The sign on the street vendor’s cart read, “Ice cold pickle juice—1 glass, 1 lira.” It must have been delicious because people were lined up to buy.

“What a different world I live in!” I thought to myself as I passed. “People thirsting for pickle juice!” What was even more curious to me was that the vendor had only four glasses. Customers would pay to drink pickle juice out of a glass someone else had just drunk from. No doubt, people in Turkey think differently from you and me.

Christian statisticians tell us that in 1900 Turkey had only one born-again Christian in the whole country. By 1960, that number had risen to 100 believers. Today, there are about 3500 born-again Christians in our country of 70 million. That is slow growth. Praise the Lord it is exponential, but still it is sadly very slow. Why so slow? Turks think very differently from you and me.

I’ve heard it said, “Unreached people are unreached because they are not easy to reach.” Yes, governments can make outreach difficult, but ideologies are the greater barriers. Pickle juice is the tip of the iceberg. Turks have entirely different thought patterns, which lead to broad disinterest and mistaken assumptions about the Water of Life. For Turks, the idea of embracing the Christian Gospel is at least as distasteful as the thought of drinking whole glasses of pickle juice is to me. Christianity is an altogether sour idea here.

Satan certainly relishes the thought of keeping this nation locked in an ideological pickle barrel until doomsday. But God has prophesied a different future, and I believe our team is making progress on cracking the “Pickle Juice Code.”

• Twitter