Wow, what an amazing trip. Thanks for praying. For those of you who prayed and followed along through the Zaza facebook and twitter accounts, thank you. Below is an edited trip report. For pics, click here.

Goals & Objectives: Per Dr. K’s suggestion, we aimed to do discipleship teaching with young believers/seekers in these 2 towns where Dr. K frequents. He has been doing medical ministry, EV and gathering in both places for 5 or more years, though he admits that he is not a pastor/teacher. Because we have experience teaching the bible, he asked us to prepare some lessons and teach from the scriptures every night. We arrived not really knowing exactly what we were going to find. Dr. K was going to come with us, but he was not able to come at the last minute.

Town 1: Dr. K prepared his people well. In both locations, they arranged a dinner and a meeting at someone’s house for every night we were there. The first night in Town 1, we took it easy and just got to know everyone for the first two hours. Okan, who seems to be a leader of the group finally said, “Dr. K told us that there was a very talented teacher in your group and so we are ready to here some teaching now.

The next night, we arrived more prepared. Most of us shared verses from the bible, Jimmy taught a lesson, and Ergun (An experienced Turkish believer) performed beautifully as a translator/cultural filter, even adding his own thoughts and examples to several of the topics. Ergun and I agreed that most of these people really seemed like dedicated believers (They shared several stories of persecution including not being able to meet much more without the police coming, and most had paid a price w/ family, friends, or jobs) so we decided to go ahead and do the Lord’s supper that night.

Town 2: The first night we were packed into a hot living room of about 30 people. Praise God that that many people came knowing that we were going to teach from the Bible. I did a creation to Christ presentation and Rod shared some. We opened it up for questions and they had many. We answered questions like why did Jesus have to die for sins to be forgiven? Banu asked questions about miracles she had read about herself in the gospels. The next night, w/ fewer people, we watched the entire J film and answered questions about until 12.30 am. The last night there were probably 30 people again. We shared 4 passages that Dr. K had emailed us. I had Ergun just go ahead and do it himself. I translated most of the evening to our American guests. Everyone seemed to listen intently. After those 4 passages, they began to ask questions. How did the virgin birth happen? What is the old covenant and the new covenant? We answered these questions with chapter of scripture. We ended the night early (10.00), but you got the feeling that we could have kept on fielding questions and answering them from the scripture. The tone of the meetings was unlike anything I have seen here w/ non-believers. Was it cause they are of a different M-slim sect? Or they were respecting us because we are friends w/ Kemal? Or is God really doing something in their hearts? I think (and hope) it’s the last one.

During the days, we visited people’s homes from the group who invited us for tea (most ended up being full meals). We prayed in every home and shared at least one bible story (sometimes more) with each host. Banu, 24 yr old girl, seemed one of the most interested. She teared up when we described what forgiveness is in light of Christ’s sacrifice. We gave her a bible as she had had one in Istanbul but didn’t have one here.

Praise God

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