Dear Family,
72 Days!!!! What does that
mean? We received an email from the Office Secretary telling us to notify
the mission office of our final plans for our release… Stake Pres, Bishop,
Family, pay our bills, etc. It hit me like a bolt of thunder.
Actually I guess it is like a shaft of lightning. Does it mean that our
time in Izmir is coming to a halt? Part of me wants to put it off way in
the distance because it means a lot of exit stuff to deal with. Part of
me wants to hurry it up because I’m anxious to see all of you. Part of me
worries that I’ll run out of sleeping pills before we return. Part of me
wonders if I’ll get enough fresh produce before we leave. Part of me will
miss our new friends here. Part of me longs for a trip to Costco.
And so it goes. I guess I have lots of parts. And some of those
parts have fleshed out a bit. The bread here is wonderful and
cheap. And it is especially good with honey.
I really like FB. I know it
can be junk, but for us it has been a wonderful connector. We were able
to see the 2-3 feet of snow posted in Istanbul this week. Our friends to
the north are slipping and sliding. The elders will have lots of service
opportunities shoveling snow. We had 13 flakes of snow fall on Friday
morning. I ran to get my camera, but it was all gone in a
flash.
We’ve had a bunch of rain, and our
ceiling drips with the rain from the roof. But we have a bucket under it,
so we are okay. I also see many of the people we have interacted with in
the past on FB. Some of my FB friends are from college. That
was a long time ago. Some live in distant lands and I’d never be able to
know their addresses or phone numbers. One of the women Dad worked with
in Egypt… Madame Ida… contacted us on FB. She told us to tell all of our
children hello. If I remember correctly you didn’t enjoy her Egyptian
food. I’ve even been in contact with my best childhood friend’s daughter.
My friend Joyce died when she was 62. But her daughter posted a photo of
her daughter who is getting married. She looks just like my friend
Joyce.
We had a bombing in Izmir this
week. It was at a courthouse. We have several friends who have
worked there. The security guard stopped a vehicle that was trying to get
into the courthouse parking lot. So the car blew up and killed several
people. But if it had reached its intended destination, it would have
been much worse. We are saddened every time something happens here.
We know lives are lost, jobs are lost, the economy is impacted and no one wants
to come to Turkey. If I weren’t already here, the news would keep me
away. But our day to day activity seems peaceful and safe.
One of the challenges for me….
Have I already said this? I forget from week to week what I write.
But a huge challenge for me is the shifting landscape. No decision here
is the “final answer”. Each phone call, text, and email changes the prior
one. I know that this happens with missionaries a lot with
baptisms. But this happens with everything we seem to be concerned
with. We can never do a weekly planning because we are lucky if we just
do planning by the hour. And we have four elders who are also inserting
their plans, and their change of plans into our lives. Then we have
mission-wide change of plans, then we have local and national events, then we
have power failures, leaking roofs, etc. But the bread is still cheap.
So church was good today. It
is amazing that I’m starting to stop worrying that no one will show up.
We seem to have people now. And 17 today in the room and 11 on
Skype. Six of them were investigators, and good investigators. Two
of the men there have firm testimonies of the Book of Mormon. I still
take some food for our “break”. I usually take some sort of cookie,
orange bits and some crackers or nuts. Someone brought a package of
cookies today. I’d made banana nut cookies for Christmas Eve and froze
some. They are still very good. Yesterday I had a surprise group…
for a baptism interview and I had some banana nut bread in the freezer that I
microwaved. Everyone liked it. So, all the baking I did before
Christmas is paying off. And if I just have something I want to get rid
of I can put it out and the elders will consume it.
I hope you are all well and
enjoying school and work. I’m surprised that several of our grandchildren
do not like school. I actually liked school. But in my day and age
there wasn’t much else to do but go to school, come home, and study. I
didn’t own an i-phone, a TV, a car, a snowboard, or a drone. But I did
have a cat and a ping pong table for entertainment.
I love you all.
Mother
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