Gettin while the gettin's good.

That's right, I'm making a run for the border. The land of the free, the home of the brave, here I come!

Willie Nelson once sang, "Give us your tired and weak and we will make them strong." You know how they do it? Through a steady diet of Chick-fil-a, USDA Grade A Black Angus Beef, and all the Dr. Pepper a skinny little country boy can drink. I plan on gorging myself on all the pork, beef, and fast food I can stand. My blood pressure and blood sugar levels may be equal when I get back, and neither will be in the acceptable ranges for a human being.

So I hope everyone has a good week. I'll think of you as I'm driving down the road (able to read the street signs) and trying to figure out if I want ANOTHER Chick-fil-a sandwich or if I can find room for ONE MORE juicy steak.

Cheers!

What a Crappy Couple Days

Pun intended.

I haven't been my usual chipper self for about a week now. Last Thursday I was tired, Saturday I slept most of the afternoon, Sunday wore me out, and I was exhausted Tuesday. All of that came to a head Wednesday night after the Anti-Girlfriend's birthday party. Let's just say that this is the worst hang over I've ever had without the help of alcohol.

I was bad sick for about five hours Wednesday night. It was so bad that Special K asked if I needed to go to the hospital. By that time though, I told him, I couldn't have a whole lot left in me, so it should be about over. It was, about.

But I'm feeling better. I slept almost all day yesterday and then a good portion of today. I've been up since lunch time and seem to be doing fine. The little bit I've eaten has stayed in and besides a pretty bad headache and some incredible soreness in my neck and shoulders, I am good to go.

I don't know if I'll be up for basketball in the morning or not, but I'm going to try a trip to the movies tonight. Pirates of the Caribbean 3 is out and despite all the bad reviews, I feel like it'll be worth a look. I've already lowered my expectations in the hopes that it won't sting quite as bad if it's a total wash. But I need to be going. The only English showing starts at 6, so I don't have much time. The last thing I need given my current situation is to try and understand pirate talk in Turkish.

Which, speaking of Turkish pirates, I though I should note this little known fact. As some of you know, I carried the nickname of Redbeard through my time in CO due to a ill conceived plan of putting some personal ads in the Denver Post. I'll spare you the details, but let it be known that had the ads run, I would not be here alone right now. Anywho, the name Redbeard is a famous one in this country. It's actually a mispronunciation of a famous Turkish pirate's name. Oruç Reis and his brother Hızır Reis were famous pirates and in the early 16th century. Oruç captured hundreds of ships and raided dozens of towns in his time. His greatest accomplishment was taking Algiers for the Ottoman Empire. He was well known for transporting Muslims from Spain to safety in North Africa. They affectionately called him Baba Oruç, which means Father Oruç, but became mispronounced in Italian as Barbarossa, which means Redbeard. After Oruç died fighting the Spaniards, his brother inherited his position and his nickname.

King of Dodgeball and A New Vocab Word (Sort of)

Today our church had a picnic. You've probably got this nice park, with green grass, lots of shade, plenty of fried chicken, and all the fixins.



Get that junk out of your head.

Think instead of hot, dry, and dusty ground that is littered with broken glass. The beat of a drum and the high pitched whine of a Shehnai type instrument (think Indian snake charming flute) is always about you. There is no fried chicken, but instead, a pastry type thing with lamb sausage in the middle. Add in songs such in a language that I don't understand and the pinky dance that accompanies these songs and you have a little bit better understanding of a "picnic."



With all that said, let me say... I love picnics. This is only the second one we've had since I have been here, but both have been a blast. We threw a frisbee that wouldn't fly straight if Jesus himself threw it. We kicked around the soccer ball, which is quite humorous for a man as white as myself. There was a never ending game of "volleyball" going on, though we had no net and there was never a mention of actually trying to play by any rules. There was some songs sung and some prayers prayed. We danced, as only Turks (and of a charismatic nature at that) would dance. Pinky locked pinky and we danced in a circle, kicking our heels out on the third and fourth beats, for the better part of ten minutes. Then we ate, and oh what a meal! The ladies really know how to do it up right. After the meal, we had a nice sit about on the carpet to let our food settle. It was here that I "learned" my new word. I hesitate to say I learned it, because I have no idea what it means. Judging by the acting job I got, it means either "grand mal seizure" or something to effect of "I'm exhausted." Sadly, it's not in my dictionary. Next time I see someone having an epileptic episode, I'll start screaming it and see if anyone understands what I am saying.



