Dear Grandchildren,
Twenty minutes. That’s all it took for me to get a second opinion on the ear injury that I suffered five months ago during a routine cleaning. With the help of the MP’s wife, I had a conversation with the physician who watches over us folks in the Europe East Area. He made a couple of suggestions about clinics where I might find a competent Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor. He sent telephone numbers, though he did not know any doctor personally. I called. I made an appointment with a physician in Istanbul, sight unseen. We saddled up and went to the big city. On an airplane, of course. At the appointed hour, I walked into the doctor’s office and he motioned for me to sit down. I did. I showed him the charts with the results of three hearing tests at a university hospital within a couple of bus rides from our apartment. He spoke minimal English and I spoke minimal Turkish, or even less. Within a couple of minutes, another fellow appeared whom I thought was a second consulting doctor. Good, I thought, another competent and experienced person. But he turned out to be an assistant who spoke passable English. He was there to translate for us.
The doctor looked in my throat. He looked up my nose. He looked in my normal ear, finally in the damaged ear. He evidently could see nothing. I told him that I had received a steroid shot in the injured left ear. Through the assistant, he asked whether I had taken oral steroids. No, I said. He asked a couple of further questions. He then declared that for any treatment to be effective, it must begin within three days of the original injury. Next, he opined, my only recourse would be a hearing aid. At this date, he said, there was no possible way to correct the damage. None of this, if true, was shared with me by the physician who damaged my ear. So I walked out, went down one floor in the building, and paid my $110 for the visit and, with Gayle in tow, I left. The only thing that really recovered my day was to watch a replay of the BYU versus Toledo University football game that evening. Go Cougars! And don’t stop!
The YVs came over last Tuesday and we watched the Saturday morning session of General Conference. The experience was nice uplift. The MP forbade them watching all the sessions during one day — he didn’t want them binging. Fair enough. We shall have them over again to watch another of the sessions that is not translated into Turkish.
Our YV threesome is looking for an apartment. They found one that they liked but the landlord gave it to someone else who put money down on the place, something that the YVs did not have. In addition, the landlord and his wife came to church meetings last week and, well, they may have worried about what they experienced with us. Who knows? So the YVs are on the trail of another. They found one that looks really nice, much nicer than any of the apartments that our branch members live in. But they are effectively on hold. One more YV is in Germany, and when he returns there will be some changes. Our threesome will surely become a twosome and it is those two names that have to go on a rental contract. Since the companionship has not been announced because transfers are not for another couple of weeks, the YVs are waiting. Living five in their apartment. I can't imagine what it is like for them to each get into the shower every morning. A crowded place. But it will all work out within a couple of weeks and then all will smooth out. That is a happy prospect. In the meantime, each has to wonder, "Is it I?" when it comes to who goes somewhere else at the next transfer.
Yesterday I spent some time with an Iranian couple whom Grandma and I met in another city a few weeks ago. They are relocating to Izmir and will declare themselves refugees, if they have not done so already. They seemed genuinely interested. Part of the conversation went through a YV who knows a little Farsi from his time in Germany and a sister in Istanbul who hails from Iran and therefore speaks Farsi, as well as English. The sister in Istanbul made it clear in her part of the conversation that the church is not in a position to help non-members, just what she needed to say. We shall see whether the couple can push though this fact and still retain a desire to join our church meetings. They did not come to our meetings today. I do not yet know whether that is a bad sign or not.
We were twenty-five again in our Sacrament Meeting, almost the same crowd that we see every week. This time there were two investigators in the hotel room, fellows whom the YVs have been seeing and teaching off and on for several months, both before their stay in Germany and after. The YVs are trying to line some of them up for Christmas Day baptisms, thus allowing time for them to attend church services often enough to show themselves to be really ready to join our numbers. Personally, a Christmas Day event makes for a lot of interest and significance. A baptism on that date will register in their souls for the rest of their lives.
I love you and, of course, pray for all of you.
Grandpa Brown
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