#87 July 17 (By Grandma)

So many things happen in a week.  Of course the biggest event was the marriage of Parker and Lindsey.  I hope that everything went well.  And Julianne and Jason flew to South Africa to meet Tanner.  They post on FB lots of exciting things…..for them.  I wouldn’t like many of them.  Just watching the video clips of their zip-lining makes my stomach churn.  Soon they will be back home.  I’m sure their family has missed them. 

Shoshauna reports that her family loves picking up the squishy apricots in the yard.  It has always been a favorite activity for our family for years.

Actually our apricot trees are pedigreed.  They came from a pit from my parent’s back yard.  Who would have known they would have spread so much joy and happiness?  The apricot trees provided a lot of shade in my backyard in SLC.  They also provide a lot of shade in Orem, but the down factor is the messy cleanup each year.  Kent always prays that the buds will freeze in the spring.  They almost never do.  So much for his praying prowess.

We were able to go on a little outing for our P-Day.  There are many, many places to visit in Turkey.  We went to a town called Çeşme.  It is along the Aegean Sea.  I figured out how to get there by looking at maps, and ferries, and buses.  I figured it shouldn’t be too hard to get there.  We began by taking a ferry, across the bay, then we took another ferry back across the bay in a zig zag fashion.  So we were now south of our home.  We thought there might be a bus pick-up for Çeşme at the ferry landing, but there was not.  So we asked someone how to get to Çeşme.  A man told us to get on a certain bus, and he got on also.  We rode in that bus for awhile, and then the man told us to get off and pointed in a direction and told us to catch “that” bus.  So we hopped off and got on a bus that said Çeşme.  That bus took us directly to Çeşme.  It took about 3 hours to reach our destination… a bus station, who knows where.  We asked how to get back to Izmir and were told there were returning buses in a few hours.  We asked how we could get a bus into town, and they said it was a five minute walk.  We were there! 

We walked into town, and it was a very nice sea port, with cruise ships in the bay.  We toured a castle from the 15^th century, had lunch, and asked how we could get to Greece, which we could see in the distance.  You can evidently take day-tours to Greece. 

In a couple of hours we walked back to the bus station, and caught a bus back to Izmir.  This time we got off the bus at a bus stop we recognized and caught a bus to our neighborhood.  (We hadn’t needed to take the zig zag ferry at all.) 

It was a nice outing, but it was very hot.  I guess we’ll be hot for at least two more months.

We couldn’t help but think about Nice while we were in the coastal town.  How sad it would be for such an area to be devastated by violence.

And our own situation here is not without violence.  We’ve received 4 State Department emails in the last few days with warnings.  Most of the activity has been in distant cities, but all of the population feels saddened and worried.  Our streets have been virtually empty since Saturday morning.  Many stores are closed.  It is hard to assess the situation because there are so many sides to the story.  We rely on CNN and BBC mainly for news.  We don’t know what the Turkish press is saying. Many opinions.

We did hold church today.  Dad was the one to make the final decision.  The YVs came by taxi because they are still in lock-down.  Ankara Branch met in homes, and we think Istanbul cancelled their meetings. 

BTW lock-down isn’t fun.  I go stir-crazy.  But, of course we know it is for our best interests.  If you can’t do something you want to do it.  It is like fasting.  As soon as you start fasting, you are thirsty or hungry.  As soon as we were locked-down, I could think of all the reasons I wanted to go outside.  Never-mind it is 150 degrees outside.  Luckily we have had adequate food rations in the apartment.  A few months ago the MP told all the YVs to have a two-week supply.  I have been gradually trying to get that.  It is hard, because if we have company for meals, the food disappears quickly.  And you can’t stock up on canned goods.  Most stuff is fresh.  I had planned to do our shopping on Saturday, so we were low on rations. 

And if worse came to worse, we could leave our apartment to get food.  Dad had to go out and buy bread for the sacrament.

We’ll go to Kazakhstan this week.  It is an over-night flight.  We should enjoy that a lot!  Love trying to sleep on planes.  Hopefully we’ll have a good trip and something interesting to write about next Sunday.

In the meantime look it up.  We will be going to Almaty.  Evidently it is 30 minutes from the Chinese border.

Thank you all for your photos, emails, and messages.

I love you,

Mother