Alive and Staying Well

To all of you who have asked how I'm doing, thanks! I'm fine. The earthquake that struck in Turkey yesterday hit over 1000km away and could not be felt in Istanbul. I found out about it when I got into the office, and today it was all over the papers.

Any earthquake news is a big deal here because there have been some incredibly devastating quakes that hit this country not too long ago. In August 1999, a 7+ magnitude quake hit the western coast of Turkey in the middle of the night. I remember waking up in Ankara, a few hundred miles to the east, and feeling like my bedroom was rolling back and forth like a skateboard on a halfpipe.

It was crazy to watch things unfold in the following days. Estimates at the time suggested 30,000+ had died. International aid flowed in much like it has in Haiti recently. The local church here dove in to help and was recognized in a very positive light as they helped set up tents and kitchens and later more permanent dwellings. In the end the death toll settled at nearly 18,000.

That said, even though I experienced the quake and even though I knew many people, including my family, who worked with the earthquake victims in the aftermath, it remained a distant thing for me. I left the country not too long after the quake to return to school. I saw some of the damage and continuing relief efforts a few months later, but in many ways it all remains in my memory as TV images and numbers. The trauma here must have been huge.

And it seems to be continuing all over the world. Have you noticed how many significant earthquakes there have been in the past few months? California, Haiti, Chile, Turkey, all over 6+ magnitude in the last two months (see the full list). It's pretty crazy. Kind of makes our time feel short, doesn't it?

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Things have been going well on the web project the last couple days. I've been working from an office on the Asian side of the city, while staying with my host on the European side. It's a pretty awesome commute. I get to cross the Bosphorus on a boat twice every day and see some of the world's most historic sites out the window on the way. It's quite a privilege.

This morning it was rainy and cold like it was yesterday. On the boat during the crossing, men selling tea and other hot drinks walk through the ailing calling out what they have to sell. Yesterday I bought a cup of "salep", a sweet rice-based hot drink with cinnamon on top. This morning my host suggested we stop at Starbucks after the crossing. Yes, Starbucks. It's a treat here. And it was freaky walking into the place, because I immediately felt transported back to America. I ordered my tall half-caf, no-whip mocha just like in the States and got the same drink I would there. Bizarre.

Anyone want me to bring them back a Starbucks mug that says Istanbul on it? They're $12, so pony up.

Thanks for reading,

Dan

P.S. If you're the praying sort, we could use some prayer for health here. My host's son has a really bad cough, so please pray that he would heal quickly and that it wouldn't spread. Thanks for your support!

Touristing and Church

Well, I got all my pictures from yesterday posted! I've captioned them nicely so you'll know what you're looking at. It was a really tiring day, trekking around everywhere in the cold and the rain, but the sights were rewarding, and at the end of the day (after my camera battery died) we got to go to the Grand Bazaar and do some shopping. We had an excellent guide who knew the right people and got us some amazing deals.

After getting back to the home where I'll be staying for the rest my time in Istanbul, we relaxed and popped in the movie The Blindside, which I hadn't seen yet (and no, it's not out on DVD yet... this is Turkey :).

Today I slept in, then went to a Turkish church with my host. I was pleased that I was able to track with the sermon, which was on the end of Eph. 6 and focused on prayer. It was a good (and convicting) message... I know I spent far too little time praying for anyone / anything but myself, and I need a lot of grace to move beyond myself and pray for the spread of the gospel and for the needs of others.

We did get to walk around the spice bazaar today, and the picture you see here I took while avoiding getting hit by all the people crowding around each seller. There are a few more pictures on Facebook.

Thanks for reading!

Dan

Tongues

Wow, the last couple days have been really full! Where to begin? Perhaps I should start with the conversations I had last night with Turkish believers? Or should I talk about seeing the Hagia Sophia, the Basilica Cisterns, and the Grand Bazaar today? I'll have to do both, but I don't know if I'll be able to fit it all in this post.

