The Big Anniversary

As of Sunday, August 12th, I've officially been in this country for a year. To sum up how it feels, I will steal a little from a guest we had.

We had a volunteer group come to visit our church for a while. The big group left and four people stayed behind, three girls and one guy. The guy stayed here in our apartment. Last week, as their time was winding down, I asked him how he was feeling. This was his reply:

"I'm tired, HOT, and bored. I don't feel like we've done anything the whole time we've been here. This language is hard. The people are hard. I've been sick on and off the whole time. I'm the only single guy and I am staying way over here, apart from the group. I'm lonely and I just want to go home."

You know, unfortunately, that's the way it is somedays. I ain't going to lie and say that everyday that I'm here I'm just juiced about the opportunities I have. Some days I would gladly trade them for a little AC and a chalupa. Our guest really summed up how I feel a lot of times.

But unfortunately for our friend, he doesn't get to see the other side of life here. He didn't go with me downtown Friday (though I offered) when I got to share the Gospel with the Bartender. He asked for a Bible, which I will take down there sometime this week. He never went down to the barber shop to see how the Barber and the Hawk like to goof off when nobody's in the shop. He never got to the point of juggling four or five suffixes on the end of the same word. He didn't go out to eat with me, the Anti-girlfriend, Miss Kitty, the Botanist, and Crack the other night. He didn't have a family like the Vs to go hang out with.

You can spend days listing things about this place and this time that have been hard, discouraging, uncomfortable, and just plain unwanted. But you can spend just as much time listing things that I would've never seen, heard, said, or experienced anywhere else.

I would've never sweated through 130+ degree weather without an AC. But I also would've never put a Bible in the hand of a man who has never even seen one. I would've never eaten a steady diet of lamb meat. But I also would've never been given the name Mustafa. I would've never been as lonely as I've been here. But I wouldn't have found the family I have found here either. I would've never seen men weep for their brothers who have been killed. And I would've never shared those tears. In short, I would've never become the man I am today.

The list could go on for hours, but I will stop. I have to go share a message that I'm not sure I will ever fully understand, in a language that I am sure I will never fully understand, to a man who has never heard anything like it. After that, I'm going for a nice juicy kebap with a dear friend and his Turkish buddies. It doesn't get much better than this.