Bed Head. Ankara Oct. 5th

The PTT, (post office).  this is the center of commerce in Turkey.  Every bill and nearly every transaction has some reason to visit the PTT.  Oh, the lines are never ending.  Shortly after I took this picture, a verbal fight broke out and the people went verbally crazy.  They were very mad because the line just go longer and never shorter.  They were screaming and yelling and some just left angry, but along came a woman with a child in a stroller and they all backed up and let her go to the head of the line.  The respect for children and old people is never ending.

What is said is not important.  What is not said is important.  This is actually not my original thought, but one I read in a book somewhere.  It struck me as being the essence of what I will call perfect and proper thought and speech in an environment of compliancy.  A place where order and submissiveness is prized over honesty and reality.  Rather than ever discussing the cold hard facts, we prefer to exist in a surreal environment where tradition and practices reign supreme to practicality and common sense.  Obedience to a benign rule is more praiseworthy than the success of the over all intent or objective.

 

Perhaps this is the only truth.  The love of a
father and his child.  The stories I could share
about these two could fill volumes.  Iranian
refugees.  We truly love these people.

The underlying question is actually, “What is truth?”  Perspective is an individual source of information.  Truth should be the absolute information, but can truth actually exist in the midst of individual perspective?

It is not fitting for a believer, man or woman, when a matter has been decided by Allah and His Apostle, to have any option about their decision: if any one disobeys Allah and His Apostle, he is indeed on a clearly wrong path.

Surat-ul-Ahzab (33-36)  (Copied from the Internet and not intended to be an opinion or point of contention.  This is just as it appears on the web. A statement.)

Where are Socrates and Plato when one really needs to practice the art of philosophy?

Seeing religion and life everyday brings never-ending questions to my mind.  Truly living among a different culture and experiencing new thoughts and expectations is without doubt the education and benefit of this experience, but it confuses my base.  I continue to wonder if I am actually learning anything or just forming new opinions that will never be considered true or real to the mind of someone who has not shared the experience.  Of what value is knowledge if it cannot be shared or if it is not believed as a truth?

 

Sharing experiences about life is a blessing.
Names withheld per instructions.
We were looking at old wedding and war photos
from Iran with our BFF.

If you have come to the conclusion that I have way too much time on my hands, you are experiencing truth.  I have far too much time on my hands.  As an MLS missionary, we have been told that our job is to love the people and to focus on the young single adults.  We have been instructed that we are not to teach investigators in a class setting so our effort to teach in our assignment as Institute Instructors is only for the members.  We can invite everyone to our weekly Young Single Adult Family Home Evening, but currently we have only 1 investigator.

So the time demands for our mission is to hold FHE (family home evening) weekly and for me to teach Institute weekly and Nori to teach Young Women weekly.  In other words, our mission is exactly what everyone in the church does everywhere in the world; hold a position.  Our current assignment is exactly the same time demand as we had while living in the comfort of the United States.

 

This is in Panora Mall.  Just wondering if
the upgraded foothills mall will have a Mescit?

We do get to work with some amazing young people who have experienced some personal trials beyond the comprehension of the young minds in the States.  We are learning so much about the rest of the world and getting a harsh dose of reality.  The plight of the world outside the states is a huge burden for the individual to carry.

Unfortunately I am spending too much time lying on the couch, getting daily bed head and watching the evasion of truth in the US Congress and the White House.  How confusing to hear polar opposite opinions of what are supposedly the facts.  I am consumed with thoughts of what is truth and what is opinion and where are the facts?

Ataturk and pigeons on a horse.  Ankara is full of
Ataturk statues.  One could get a picture of him doing
any and everything.

The weather is changing here in Ankara and the leaves have turned color and began to fall.  The “Villa” is growing cold at night and the temperatures are now below freezing during the night.  Daytime is pleasant with 50 degrees and mostly sunny.  My thoughts have returned to a year ago when we were anxiously starting to pack and line up the details of this life adventure.  Oh how excited we were.  We were waiting for all our family to come for our grand send off and trying like crazy to learn a few Turkish words.  We could only see the promise of a remarkable opportunity and could not wait to be fully engaged.

I would like to share more personal experiences and I wish I could report that we are having tremendous spiritual events, but the restrictions and limitations prevent us from reaching much beyond the boundary of our Utah Branch that is just coincidently located in Turkey.

We are Skyping and teaching a family in Izmir and their growth in knowledge is exactly what I thought our work would be, but unfortunately we cannot encourage baptism and simply building a friendship that will disappear after we leave is too hard to think about.

I am truly sorry for my lack of positive perspective.  I have hope, but it is limited.

I love this support.  I always wonder if the supporting branch came from the tree that provided the seed for the
new tree.  I can picture the mother tree giving a branch to hold up the baby tree.  Where are the steel posts and wire?