Dear Grandchildren,
If I were smarter, I would talk about four big things because last night Marinn was named the first runner-up in the pageant for Miss Uinta County. That is pretty heady stuff for a young lady.
It must have been a pretty good week to see three big things happen to me. Not many volunteers, whether young or old, have that occur. In my case, it left me pretty tired. And worn out, of course. But it was all for a good cause.
The first event left me with no fatigue. It’s because Grandma was the major player. A person in the branch offered to provide a Turkish meal for last Sunday’s lunch after church services. Ok, thought Grandma, but what if a bunch of people show up? Truth be told, fifteen came, including four investigators. Sensing that one big dish might not feed any kind of a crowd, Grandma made sure that we had plenty of food on hand to supplement. And that is exactly what we needed. Without the extra, the main dish would have been gone in no time. The only role that I played was to be the mule, carrying home the goods that Grandma prepared and put out as trimmings for the meal. That was not very tiring to me, just to her.
The second: A week ago Saturday I received a notice in a brown envelope that books shipped from BYU’s Maxwell Institute had arrived in the Istanbul airport and were being held in customs for a duty payment. As I would later learn, that was because the two boxes of books had come with one shipping document. Had the boxes come separately, each with its own shipping papers, and had each of the boxes weighed less than 15 kilograms, they would have sailed through and been delivered to me. Or so said someone who was supposed to know. But that did not happen for me and I now had to do something to free the books from the grasp of the customs people and see that they got to our apartment so that I could take them to a couple of university libraries in the city as gifts. That kind of gift is called public relations.
In a small panic, I called a friend who helps the MP and, from my phone, sent photos of the outside of the envelope and of the form letter that came inside the envelope. He called the customs office and learned that indeed a fee was to be paid and someone had to go to the Istanbul airport to take care of the matter. Fortunately, he was going to be in Istanbul the next week and was willing to do some ground work. With the MP’s permission, he spent much of last Tuesday running between customs offices (there are several) and the FedEx facility. At the end, his message to the MP and me was that either I get a letter from a librarian at a university where the books were to go and send it to the airport in the hopes that the customs people would charge no fee and allow the books to come to me or (pant, gasp) I had to go to the Istanbul airport and deal with the issue myself, probably paying money to fix the import duties. The more secure approach was the latter. I had to go.
Grandma found a seat on a flight for Wednesday morning. The adventure had begun. I was in the international terminal, the proper destination, by 11:15. But my friend was delayed and did not arrive until about two o’clock. I wondered to myself whether we could finish this thing in three hours, by five o’clock (actually we had until 5:30). It would be the closest of calls.
You know the story of these kinds of efforts. You are always in the wrong place and need to go somewhere else. Well . . . We started where he was told to start, at the customs office in the international terminal. No. That was the wrong place. We needed to go to another customs office, about a mile and a half from the airport. After two further attempts to find the right place to start, we found ourselves in a government office managed by a couple of nice young women. There I signed the first of many forms. Then to another office in the same building. Then to the FedEx facility which was about five miles away. All of these trips between facilities, of course, required a taxi. After we paid the customs fee of 200 Turkish Lira, a small fee as it turns out, and got a promise from a head fellow that we would not have to pay a storage fee because the books were to be gifts for academic institutions (he was later overruled by an accountant), we rushed back to the customs office and I signed a second set of forms. But that was not enough.
By now, it was five o’clock. We headed back to the FedEx office, signed some more forms, paid a storage fee (for the life of me, I didn’t see the rhyme or reason for the storage fee except to make money — the boxes were sitting on a bench by themselves, not talking out of turn or sassing anyone; apparently every cubic centimeter in that huge warehouse was worth something) and then walked around to the loading dock where the two boxes were sitting, just waiting for us to present all the signed papers and receipts, so that we could haul them away. But wait, I said to my friend, wasn’t FedEx paid to deliver the books to my apartment? He said, Things have changed. So we picked up the boxes and took them to the other end of the warehouse where the taxi driver was waiting for us. I barely made the seven o’clock flight after paying a overage feel for sending the boxes as my luggage. Grandma met me at a curb and we put the larger box into our shopping cart, almost crippling it, and I carried the other box to our apartment. All was safe. But I was tired. And I know my friend was tired.
Finally I get to the third big event, a trip on Friday to Antalya, a city the Apostle Paul traveled through (see Acts 14:25). I went with the YVs on Friday. We caught an early flight (I got up at 4:30) and then came back on a 9:00 p.m. flight. We went to see two non-members and a member. We only saw the member. And his non-member mother. The other two disappeared. One would not answer his phone and the other is a student who was facing a final exam at the end of the day. The latter said that his phone died (that, it seems, is a common excuse) and, because of his studying, he could not meet us. But we met with the member, who needed some fortifying. And we met his dear mother. In my mind, I can see her apartment someday becoming the meeting place for a small group of Latter-day Saints. And it was important that we establish in her mind that we are good folk and that religious lessons in her home are ok, and even welcome (we talked with the member about the Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood because he is yet to receive the priesthood). For those reasons alone it was important that we went. Saturday, I was just barely able to mope around the apartment. I had little energy though I was very happy and satisfied for what had happened during the week.
We were eleven in our church service today, the lowest total since February 21. For the first time since December, no one joined us by Skype. However, three investigators sat in that meeting, one of whom will be baptized before the end of the month. The other two are young fellows, one a thirteen-year old who is the son of the man who will be baptized, and the other a twelve-year old whose parents are members and will be baptized soon (we hope). Those two young fellows, when they are baptized, will give us a real Young Men program, something that has been missing since the beginning in our branch, a beginning that goes back to a time long before we arrived last July.
I ask myself what I can do to top the events of the past week. Probably nothing. We shall go to Ankara for a fireside (myself) and a family history workshop (Grandma's self) on Friday and Saturday. And I go to see my voice doctor this coming week. But it all looks rather calm and quiet. It is not as though I am looking for something wild to occur. But a notable event will need to come quickly because Ramadan begins Monday (tomorrow) and that will really quiet things down. My main task will be to arrange for a future baptism at the hotel. I like that kind of an assignment.
I love you and pray for each of you.
Grandpa Brown
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