This isn't the first time I've thought to myself that Turkish believers are some of the most amazing people to be around. My experience so far has been one of encountering passionate men and women in love with Jesus who really know their stuff. In a country where one faces the likely possibility of rejection from family members and friends (think excommunication), it takes a lot more courage, faith and commitment to be a believer. The common understanding is that to be a Turk is to be a Muslim--so becoming a Christian defies tradition and culture. They better know what they're doing.

The last couple nights I've stayed with a few of these men, and it's been a blessing. Actually, a couple of them were here from Germany, and it was encouraging to hear their stories. It also was a lot of fun switching between all three languages, Turkish, German, and English, sometimes mid-sentence. I had sat down to read after making a sandwich (on some good Turkish bread, with some slightly different-tasting peanut butter and jelly), but I was soon drawn into conversation with one of the guys. He was talking about spiritual gifts, in particular speaking in tongues, talking about how what he saw in the scriptures was people talking in "the languages of Babel", i.e. languages that people have actually used to communicate with one another.

He was saying that in his experience, he had never actually heard someone speaking in tongues where he actually recognized the language, even if he couldn't understand it. I would have to agree with him... while both of us have heard of it happening, neither of us had ever heard anything that didn't just sound like gibberish. Now, we both appreciate the idea of a prayer language and that there is a place for that (and not in a service where everyone is speaking in tongues--otherwise their better be as many interpreters present), but why aren't there more cases of people speaking in tongues where the speaker is actually speaking a recognizable language? Please feel free to chime in.

In any case, that conversation along with other meaningful ones made me once again very appreciative of my Turkish brothers, and I will miss talking to them and enjoying their sense of humor, which was very Turkish as well. They are heading back to their respective homes today and tomorrow, and who knows when we will next cross paths?

This morning I woke up late along with my roommates, and we got in a couple last sessions to close out our conference. I figured I'd be sticking around to help tear down, but before I knew it I was whisked off by my host along with the conference speakers to see the sights. It was a cold and blustery day, but we braved the elements nonetheless... but you will have to come back next time to hear my thoughts on that.

Unfortunately I can't even give you a teaser picture at the moment because my camera battery is dead and I don't have a card reader... I'm sorry. But soon, I will post pictures, and they are breathtaking--well, at least the sights themselves certainly were. I hope you'll be able to get a sense of that--and why you should come visit this beautiful country yourselves!

Thanks for reading,

Dan

Conferencing

Today was a busy day of meeting people and talking tech. It was fun running into a couple old acquaintances from back in the day when my family lived here, including the guy who got us online in the first days of the Internet here in Turkey, back when it was amazing that I could download a megabyte in an hour. We heard some pretty cool reports about the growth of the Internet and other technologies in Turkey over the last few years. In addition to being the third largest user of Facebook in the world, Turkey is also in the top ten Internet-using countries in Europe. From the sounds of things, computers are becoming common enough in households here that people are having to figure out what home networking is all about. Things have definitely changed.

One cool thing I learned about today interested me not so much because of its application in Turkey, but because of another project that a friend of mine has been asking me about. He works with a US-based organization that works with other organizations on the ground in South Africa to help deal with the AIDS crisis there. They want a way to use cell phones and text messages to gather patient data in the field and send it back to a database at headquarters. Well, it turns out this has been done all over and there's already open source software out there for that purpose. The software is called Frontline SMS, is freely available, and it sounds like it's pretty straightforward to implement. I don't have the bandwidth for that sort of project right now, but if you're interested, let me know!

I found myself translating between English and Turkish quite a bit today, which I didn't expect. It was in an unofficial capacity, but it came in handy and helped some folks out. The breakout group I joined, having to do with social networking, ended up being entirely in Turkish, and I ended up talking about Facebook and Twitter in Turkish, picking up the appropriate vernacular as I went. It was a lot of fun. One topic of conversation--privacy on Facebook. A big one.

