Turkey (not the animal 🦃, but the country🇹🇷)

Turkey came with a lot of new transitions. I changed roles for the first time and after 6+ months of being a Treasurer, I became a Team Leader to a completely new team. At this point in the Race, all my squad-mates feel like family but being on small teams of 4-6 people cultivates a deeper level of relational intimacy, shared testimonies, experiences, growth and accountability. After just a couple months of being together now, I have already learned so much while growing with my new team. After praying and asking the Lord what season He was leading us into for Turkey and beyond, we agreed upon the name Alabaster based on the idea of becoming more like Mary from the Bible described in Luke 7:36-50, when she washes Jesus’ feet and worships him by pouring out her life, tears, hair and expensive alabaster jar of perfume. We also want to follow her example in Luke 10:38-42 when she chooses what is better than any striving or busy work; to simply sit at Jesus’ feet. This name and prayer for our time ended up being kinda prophetic because we showed up to the town where we were serving in Avanos, Türkiye and were surrounded by ceramic alabaster-looking jars as it is a city famous for its ceramics and jars. We spent the month coming back to sit at Jesus’ feet being boldly vulnerable, praying, and seeking to build communion with God and our team before ministering to others.

Turkey is a mostly Muslim country. We served alongside a local church and pastor that happened to be the only Christian church in all of the region of Cappadocia with a congregation of about 15 people. This was a kinda insane but super cool statistic to be a part of as we sought to grow and serve the local church. We helped the church with cleaning, moving to a new location, yard work, teaching Sunday school, sharing testimonies and encouraging the local body, etc. We were in Turkey during the month of fasting in Ramadan which provided a unique experience learning more about the Islamic faith and practices. We made friendships with multiple sweet Muslim people who welcomed us into their shops, homes, and lives. We had the opportunity to plant many seeds through intercessional prayer and sharing the love of Jesus with these friends. One of our closest friends made was named after light and life and truly had a light demeanor, shining smile & was lively to be around. We had opportunities to learn about her life, family, values, hobbies & Islamic faith and share ours while bonding over shared interests. She invited us into her home for dinner with her sisters and out of the blue in conversation, one of her sisters asked us to pray over her to be healed from depression and for a few other needs she wanted to ask God to provide for. This surprised us as she knew we were praying to Jesus, not Allah but still saw value and power in our prayers & God. We happily prayed over her and the family that night and were able to write notes for each of the sisters with exhortation, Bible verses, and prayers to encourage them as we left. Since leaving Turkey, we’ve been keeping in touch with these friends through WhatsApp and continuing to pray for Jesus to encounter each one of the sisters personally as they seek to know the one true God.

In Turkey, 5 times daily, loud speaker announcements for calls to prayer at the Islamic mosques go off and interrupt conversations and daily tasks. We chose to take this time to pray for the people of Turkey each of those five times in addition to our regular daily intercession sessions. I felt my heart break for so many people living lost in a life based on fear, rules, striving and uncertainty. Seeking to be good enough to please a god who still may not have mercy on them at the end of a life lived sold out for him. It is an especially oppressive faith for women and many of them still continue to follow their faith and family though they believe Allah will likely send them to hell at the end of it all anyways. Allah is not a relational, loving, grace-filled god. The Islamic faith is not just a religion but considered part of the Turkish identity so when a person says yes to Jesus, they risk losing everything; their family, friends, job, safety, culture, etc. New life with Jesus is worth losing everything this world has to offer and being in this country brought a ton of perspective to ways I’ve taken God, my faith, access to the Bible, church, gospel, safety, family and friends for granted over many years of my life. We got to know the local church members & hear multiple testimonies from believers of how the Lord met them and the sacrifices and persecution they have had to endure since making the decision to follow Jesus. None of them regretted the decision though. One man we became friends with even shared that he left an area where he had a larger community of believers to serve in Cappadocia with this lone smaller church because he felt God called him there despite it being a harder, lonelier, more oppressive environment. Places that are dark have even more need for Christ’s light and hope to be shared. Picturing myself in others’ shoes metaphorically helped give perspective & hope for the long process of building trusting relationships and planting seeds of truth & prayer in people’s lives while we were in Turkey. Believing in Jesus as the one true God and leaving everyone and everything else you’ve ever known behind for Him is a big ask. Many people hear the gospel and explore the Bible and Christianity for years before they finally feel ready & trust that they know God & his people well enough to make the decision to choose Him. The Lord is speaking to many Muslim people through dreams and visions appearing as a man in white. The Lord is loving, patient, intentional and doesn’t force Himself on anyone so we sought to do the same too. We experienced incredible Turkish hospitality and got to love, listen and pray for a lot of amazing people these past couple months.

