Dear Grandchildren,
They come in sets of threes, except the waves of the ocean that come in sets of seven. (Don’t ask me how I know that. A friend who once lived in Hawaii as a surfing teacher told me that.) Now Grandma and I are hosts to a set of threes. In Turkey, we have often enjoyed an uneven number of YVs and that has meant a threesome in either Istanbul or Ankara, the bigger and more important cities. This time, with nineteen YVs on hand (one is in Germany still), our town has become the home for a threesome. In the threesome are one YV who has served more than eighteen months, one who has been out fourteen months, and one who has been in the field for five months. The senior YV in the other set is a trainer again and has a greenie. And the greenie looks really young. He is smart and already has a modest command of Turkish. But he just has a really youthful look. Like he just watched his older sister walk across the stage at her high school graduation and he still has two years to go. In the end, I am sure he will be fine.
But coming to our city was not so easy. On Friday afternoon, the greenie and his new senior companion left their orientation meeting at the branch house in Istanbul, pulling the greenie’s luggage down into the metro for the ride to the airport. The security guard at the metro entrance asked them where they were going and why they were going there. They answered honestly. Then the guard wanted to see inside the suitcases. Naturally, he did not have access to a scanning machine and he did not want two crazies dragging explosives into the metro from his station. They complied though they thought the request was unusual. When the guard learned that they were Christians, the conversation turned a little snippy, with him saying some rather negative things about the Christian faith. The Yvs kept quiet because they just wanted to get going since their deadline to be at the airport for a seven o’clock flight was drawing ever closer. In the end, the guard let them go but the two YVs missed their flight. With the help of the people in the mission office, their flight was changed to a much later time and they arrived in their apartment, where the other three YVs were already asleep, at 2:00 a.m. The greenie must be wondering whether the people here ever sleep. He came out of the airport a few days ago at 2:00 a.m. and then, two days later, doesn’t get to bed until about 2:30 in the morning, only sleeping a little before rising at 6:30.
I went to Istanbul for training in MLS, the church’s financial system which is coming to Turkey so that we are on the same page as the rest of you. I was in it until about three hours into the training. Then my mind began to wander as I became a bit concerned that we would soon run against a time when we needed to leave for the airport. We were practicing our MLS activities on a big screen computer (big, compared to my laptop) which is a dedicated instrument for church work. We had to pack that baby into a box and then do the same for a printer. It was a good thing that my accompanying counselor is an engineer. He figured out things pronto and we made our flight with a little time to spare. I feel a little bit smarter about the MLS system, but not a lot. For starters, I took the wrong pair of glasses and had a hard time seeing the tiny print on the screen as we were going through our paces. Fortunately, my counselor has been a ward clerk and knows the MLS system.
Grandma made the carrot cake that she promised to make on my birthday. Oh my! It has been heavenly, even the stiff, darkened part without frosting. Thank you! Thank you!
One of the satisfying things I did this week was go with the YV threesome to the apartment of our new Hungarian couple to help with some of the boxes that had come in a shipment. When we arrived at their home, two Hungarian women friends were helping in the kitchen and big bathroom. We were left to heft boxes into the baby’s room and another auxiliary room, eventually opening them in an effort to find utensils for the kitchen. We never did find the box with the utensils even though we opened almost every box. The sister is obviously still in a lot of pain from her caesarean section. They joined us by Skype this morning for church services since they cannot attend because of the new baby.
From a total of 16 and 18 attendees at our last two sacrament meetings, we shot up to twenty-five today. It included a Turkish couple who will rent an apartment to the threesome of YVs. When they learned what our YVs are doing, they more or less invited themselves to our church meetings, saying that they would like to join us. They now have a copy of the Book of Mormon and a pamphlet to read. They were very attentive throughout the meetings. That gives me hope. Who knows what these kinds of connections might bring.
Perhaps oddly, I have found my mind turning to Christmas already. We have scheduled a branch activity for Christmas Eve. Perhaps that has tugged on my mind. For a wobbly person like myself, I find myself growing excited about the possibilities of celebrating Christmas, even in a land that now has no Christmas tradition. But there was a day when the bells rang out all across this land, before the fifteenth century when Christianity was the main religion in this region. Those bells have largely gone silent. But in our hearts we shall celebrate and be grateful for what happened all those long years ago in Bethlehem. Truth be told, I still pray for the Bethlehem branch, which is the only church unit that can claim to be established in the town where the Savior was born. We still count as friends a few members of that branch. That place is in our hearts. I hope that it is in your hearts as well.
I love you and pray for each of you.
Grandpa Brown
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