#64 "Almost" (By Grandpa)

Dear Grandchildren,

All of us have enough experience to know that things don’t go the way we think they will. That rule applies to a lot of events in our lives. Schooling. Families. Employment. Church service. And so forth and so on. It is doubly or trebly true in the Middle East and areas close by, particularly Turkey. The old expression rings true – It ain’t over ‘til it’s over. Around this country, which has been beset by suicide bombings and car bombs and attacks on police stations and the like, people are nervous. As you know, there was a terrible, murderous series of explosions in Brussels last week. Those events have impacted people’s lives here. They have led the government to put in place a no-travel restriction on refugees for the next six months. They are not to leave the city or area where the government has located them, except to travel to Ankara or Istanbul for official business and the like. Here is the deal.

Our YVs have been teaching by Skype a refugee who lives in a distant city. He has progressed enough that they had set a baptismal date in our town for today, Easter Sunday. In preparation, I sent my first counselor to a town by the sea to learn whether the beach and nearby restaurant are open. I went to the hotel where we meet to find out whether we could use the pool and, if so, what the cost would be. The YVs put on a full-court press to get this fellow ready. They arranged for a hotel and put down a deposit. My first counselor and I arranged to bring him from his apartment (actually, his apartment is hardly an inviting living space) because we were to meet another family in that town yesterday about an important matter. Sister Brown had gathered foods and had begun to prepare a luncheon for those who would attend the baptism. Then, the no-travel restriction hit. The baptism candidate went to the police for a permit to come and, of course, was denied. One of the officers told him that he could come anyway and would "probably" not get into trouble. But the dye was cast because the Church is not in the business of doing things that are, or may be, against the law. So all of the probing and gathering and planning went you know where. We shall see how things look in a couple of weeks. It is now likely that we will have to find a place near his apartment for a baptism. We know of a lake that might do. It will be cold, I am sure. Why does that matter to me? Because he has asked that I baptize him. More later in this saga, I am sure.

Last Sunday evening I gave a fireside by Skype to the SVs in the next mission over. The topic was the last week of the Savior’s life. The connection from my end was fine. They could hear me. But I could not hear them. One after another, I saw seniors come to the laptop in their facility to try to fix the audio problem. (No nineteen-year-olds were available.) Extending their fingers, they touched this, they pushed that; craning their necks, they looked and looked at the keyboard and the screen. No one succeeded in making them heard. Fortunately, our YVs introduced me to the feature that allowed the MP and me to write messages to one another. He wrote me that they were going to have an opening prayer. So I bowed my head, hearing nothing. When it was clear that the assigned person had finished saying the prayer, the MP wrote to me to begin. I did. Through the course of the next ninety minutes, I felt that something was lost because there was no real opportunity for any of them to ask questions. But I pushed on, covering the ground that I had said I would cover. I brought it to an end and we waved good-bye to one another. I learned later from the MP that the YV assistants had muted the microphone in the laptop so that I could not hear anything on my end. Hmmm. That sounds eerily familiar to our occasional experience after our YVs had been handling our devices, particularly early on.

We were nineteen today in our Easter Sacrament Meeting. Twelve of those people joined us by Skype, six of them Farsi speakers from near Ankara who cannot travel because of their refugee status. We met even after receiving a State Department warning that Christian churches and Jewish synagogues might be hit in Turkey by extremists. We meet in a hotel and in an out-of-the way room. We are very small fry. Someone would have to do a lot of detective work to learn when and where we meet. And making trouble for a half dozen people doesn’t seem to match the huge media coverage that occurs when an attack occurs in a place full of tourists or Turkish citizens. Outside in our city, there are some very prominent church buildings, including a couple that count as cathedrals. We felt safe largely because of our small size and obscure location.

We just finished our Sabbath day by taking some Easter goodies to a family on the other side of town. The father has been away for a couple of months. Your mother put together some goodies that she had collected (with my help, of course, because I carry most of them back to the apartment) and we took them. Most were for the children, including the chocolate Easter bunnies that we found in only one store in our hunting. I am sure that the mother will parcel them out over time, not letting the children poke candies in their mouth in rapid-fire fashion. Just what a parent does best. Right? We face our branch conference next weekend. It should be a good experience for our branch members. They have never gone through such an event here.

I love you and pray for each of you.

Grandpa Brown