During some of the presentations today I zoned out a little and focused on learning Joomla, the content management system being used for the website I'll be working on. While the speakers spoke about forming Internet strategies and relationship building, I was learning about how Joomla implements a model-view-controller paradigm with some pretty complex views. A model/controller can have multiple views, the views can have multiple layouts, and those layouts can be displayed in multiple positions within a template, which in turn can override some or all of the layout functionality. That raises a lot of architectural questions for me... it'll be insteresting to see how this all works out.

After dinner this evening I went out for a nice stroll through the restaurant district where we ate last night. It felt a little weird being on my own since so far my time has been mostly directed by my host and by the conference agenda. I hadn't had to depend on my Turkish entirely until then, but today's translating helped my confidence. I enjoyed going into a cell phone shop and not missing a beat talking about my options for getting a cell phone for these weeks that I'm here. I don't think I will making such a purchase, but it was still fun to have the conversation. :)

I don't have many pictures today... we were inside most of the day. But here are a couple.

Thanks for reading!

First Full Day

This day has been a busy one! After a slow start this morning we headed out, went down to the water and hopped a ferry across the Bosphorus. It was a beautiful day! The sky was clear and the sun was welcome--we may not see it for the next few days with the rain that's expected.

We made it to the office where I'll be working during my time in Istanbul, and I was introduced to a bunch of people. We didn't waste any time brainstorming about website ideas as well as getting me to a point where I could start playing with the site to test out some of those ideas. Looks like it will be fun!

I'm already enjoying the food. Lunch was a doner kebab from a quick little street restaurant, and it brought back a lot of good memories. Later on, we met up with the speakers for the conference this week, and after a short walk through a beautiful street market, we sat down indoors at a nice restaurant where I had a dish called "alti ezmeli kebab", which is a plate of beef cutlets over cooked tomatoes. Delicious.

I've been enjoying the many conversations with folks so far, and many are thought provoking. I am appreciating being around folks whose main focus is making Christ known, who are thinking big and dreaming about some really cool ways of getting the word out. For us, it's going to start with a redesign of the website, but it really comes down to the people involved who are making themselves available and praying and listening together. I'm learning a lot, and it's exciting.

I took some pictures while we were out and about today! See the album here.

An Airy Trip to Istanbul

At the Indianapolis airport, the still-new concourse ceilings soar high above me as I wait for my plane to Chicago. I board and settle down to read an article in Relevant about solo work from Sigur Ros front man Birgisson, whose celestial-sounding songs have become worship music for many. Most of this Icelandic band's lyrics aren't lyrics at all, but made up syllables in "Hopelandic", a fact that has actually made it difficult for me to connect with their music. Something about them singing in gibberish just seemed to say something about where we're headed as a culture, obscuring truth and robbing language of meaning. But the article I was reading suggested another perspective, that maybe their songs are closer to "groans that words cannot express" or a prayer language of sorts, something that expresses the deep longings of the heart without forcing them into the confines of words or our ability to express them. Maybe that's why many have connected with this music at a spiritual level. Interestingly enough, one of the Sigur Ros most popular tracks is called "Glosoli", not too distant-sounding from the Greek glossolalia, referring to speaking in tongues. Maybe Hopelandic isn't so devoid of meaning after all?

In any case, while I still don't connect all that much with their music, as I hit the air for Turkey, maybe Glosoli is a fitting first track of a soundtrack for this trip (listen/watch here). The video suggests a jumping-off point too, which is pretty cool and inspiring.

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I am now in Istanbul after an eight hour flight to Frankfurt, which passed fairly quickly with some fitful sleep, followed by a two and a half hour flight to Istanbul, a half hour light rail ride and a fifteen minute bus ride to the place where I'm staying. My hosts are very hospitable, and we had a good evening getting to know each other last night. I was soon exhausted, though, and I slept well last night, waking this morning to feeling like I had both under- and overslept. Weird. But I'm now thoroughly caffeinated and will soon be heading out to meet some of the folks who will be involved in this week's conference. I'm looking forward to seeing the city in the daylight, and I'll be sure to post some pictures!

