#3 Made it (By Grandpa)

Dear Grandchildren,

We made it. With our very heavy suitcases and carry on bags. We had to pay for our second pieces of luggage, of course, to be taken on our trip. But we expected that. Those heavy bags have been the bug-a-boo in a couple of situations. First, we have had to rent carts everywhere we have gone—at the Salt Lake airport, in the airport where we arrived, in the final airport to get our stuff out and into a taxi (spelled Taksi here because Turkish does not have an "x" it its language). Fortunately, the day before we left I found a two Euro coin in a drawer from a trip long ago and put it in my pocket. When we arrived in the country, that coin rented a luggage cart. Sweet.

Second, when we were taken to the apartment where we stayed three nights, we had to muscle those heavy bags up two and a half floors to the apartment—there is no lift or elevator in the building. Not so sweet. That was after muscling them up a long flight of stairs to get from the roadway, where the taxi van stopped, to the apartment building. A couple of people, especially one of the SVs, helped us with that task. If he hadn’t, those bags might be sitting there still.

Third, when we finished the zone meeting Friday, we took four of the YVs to the apartment to take our bags out to the waiting taxi van. Once again, if I had had to carry those bags to the taxi, I might still be there. But those fellows just hefted them, flew down the stairs, and carried them along the shaded path to the waiting van.

We seem to have been moving non-stop since we arrived. The first full day we were generously shown some of the local attractions by one of the women—the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. For two hours in the afternoon we were treated to a boat cruise up the Bosphorus. The next day we were met by a couple and taken to the Chora Museum which consists of an early Christian church decorated by impressive mosaics and paintings that have survived until today. Some conclude that this church was first built in the fifth century AD. The decorations were most interesting to me.

Friday was moving day from the big city to our final destination. Luckily, we were not charged extra for our bags because another couple went with us and took two of our suitcases as their own. Our taxi driver from the airport was a very good man and showed us the highlights as we drove into town. Our hotel room is very nice and has a walk-in shower of all things. Yesterday we went to visit a man who is the father of a couple of church members. It was an important meeting. We went to see him for thirty minutes. At that point, he donned his baseball cap and pronounced himself ready to go with us. So he went with us to a couple of important archaeological sites near his town. We were finally acting as volunteers by spending much of the day with him.

When we were at one of the archaeological sites, we met a family of three: she was from Germany, he was from Antioch and their son was born in the States. The son is a big baseball fan, especially of the New York Yankees. Before we parted ways, I told him to look out for Taysom Hill of BYU who would be playing on ESPN this coming fall. I hope that it planted a seed in his mind.

I love you and pray for each of you.

Grandpa

This is grandmother at the end of this. We think of both of you (Parker and Tanner), wondering how you are doing in the trenches. Now we realize how hard all of this "volunteer" work is. You are amazing to be surviving in your environments. Tanner, we are almost directly North of you. Parker we are almost directly East of you, and Scottie will soon be directly South of Parker and west of Tanner. So we have the four-corners covered. We love you!!!!