Five years and eight months ago, we waved goodbye to America and set sail for Turkey. At that time, Mr. LongJump couldn’t even walk, and Brother LongStory was not even a thought. I had only a dozen Turkish words and a dream that God wanted us to take up where the Apostle Paul left off.

I remember sitting in the airplane on the way to our new mission home and reviewing all that God had brought us through to get us to the point of launch. I reminisced about the day I told my wife I thought we should go to Turkey as missionaries. “That’s amazing!” she replied. “I just got off the phone with my mom. For the last half hour, she has been telling me all about Turkey. Some man did a slide show at her church that really impressed her.”

Wow! With the mother-in-law on board, as they say, the rest was history.

I reflected on how our first child had been born the day after our missionary training ended. I thought, too, about the miracle of a kind elderly Adventist family who bought our for-sale-by-owner house for cash. They drove up less than 15 minutes after we paid our back tithe. (They were the people who had led Roger Morneau to Jesus, and truly they were an incredible answer to prayer for us.)

I thought about all the people we visited who had sacrificed to become part of our support team. A young couple came to my parents’ house one evening to give us all of their garage-sale proceeds. They were our very first donors. People started committing $25, $50, $100 and even $200 a month! What an overwhelming emotion to realize we weren’t just following Jesus’ words to go, but we were being sent. Thousands of dollars came in, each donation stamped with love and an unwritten story of sacrifice. Our list of supporters grew to more than 80. Esther and I held hands and prayed as we recognized the names of old friends and strangers from cities and states we had never visited. A great host was committed to establishing the gospel and putting our feet, family and future on Turkish soil.

In August 2004, we left the States after two years of preparation, fundraising, and training. Now it is 2010 and time for our second furlough. What has God done in that time? Instead of meeting in homes, we now have a legal church and a beautiful rented facility. We have a congregation. We have several Turkish-language Adventist books in print and others in preparation. We are producing digital gospel media. We have Bible studies. We have baptisms. It is unbelievable to me how God did all of this! Though I have lived every second of it and allowed Him to use my hands and mouth in tandem with my teammates, it still astounds me.

It is amazing to me because, by necessity, so much of my time here has been spent on things that seemed unrelated to the gospel. Only someone who has been an alien in a foreign land can understand the daily helpless upstream paddle. For example, I lost my car license plate in a rainstorm. Where in this chaotic city of millions could I go to replace it? And once I arrived at the agency, what should I say? What documents did I need?

Oh, but the problems didn’t begin there. How do I rent an apartment? How do I get water connected to my house? I find a little piece of paper taped to my door—what does it say? Where do I pay for electricity? Where do I go in the city to buy a potato masher? How can I figure out where this bus ends up? What did the postman say when he knocked on our door? Why do people keep cutting in front of me in line? How do I insure my car? My baby needs shots—where do we go? What is this doctor trying to tell me? Anybody ever heard of peanut butter around here? These and a thousand other questions arise—some not urgent but nagging, and some critical for life, health and safety. Banking problems, phone problems, cultural conundrums, the list of things that consume a missionary’s life goes on and on.

Then there is the whole realm of questions no one can answer even if they speak my language. What should I tell the police about my work in Turkey? What kind of information can I share through the postal system? Does the government monitor the Internet? What is the process of opening a legal church? What is the chance of being thrown out of the country for trying to open a legal church? We can’t just ask our neighbors these things.

Because the people here are unreached, there is a whole host of questions no one can rightly answer. What is the most effective question I can ask a Muslim to interest him in the Bible? The unreached are unreached because they are hard to reach. My job is to find answers to questions no one else has been able to answer. The pursuit of those answers would be wonderfully enjoyable if I was a reporter in my homeland, but imagine processing sensitive issues by deduction at a deep level of feeling and emotion in a language you don’t know! Six years to get a church started, and the whole thing begins with, “This is a ball. The ball is blue. The blue ball is beautiful. Boing. Boing. Boing.” Language practice, over and over and over. And the Three Angels’ Messages and the Everlasting Gospel hang in the balance!

I found my brain particularly resistant to Turkish syntax. It took me six months of daily practice before I could create a single spontaneous sentence! So, you see, I count our progress as nothing short of miraculous.
Before moving here, I was used to flying to foreign countries. I would unpack my Bible and sermon notes, dress in a suit, smile at the crowds, and as a result the locals were happy and evangelized, and I felt like a hero. Of course, a whole team of native believers were working like crazy behind the scenes, getting me from place to place, filling my belly with cabbage and cakes, translating my stories, inviting their friends to the meetings, following up on the interests and praying over the names of attendees. They even knew where to buy Pepto Bismol if the need arose.

Here in Turkey, however, there are no backup saints—none. When the missionary sleeps, the work stops. We have to make our own cabbage and figure out which bottle is the Pepto Bismol.

Working as a frontier missionary reminds me of the joke about the secular scientists who challenged God, saying they didn’t need Him anymore because they could engineer life using nothing more than dirt. God accepted their challenge and stepped back to watch their demonstration. A scientist was reaching down to pick up a handful of dirt when God suddenly stopped him. “Get your own dirt,” He said.

Here on the frontier, we have to start with our own dirt. Praise God, at least there is a Turkish translation of the Bible. Some places missionaries go, they don’t even have that. We also have Christian songs in Turkish. Two Turkish men became Adventists about five years before we arrived. One of them accepted my invitation to move to our city and work with us. I praise God for both of them. I am also glad our division has translated several Ellen White books. They are a help. But all in all, we still had to start with a pretty barren plot of land.

What are my goals for the next three years? I am looking for 12 good Turkish men to be pillars of this movement. We are building a system for reaping interests from the Internet and writing culture-specific lessons to target those interests. I want to see our church mature spiritually to the point where Turks are leading other Turks to Jesus. We need to grow our numbers and age range. I clearly see my continuing need to strengthen my Turkish language abilities. Most of all, I want to answer that nagging, yet unanswered question: how can I get a Muslim to be hungry to know Jesus Christ?

Faith and prayer, time and effort, vision and resolve, love and consistency—these are the tools for the years ahead. Many thanks to you and others who are entrenched in our mission. Let’s keep going together for Jesus and for Turkey.  *

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