Another sweet friendship we got to form was with the owner of a local family-run rug shop. This man has been visited in previous years by multiple World Race teams who have built relationships with him and planted seeds of the gospel and within 5 minutes of myself and a teammate arriving in his shop saying hello, he invited us inside to have tea with him and we stayed for 3 hours. He spoke incredible English so we asked him where he learned it from and to our surprise, he shared that most of his English lessons came from listening to Joel Olsteen sermons and reading the Bible before falling asleep each night! We were shocked but excited as it opened the door for us to hear more of his life story and faith journey. He shared that he was raised in a Muslim family and had looked into many faiths and ultimately came to the conclusion of believing in evolution but if he were to choose a religion it would be Christianity. He found when he read the Q’uran and other religious books or doctrines the writings were full of commands and demanding un-loving gods but when he heard stories about Jesus and read the Bible, he found that the Christian God was loving, peaceful and cared for His people. My teammate and I were both able to share some testimonies of God’s presence in our lives and life stories. This whole interaction was encouraging and a direct answer to prayer as we had prayed before walking in the shop for open hearts, walls broken down and deep connections cultivated quickly and ended up experiencing exactly that through this new friendship. We were able to relate on a similar hardships and joys experienced in our lives and how Jesus had given hope through it all. We had to leave within a week of meeting him so we didn’t get to meet again but we did start a groupchat on WhatsApp and continue to pray for him. Please pray that the Lord would continue to reveal Himself to this man as he reads the Bible and listens to sermons each night and that more Christians would come and share God’s love & gospel with him.

 

A couple more Turkish memories:

While spending the day with a family from the local church practicing English, we went for a hike and ran into a guy who needed help because his van was stuck in deep mud. The guy was traveling across countries living in his van and spoke German as his first language, English as his second. It worked out perfectly that one of our church friends we were hiking with was from Austria, living in Turkey, so he spoke enough German, Turkish and English to bridge the communication gap for all of us to help dig his van out of the mud and call a tractor to tow him the rest of the way out. We were able to pray for God’s protection, blessings, and presence to meet the guy before sending him on his way and ended up exchanging info and hiking 10+ miles with him a couple days later too.

One of the guys I shared about in my Romania blog that my teammate and I met with a couple times in Romania has continued our conversations over Instagram and we were able to catch up over a phone call while in Turkey. It was a great opportunity to get to know him better, hear how he was doing, and learn more from his experiences with the Islamic faith practices, his family, and fasting for Ramadan. We had discussed our different faiths very openly during our last meeting in person and over this call, he asked more questions about what I believed and why and I was able to share the gospel with him. It was a cool reminder from the Lord that just because we’re only in each country for a short time on this trip, that doesn’t mean our friendships have to end and the Lord can bring good from every interaction, no matter how short or small!

I don’t want to bore you with all the details, but I could share a lot more about Turkey. We hiked a lot, toured dozens of cave churches and an underground city that used to house ancient Christians fleeing Roman persecution, rode in a hot air balloon, got invited to a garden bbq party where we were dropped off for a few hours in the desert making salad and peeing outside cause there were no bathrooms until our hosts joined us again and we shared tons of delicious food and played UNO until midnight—it ended up being one of our favorite crazy memories. We also drank an unbelievable amount of Turkish tea, ate lots baklava, held lots of cats in restaurants, went to a hair museum (you heard that right, a museum full of people’s hair dangling from the narrow walls and ceiling—it was pretty gross) and last but not least, I got to see my little brother Gabe and meet his team as they were serving in the same part of Turkey and we all got to stay together for a couple days.

Thank you for reading this far and continuing to support and pray for me. I truly would not be where I am today without all your support and influence in my life. Please continue to pray for the people of Turkey, those that already know the Lord to be renewed in strength and courage as they continue to live out Christ’s example loving & sharing with their family, friends and neighbors. For God to send more people to serve in the local church and add to the supportive community of the current leaders so they can be relieved of some of their current burdens. Please pray for those that are lost & don’t know Christ yet, that they would continue to search for hope and truth and God would reveal himself to them as the one true, loving God through dreams, visions, His Word, His people and any other way He sees fit!

Love you all!

Fran