it was okay to discreetly take some pictures since we were foreigners (these people are so sweet and give foreigners so much grace). I took one or two, but it felt really disrespectful, so I stopped after that. The mosque was very uncomfortable for me. Maybe it's just me being sentimental, but I felt spiritual oppression as soon as I walked in. I looked at all the people praying there and just marveled at how they devote their entire lives to following all this, and in the end it will all turn to ashes in their hands. I want to stop them right there and start telling them about Isa and the peace and joy He brings. It was an overwhelmingly spiritually dark place. It took me a while to shake off the feeling afterward.



After the mosque, we went to visit the only church in town - and old Greek Orthodox church, gated in, that now serves about 40 Protestants in the city. The building was in disrepair, and you could see where people had thrown bricks through windows and other vandalism. Needless to say, by the time we got back to our hotel after lunch, I was feeling pretty overwhelmed and subdued. They gave us free time between lunch and dinner, and Abby and I had some great conversations about gender interaction among Christians and some of our struggles with that. Then, both of us wanting some quiet time with God, we took my Zen (mp3 player) and sat overlooking the city, listening to some worship and just praying over the city for a while. Through that time God really encouraged me that despite (or perhaps because of?) all the darkness in the city, He was there working, and His presence was there, indwelling us. It was a really powerful time.



After that, Kyle, Dan, Julie, Abby, and I decided to wander the city in search of food, set off, and found ourselves in a mostly residential area with no food in sight. So Kyle asked a guy at an apartment building for directions. The man, Mahmet, stopped what he was doing and offered to walk us up to a good restaurant. He was waiting for a friend to phone him to meet for dinner, but he ended up eating with us (he said his friend didn't believe him when he said he was with some American friends :p). He introduced us to some weird dessert that's made out of chicken. It was okay, but it was a strange texture, and it seemed odd to me to have my dessert taste slightly of chicken. Mahment (who doesn't speak English) talked to Kyle through the whole meal and actually invited us to his house to meet his family! I was so excited! It gave us an excuse to interact with women, something we hadn't been able to do much. By now it's like 9.00; we leave the restaurant and go with Mahment back to the apartment complex to finish the job he dropped to take us to dinner, then we all crammed into his little 1970's-ish car and he drove us about 15 minutes up the mountain to his house.

It was breath-taking to see the city span beneath us and above us as we drove up the mountain. I'm a Florida girl, so I'm not used to mountains, and Julie even said something at one point about how a city on a hill cannot be hidden, and I'd never really seen that before, and it was such a cool thing to me to see. It was dark, so there were just lights everywhere, traveling up the sides of the mountains and spanning nearly as far as I could see. It was gorgeous.

Once we reached his house, we went in to meet his wife and two children, sister-in-law and two children, and parents-in-law. They were such a sweet family! You could tell they were thrilled to have us there. They gave us a local pop drink, which he sent his daughters to get once we arrived, then later some nuts, then later some çay, then later some strawberry juice. They were so hospitable. We talked for hours, with Kyle translating between us. Kyle was able to talk to them about Isa, and we all discussed beliefs back and forth, which was so amazing. It was the first time I'd really done house EV. Before he took us back to the hotel, we gave him a NT in his Turkish and some Isa CD's, which hopefully he will watch. He even invited all of us back to his house tomorrow for supper, so hopefully we'll be able to do that and follow up some. I would love to see his sweet family again!

It was so cool because Abby and I had just spent time praying over the city, and literally 20 minutes later, He pretty much handed us this family. It was so direct, and you could just sense the hand of God directing it. It was amazing. I can't wait to see what God does next!