Thanks for reading!

Dan

Upcoming Trip to Turkey

A week from today I leave for Turkey.

A year ago I would have told you I was heading to Brazil. I've been wanting for a while to have a chance to put my vocation to use in a ministry context to get a taste for what that would be like, and an opportunity came up while I was in California to potentially take a trip to Brazil for a few weeks to help out with a project there. Things were in flux for me at the time, however, so I put that idea on hold.

I have since moved back home to Indiana and have settled into an apartment in Indianapolis and have rejoined the church community I had been a part of before moving to California over three years ago. The Brazil idea never left my mind, but when I finally got around to pursuing it this past summer/fall, things had changed and that opportunity had passed. In the meantime, another opportunity presented itself.

Through a connection my parents had, I made contact with a group of folks working in Turkey on a website meant to help people understand the Bible and the message of Christ. The organization behind it provides resources for helping those interested to grow in faith and knowledge of God in the hope that they can discover the reality of God's love for them.

After a few conversations and a pilot project it became clear that this could be a good fit. My experience lined up with what they needed. Before I knew it I was seeking approval to take a leave of absence from my job (something I asked to be able to do when I interviewed a year ago) and a little over a month ago I bought my plane ticket to Istanbul.

I'm really excited about how this has worked out. God seems to just drop things in my lap sometimes, and His provision for me has always astounded me. I did not plan on heading to Turkey, nor did I seek it out, but it came together in the timeframe necessary to work with my job. I have some specific technical skills that are needed for the project, so God is providing for this project as well. And I fully expect to see other ways in which He has orchestrated the details of this trip--like the graphic design help I am already receiving from a friend!

My first week in Turkey I will be joining a group of technology-oriented folks for a conference on using the Internet in ministry and getting up to speed on the website and the technologies they use. The next couple weeks I will be helping implement a new design for the website and adding new functionality to tie the website in to social networking sites such as Facebook. (Turkey is the third-largest user of Facebook in the world! See this link for more details.)

During my last week in Turkey I will have some time to travel. I feel very blessed to have a chance to visit some of the places where I grew up. My family moved to Ankara, Turkey when I was nine years old, and I spent the next seven to eight years there before leaving for high school in Germany. I plan on visiting old friends who are still there and also hope to visit some parts of the country that will be new to me (including Trabzon and the Sümela Monastery).

I'm looking forward to hearing and speaking Turkish again and seeing many of the familiar sights of Turkey, from the towering minarets of the mosques in Istanbul to the street vendors balancing stacks of baked goods on their heads to the mountainous landscape and the Black Sea coast as I travel beyond the city. And the food! I can't wait for a good kebab.

As I leave on this trip next week, I would really appreciate your prayers! Please pray for smooth and safe travel, but mostly please pray that God will have his hand on every step of this trip. I am going to serve... I want to have a servant's heart. I am also going to learn... there is much I do not understand about the ministry work to which I will be contributing. And I am going with my eyes open, looking for ways that God might be leading me or speaking to me as I think about how to invest the gifts He's given me in the future. So please pray that He would direct my steps and give me divine appointments... meetings and conversations from Him.

Beyond my involvement in ministry, I would also appreciate your prayers that I would just be able to grow in closeness with God during this trip. Please pray that He would reveal himself in new ways and that I would revel in His delight in me. That's part of where the title of this blog comes from... two symbols that God has given me over the years of my identity and His love. I'll try and write more about that later. Please pray for God's protection and provision as I'm on my own for a few weeks without my normal community of friends and family in Indy.

That said, please keep in touch with me while I'm in Turkey! I will update this blog as much as I can and try and take some good photos to share with you. I'm looking forward to writing about my experiences and putting my otherwise dust-gathering camera to use. Thank you so much for reading this and for your encouragement and support! I am so thankful for the friends and family God has given me.

More to come,

Dan