But after our sit about, we had a killer game of dodge ball. The rules: There will be two teams. Each team is made of about 6 people. One team forms two lines on opposite sides of the street. The other team is in the middle. If the team in the middle is hit by a ball, and the ball falls to the ground, the person hit is out. If the ball is caught in the air, you win an extra soul (direct translation here). Once you are down to just one person in the middle, you only have ten throws to hit them or the entire team comes back out. Past that, it is wide open. My team was on the outside first and we got everyone out in a fairly quick manner and hit the last person on the second throw. My team was in the middle next. I won a dozen souls for my team. We don't die, we multiply baby! It was almost half an hour before our FIRST person went down. Finally, they made the rule that your extra souls can only be used by the person who won the extra soul. Therefore, I was stuck with 6 souls, the Shark had 3, and everybody else was out. Sadly, I had three souls just slip through my fingers and I went down before the Shark. He made it for seven throws, but was hit on number eight, so we went back to the outside. It was here that I really came into my own. The Shark decided to just one hop the ball to me, to catch everyone off guard and to give me an awesome chance to nail one of them. Boy did it work. Six of their eight players were gone by my seventh throw. I was 6 for my first 7. I missed one guy a couple times in a row and he said to me as the Shark was going to get an errant throw, "I won't be as easy to get." Ok, old man. The very next throw he was out. One of his teammates won a soul from our weak link to bring him back on, but the very next time I got the ball, he took a seat again. We had their entire team out in a little less than 15 minutes and the last person only made it three throws. It was a dominant performance and I was named MVP. No one ever gave me a final answer as to whether it was awarded due to my soul saving abilities or my soul taking abilities. Either way, I'm your Dodgeball MVP today!

If I Had a Boat

I'd go out on the ocean. And if I had a pony, I'd ride him on my boat. Then we could all together go out on the ocean, me upon my pony on my boat. -Lyle Lovett

Yesterday I did have a boat, and I did go out on the ocean. There were no ponies involved though.

A bunch of us went fishing yesterday out on the Med. Some guys from the local Air Force base had organized this trip and invited us to tag along. Crack, Papa V, two of the V boys, and myself took them up on the offer. All day Friday it had rained and sure enough, Saturday morning was nasty too. Rain, lightning, wind, it was awful. But we went anyway and by the time we got to the coast, it had sort of cleared up. But on the way, I noticed three things that tipped me off to the fact that we may not be in for a great day of fishing. The first thing is that we were going out on a flat bottom boat that I affectionately named, "The Party Barge." It's not a fishing boat by any stretch of the imagination. There were tables set up all over the bottom area, a grill on the back, and a large upstairs for laying out in the sun. The second thing that tipped me off was the fact that one of the guys that seemed to be heading the trip up was wearing a fishing vest with pliers attached and a fishing hat complete with fishing pins attached to it. I'm not saying that the guy didn't know what he was doing. I could tell that he had been a time or two. But it's pretty obvious that he was not expert. The true experts don't have to dress like that for people to believe they know what they're doing.
The third thing that tipped me off was that the expert kept telling people how good the fish that we were going to catch were. They have almost no bones and you can just skin them out easy, etc etc. Then he mentioned that some of the big ones could get up to 8 inches long. Great.


My fears were realized soon after we got on the boat. The first nail in the coffin for me was seeing that the hooks we were using were smaller than most bream hooks I used back in SC. Obviously, we weren't expecting to hook anything large. The second nail in the coffin was seeing us park the boat within an easy casting distance of shore. Again, it seemed that we weren't really expecting to catch anything large. The final nail in the coffin for me personally was seeing that not only were these fish so small that they could steal your bait without you knowing, but that they had bird beaks that could cut your line before you knew what happened. I had a ton of bait stolen, but when I had all three of my hooks stolen, it was time to hang it up. I had caught a few, but they had to be measured in centimeters, not kilos. It was embarrassing.

So the fishing stunk, and so did the weather, but everything else was a blast. The boys had a great time and it was fun just to watch them catching fish. Crack, Papa V, and I had some great conversations and a lot of laughs. The guys from the base were all real nice and personable. They were gracious hosts too, and brought us lunch. I'll just go ahead and say that lunch was my favorite part of the whole day. They brought Oscar Meyer hot dogs (something I have not tasted in almost 9 months now) and French's mustard (the mustard here is no where near the same). It was amazing. I had three and if there had been more, I could've eaten three more of them. It was awesome. I like hot dogs, but I don't know that I've ever been as excited about a hot dog as I was yesterday.

