I will miss driving in Turkey. I confess I have gotten used to driving like a maniac. I zoomed around in my boxy old family-friendly flying turbo-boosted diesel Fiat ministry machine, and I loved it! I think, after living in Turkey, if I were to meet NASCAR champ Richard Petty, he would ask for my autograph.

Making pastoral visits in our maze of a city is a blood-pressure-raising experience vastly different from my youthful days as a minister in the expanses of Wyoming. Back in those days I would drive 70 miles one way to visit a member, and I would see an antelope grazing in the same place both directions. My greatest danger was falling asleep at the wheel. Not so in Turkey. Everything about Turkish streets changes constantly and instantly. As I zip along, I am on high alert as the urban obstacle course morphs before my windshield like a video game: cats leaping from dumpsters, chickens scampering, mini-busses swerving, balls bouncing, stray dogs sauntering, men stepping off curbs with platters on their heads piled high with giant pretzels, and road-hogging BMWs passing on the right. Yes, there is plenty to keep a fellow wide awake!

I am proud to say I went 10 years without an accident. But now that I have become a Stateside mission mobilizer, I can’t let my guard down. The great tank warrior General Patton was killed not in a tank—he died in a jeep accident after the war. After 10 accident-free years in the wilds of modern Ottoman confusion, how tragic it would be to end up getting run over by a Wal-Mart shopping cart.

On a deeper level, perhaps that’s what Jesus meant when He said, “Stay awake and pray that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Being a missionary in the States has its own dangers, like falling spiritually asleep at the wheel.

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