Update From Central Asia

Here are some recent events that the team have experienced:

Day1
On their first day they visited some of the tourists sites in the city, then had a lunch of Doner wraps, rice pudding and baklava. Got in some shopping then back to the hotel to rest for a while.They went back down to the waterfront later to see some of the street vendors, then went back to their hotel to enjoy cay tea at the hotel’s rooftop café. They were able to develop some new friendships that first day and get a ‘taste’ of the country.

By the second day, they went down to sit in a park area between two Mosques. They guessed what countries all the tour groups were from, observed chai-men, (they are men that walk around selling tea) and conversed with each other. Then, they took two taxis to catch the boat to their next destination. The boat ride lasted about 2 hours, which was like an oversized bus on the water. (And really, really uncomfortable for napping.) Settled into their hotel, then had a Turkish-Italian meal (aka. spaghetti) with our friends. Then they went back to the hotel and ‘tried’ to sleep. They were being “entertained” by the night club next door and the mosque speaker right out our window.

On their third day Trent & Billy went to the barber. Trent got a haircut, Billy got a shave, and they both got their ears ‘torched’.

I later found out this means they had their ears waxed. Yeah….sounds like fun to me!!

In the meantime, Cat and Amy explored the shopping area while seeking out English speakers. Then, they met up and ate lunch at the park, which only costs them $12 for everything. Then they traveled to a resort village with the intent to look for individuals to start building relationships with. As soon as they got there, they chatted with a guy who ran an ice cream place. Then, they broke into two groups, guys and girls. The guys went one way, the girls another looking for people who spoke English.

"Here is the guys story: We were looking for people who spoke English, but everyone we found had the intent of selling things. Trent encouraged Billy to go into a particular shop and the worker directed us down the street to another store. When we went into this other store, one of the girls spoke good English and before we knew it, there was an older man who started speaking to both of us. He asked a lot of questions, as did we, and we shared tea & nes café (instant coffee). After about an hour, the man took us to a bookstore to find a particular book about the Ottoman Empire. This man just happened to write historical articles for the local newspaper . However, they did not have one in English, so he was going to find a book in his library and get in touch with us later. We met his wife, son, and daughter and had some great conversation with them.

Here is the girls story: We wandered through a couple of shops and found a couple of younger girls who spoke English, but none could speak well enough to carry on a conversation. We were not having much luck finding very many girl English speakers, so we decided to just do some walking. We decided to walk towards the water by a playground that seemed to have several moms there. When we got closer, we noticed two girls sitting by themselves. We approached them and started talking. They didn't speak much English, but encouraged us to sit and talk with them. We conversed through charades, laughter, and what little of the language each of us knew. After about 40 minutes, we decided to walk up towards our meeting spot. As we were walking, they showed us their boat. They ended up teaching us some of their language and we just had a great time.

We met back up with the guys, introduced all of our new friends to each other, then headed back to the town we were staying in. We grabbed some dinner, then went and spent some time with our friends that we had shared a meal with on the first night there. We shared tea, some of us more than others. Trent had 14 glasses. And we also played a very, very long game of phase 10.

God revealed Himself so greatly to us! He answered prayers, gave us direction, and just filled us with joy. We've been so blessed already and are so excited to see what He is going to do in the next few days. "

So as you can see, they’ve been pretty busy already. I do want to mention that the tea ‘glasses’ are very small and only hold about ¼ cup of liquid. I will update as I receive more updates from Billy.