It was really a great day, but I must end with some words from Hank Williams.

"The horse is against the automobile. The bus is against the train
The train is against the jumbo jet, and I’m against fishing in the rain."

On a Lighter Note

Since the last few posts have been a little bit heavy, I thought that I'd let you in on another major, though maybe not quite as serious, happening here in my wonderful city. As the locals say, Summer came! Yes it did, and very suddenly. Last Monday night I took a light jacket to English class with me. There was still a bit of a nip in the air. Today I was sweating out of my fingernails.

We can argue over whether it's hotter here or in CO or in good ole SC or wherever. It doesn't really matter to me. I'm not in those other places. I'm here. I'm here and it's hot. It just saps the life right out of me. By the time I got to church, I was already tired. I know I looked spaced out throughout the whole service. It wouldn't have been so bad if there had been more than 10 or 15 people at church. But since (according to the Shark) everyone went to the beach (not a bad idea), I have reason to believe that my sleepy eyes and glazed over look was easy to spot from the pulpit. If I wasn't tired enough already, I had what ended up being an almost two hour volleyball marathon outside of the church with my 11 year old Turkish professor. After that, a dozen games of 8-ball at Layla's Billiard Salon, and a long, hot bus ride home, I am sweaty, a little smelly, and DONE.

Tiger baseball is down to Boston College in the fifth in the first game of a double header. I love and support my Tigers in every sport and in every way. But I can not stay up much longer. Go Tigers, let's get some runs!

New Life

"They say that new life makes losing life easier to understand." -Jack Johnson, "If I Could"

You know things are bad when I feel the need to preface a post like this by saying that no one has died this week, but that is the state we find ourselves in these days.

What I want to tell you about is one promising story and one disappointing story. First of all, a lady has started coming to church in the last couple weeks. It's a wonderful story about how she got here. She was given a Bible five years ago by someone. A few years ago she watched the Passion of the Christ. She has been curious for a long time. Then, a few weeks ago when our friend Mr. Shelby came to town, they had a random (read: providential) encounter. Mr. Shelby's taxi driver didn't know where to go and ended up dumping Mr. Shelby off on a street corner. Seeing a lost white man, and knowing English herself, she offered her help. In return, Mr. Shelby introduced her to Miss Kitty, Crack, and the Anti-Girlfriend. They shared the Gospel with her and told her she should come to our church to hear it from other Turks, and in Turkish. So she came and has been coming since. She claims to have "put her trust in the Lord." We can argue over the true meaning of that later because it will only be later in time that we know what it truly means (Yogi would be proud). What I mean is, I am slow to count her as part of the elect at this point. Why?

Because of the Butcher. I never really hit it off that well with the Butcher. He's always sort of been a little unreliable. Some weeks he'd be at home group and excited, other weeks we wouldn't hear anything from him. This isn't totally out of the ordinary for even the most devout believers, but for him, it was obvious he wasn't all there at times. Well, with that background, he gave a short testimony in the service Sunday. He told about how he had struggled with tithing, but that once he started giving, God had really blessed him. When he was done, everybody clapped, everybody but my roommate (his small group leader) that is. After church, a group of us went to a cafe to eat dinner and hang out. My roommate started in on the Butcher about his little testimony. You see, my roommate, as his small group leader, knew that he hadn't been tithing. So that's where the conversation started. Before it was over they were talking about whether or not the Butcher truly believed God and God's word. The Butcher admitted that even though he believed the Bible was God's word, he was not following it. He said that God just asked too much. This was especially troubling for him in regards to the fact that he had to marry a believing woman, since those are in short supply around here. So he quit. He gave up. He decided that he was not going to follow Christ anymore. Right then and there, in the cafe, the Butcher denied God.

This is the ebb and flow of the work in this country. The White Guy left, if you remember, last fall. He had not even been "following" for a year yet and it became too much for him. Ironically, it was the same desire to be married that really wore on him too. After he left, a high school aged boy started coming. He claims to believe and, so far, has shown himself to be pretty devoted. They canceled each other out. Then this new lady (no nickname yet) started coming. It seemed like we were finally getting ahead and making some progress. But then the Butcher had to go and do this. Back to zero.

Whether this new lady is for real, only time will tell. Whether the Butcher can really just walk away from Christ for the chance at a wife and kids, only time will tell. It's easy to start into the Christian life. It's hard to finish. I pray that for myself, and for the believers that I work with here, and all the new brothers and sisters that will come during my time here, that one day we will all be able to say, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."