Fourth Leg of Heat and Hardships

Hello all!

I will attempt to sum up what has happened in Turkey in a brief way, but there have been things that I have not witnessed before, and things that members of the TACO team (the creative outreach team that we have been working with here in Turkey) has seldom experienced in the way of opposition. That being said, there were also wonderful times where we were able to share with individuals about a life that is freed from pains of the past and about a father who is good.

Our tour was a hectic arrangement for the organizer, Kati who is from Finland, to put together, as plan A and B had both fallen through with crazy circumstances and there was no tour set up a week before our arrival. But through a great guy named Safak, we were able to arrange four consecutive shows in south eastern Turkey, around the major city of Diyarbakir, where he had grown up. We were based in Diyarbakir, had two shows arranged in that city, one show in a town called Silvan, and another in a town called Batman. Of course we were all pretty excited about Batman for obvious reasons, being the super hero.

We met with a pastor of one of the two Christian churches in Diyarbakir who came to faith through Dave Wilson's efforts, the founder of TACO, and the pastor talked to us about the history of the area and his church, which was described as a "thriving" Turkish church at 60 members. This area of Turkey, which is nearly completely Kurdish, has been scarred the deadly radical Islamist Turkish actions that took place during the 1990's against the Kurdish people, and is the home of the PKK, a Kurdish political party, often seen as a "terrorist" group, which we found was not true as one Kurd explained that they are all part of the PKK, they are the PKK. Turkey is expecting a Kurdish revolution and is anticipating that it will come from this area. But, as we have learned, people are also anticipating the return of an era of radical Islam through political means.

Politics aside, this area is very hurt and is dark. We had our first concert in Diyarbakir. Not long after getting off of the bus, we were swarmed with very poor children who desperately wanted to sell us packages of tissues, but who were also very interested in finding out who these wierdos were. Through a few of these children, I saw how generally unaccepted Christianity is in this area. They saw the cross that Steve wears around his neck, made a cross sign with their fingers and then waved their hands to the air as to say that the cross shouldn't be there. Then one of them made Steve's cross flip under his shirt so that it was hidden. Steve put it back out again, and that was that, but it was a pretty big sign to me that this was hard ground.

During setup, we had such battles as having to wait for the city workers to finish their work on the exact spot where we needed to set up the stage, the hot hot sun, and an electrical outage just before sound check. Unfortunately, we learned a day later that that outage was not unintentional, and was arranged by the authorities to delay or stop us from doing our show.

Before our show started, though, the mayor presented NLM and Safak with flowers and plaques of appreciation. This possibly showed the split that is going on between the local and national governments. The mayor watched the whole show and particularly identified with the parts that spoke against fascism. The show went very well, the crowd of 99% young guys was crazy, and therefore it was deemed not safe for the women of our team to go talk to people after the show. It was a good decision. After the show, the sign that this was hard ground was confirmed by some of the guys shouting that "This city! Islam!"

I heard of some very good conversations that were had, and that some people gratefully received Bibles. Us girls packed down what we needed to and then left, but as we were leaving, some small stones came our way from the hands of some kids, and one of the stones hit Jodi on her head. She wasn't hurt, but we didn't expect this activity to be a foreshadow of the next day.



The next concert was in Silvan, which was about an hour's drive from Diyarbakir. The breeze coming in from the windows of the bus was like that of an open warm oven. It was actually cooler when the bus was stopped. When we arrived there, at about three, the sun was burning and the guys had to begin setting up the stage. Again there were many many children with nothing to do who were so excited to see us. After a while, the girls of our group were invited into the house of a woman and her family who lived right by where we were setting up. It was such a blessing, and they had air conditioning in one room! We were able to talk a little bit with them through one young guy who spoke English, and after one of the calls to prayer, there was one woman who was praying in the living room. Later on in evening, we were able to talk more through a relative of the house's who was visiting from Sweden, named Dilvie. She grew up in Sweden, but is Kurdish, and is still about high school aged. She was very sweet, and was very good at interperting, and through her I was able to encourage her cousin, Dilovan, in her starting to play violin. Later in the evening before the show, Dilovan gave me a very nice necklace that she got from Sweden and earrings in a pretty box. It was such a kind expression, and I wished I could give her something also.

We were invited to eat our lunch in the back yard of the house of a man who is one of the main leaders of Silvan. It was an area shaded by trees, and was nice for the guys who had been in the sun. David had a good discussion regarding Jesus with this man later that evening, and he really appreciated what David had to say to him, and that he was truthful. We knew a bit about this town but also learned more things, that it was actually somewhat dangerous, but we knew that God would protect us, and we saw that he did. It was very significant that we went there as a Christian group and were able to spend time with this guy.

Unfortunately, I have to cut the rest of this post short, (or maybe fortunately for the sake of length! :) ) I will go into detail later as to all that happened in Turkey. But I will say that the show in Silvan was canceled after we had set everything up, and were ready to do it, and that during the teardown, some of the police quietly encouraged the kids to throw stones at those who were tearing down and to call them infidels. I was safely inside the home that we were invited into earlier in the day, and we prayed for the family with the family, and also I was able to give them a gift by playing some things on my violin, one of them a worship song. It was a very good time, and at the same time, outside, it was more of a battle than we had experienced before.

After this night there were more conversations that were really great, and a visit to the church.

Croatia

Now we are on to Croatia where I will get to see my wonderful sister, Johanna, who is coming down to visit from Austria. We have two shows there, and have been excited by the reports of how the Catholic and Protestant churches are working together.

We will have one show on the 8th outside of Zagreb, and one show on the 9th in Zagreb in the main city square, which is really exciting. We got permissions from the government, and don't expect that they will pull anything out from under us. Pray that these shows are solid in stone. Otherwise, we will be handing out flyers for our concerts and hopefully getting in some good conversations. This country is one that is also recovering from the effects of war, so also pray for everyone we meet.

Thanks so much for reading and praying!!
Pictures will be up soon.
Love,
Christa