2013 A Year in Review:

These balloon salesmen are everywhere
A group of balloons in a heart shape
is a New Year tradition.

This year will go down in my mind as one of the most strange and confusing years of my life.  I truly am trying to understand how this year can be a period of growth and not just 12 months in Turkey.  I cannot deny that we have had some absolutely amazing experiences.  We have accomplished a lot from our perspective, but we have no clue if anyone actually knows or cares about the things we have done. Maybe we need validation or maybe we just need to know we have not wasted our time.

Before I summarize our year, I need to point out the most disappointing aspect of our service here in Turkey.  We are most disappointed that there was no intention for the church to have humanitarian missionaries in this country.  The simple fact that they knew this before we even arrived in 2012 made our hope of humanitarian service extremely disappointing to say the least.  If we had only been told the facts about what was intended for Turkey from day one, we may have been better able to deal with the awkward situation of our mission. 

It has been most difficult to see the tremendous needs of the people and then have to fight for everything we were able to accomplish.  Now we will leave in a few short months and everything we did will simply be forgotten.  No one will even follow up to see that the time, money and energy we spent had any value at all.  We are simply a hand removed from the ocean.  We will not even leave a hole.

Party America
Street vendors setting up shop to sell
hats whistles and sparklers for New Year.

Our year began with a tremendous effort to develop a teaching program and provide materials to support this program for refugee Iraqi children.  Spending time at the Catholic school for these young people was a real treat.  The amazing ability for them to attempt to learn English and prepare for a life in the States was a lot of fun.  It was real mix of joy and an education in the plight of the refugee Christian society in the Middle East.

We were given the opportunity to teach the young men and young women in the Istanbul branch and had a great time establishing the new young men and young women programs.  We had the most amazing group of kids that taught us so much.

We fought and fought and struggled to get the Association of the Church functioning correctly and to meet the legal requirements of an audit by the Turkish government.  Countless hours were spent recreating all the activities and documenting the finances of the organization from 2011 through our arrival in the country.  This legal entity of the Church was a complete and total disaster.  The Church could have been significantly fined and could have lost its legal designation.  This was the most difficult and heartbreaking experience of the entire mission.  We did get things working and completed the governmental audit without incident.  We are still managing the finances and are trying to turn the entire matter over to the local members.

 

Where the sidewalk ends?
This is one of my favorite sidewalks.  See how
it just ends and drops off.  Explain how a
blind or handicapped person would know.
You have to walk into the street to avoid this.
At least you fall onto a rug.

We were blessed to find two projects to serve the old people at two full time care facilities.  To meet and know the Little Sisters of Mercy and the local Jewish community was really great.  We found some great chairs, bed tables and television systems to add to the comfort of the final years of life for some amazing people.

We were asked to move to Izmir and attempt to build a continuing contact with the Church.  Unfortunately the Church decided that it would not expand the missionary effort into Izmir and we were left alone to find people to attend and to find some additional projects.

We took the time in Izmir to break my foot and experience the joy of a Turkish hospital and its fine cuisine.  I will have a limp for the rest of my life to remind me of this adventure.

We met and truly enjoyed teaching about Christ and His Church to several young people and were able to maintain a consistent attendance at Church with visitors and people who vacation in the heat of the sea coast.

We developed a unique and modified program for the distribution of wheelchairs and finally convinced Moscow to allow us to implement this program.  We literally went to the people, fitted them for chairs and distributed chairs to those in need.  We were able to partner with some extraordinary people and will continue the wheelchair distribution through June of next year.  More than 300 wheelchairs will be distributed to a very special element of the population.  This project also encouraged other groups to contribute wheelchairs.

 

Sign says "do not stick your finger in there".
wonder if the bare wires are hot?  Looks fresh.

We supported a sports program for handicapped people and provided many Boccia game systems.  We installed a wheelchair lift into a public school and developed a design that the local city will now pay to install into other schools at the City expense.  We arranged shoes for an entire school of children in eastern Turkey that had never owned shoes.  We did a presentation at a rich school and talked about serving the community.  This school has now raised funds to purchase an adapted van for the handicapped sports team.

The Humanitarian mission then closed and we were moved to Ankara where we are again working with the youth, holding weekly family home evenings for the young adults, teaching an institute class, teaching math, geography, American history and English to a group of Iranian refugees.  We have seen two of our young Iranians join the Church and this weekend one of my students actually gave a talk in English.  It was so cool.

We have experience the best and the worst of the world.  We have seen compassion and complete disrespect.  We have shared in the hope of people and the generosity from surprising sources while seeing complete and total distain from people that we thought would support the work.  We continue to learn that one should never be surprised by anything.

Fresh poured concrete.  No sign, no barrier,
no problem.  Just step in and move on.
Of course why bother to even level it with the
rest of the area.  Just fill the spot.
Welcome to Turkey.

Nori has fixed a million meals for weekly events and learned to overcome the complete and total lack of a decent supply of ingredients.  She says she is tired of being the branch cook, but everyone loves her cooking.

We have learned more about the Middle East than we wish we knew and find ourselves overwhelmed with concern for so many people that we are unable to help.  There are so many lives at risk and people in need.  We can do so little to help.

As we enter a new year, we wish all a very Happy New Year.  Forget the junk in the local news and look to the bigger picture, realize how much you have and how little there is for the majority of the world.  To quote an amazing man, “Try everyday to be a little better”.

We look forward to seeing old friends in 2014, but we will miss and already miss so many of the great people we have met.