“I want to be baptized and follow Jesus.”
The Turkish words coming from my friend, Ozcan, riding in the back seat of my car sounded wondrously amazing to me. I didn’t respond immediately as I thought about the great gauntlet of Bible studies that yet lay between him and the waters of baptism.

“What do I need to do to be baptized?” he said again, perhaps thinking I hadn’t heard him. “I want to become a Seventh-day Adventist.” Monumental words!

For five years now, I have been working in Turkey to find such a soul. Seven years ago, Esther and I prayerfully began building a team to financially support our bold kingdom undertaking. Fifteen years ago, as a single seminarian, I penned in my journal, “God willing, I will raise up a movement of truth in Turkey.”

Ozcan is faithful, honest and earnest. He is a 30-year-old business owner and family man. He was the first Turk to ask directly for Bible studies, and he has met with me faithfully for seven months.

This is an exciting, pivotal moment in our project. Three more people have asked to study the Bible with me. Sabbath after Sabbath, new faces show up at our home church. For the first time, we are seeing our guests inviting other guests to church. For this reason, we just opened our first public church location, rented in the center of the city. That timely opening coincides with the fact that we now have published materials to distribute, and they are being read and enjoyed by Muslims and Secular Turks. Our ministry snowball is still small, but it is no longer just a single snowflake, and for this I give glory to God.

I have had two life dreams. My first was to be a great evangelist. I read all the sermons of Moody and Spurgeon. I desired to preach to thousands and baptize thousands. God gave me a taste of this, and I thought that was what I would do. It was painful and confusing to me to watch my first dream die in order that my second dream might live. My second dream is to reach the unreached and lift up Christ to those who wouldn’t otherwise hear the gospel. It turns out that my two dreams are largely incompatible. Perhaps the reason is that, in my first dream, I am exalted. In my second dream, God is exalted.

For a long time, I thought it might take me about six years to finish up dream number two so I could get back to pursuing dream number one. Now I see that six years on the mission frontier is just a beginning. There are fewer Turkish Adventists here than you have fingers and toes. The moment Ozcan submerges in the waters of baptism, the membership of the Turkish Adventist Church will increase five percent!

Six years—the classic missionary term of service—is a long time to serve overseas away from family, but not nearly long enough to plant a church. When we left the States five years ago, my first boy was not even walking. Now he is telling me about planetary rotations. In five years, my niece has gone from playing with dolls to graduating from high school. In frontier-missions terms, I now see six years is only enough time to put a missionary on the brink of something greatly exciting.

I marvel at God’s behind-the-scenes efforts because I believe that what I and my missionary colleagues are doing here is impossible. Until you live and minister in a foreign country that is opposed to the gospel, you can’t fully appreciate the word impossible. First, consider trying to advance the gospel in a language not your own. Five years ago, when I arrived here full of zeal and cruising on the afterburner of my own motivational preaching, I said to myself, “We can establish an Adventist movement here.” Now, after five years of bumbling at the language and being thwarted by governmental tricks and baffled by deeply entrenched anti-Christian Muslim and cultural norms, I now fully believe that we are up against an impossibility. Yes, church planting in Turkey is impossible! And yet, to my amazement, it is happening. Every Sabbath, new people appear in our group, and new possibilities and doors open before us. I am watching God do the impossible, and it brings me to tears of joy and wonder.

Government, society, tradition and religion are all against us. Often, my deficiencies are a terrible tide against us. And yet, through it all, God is accomplishing something. It amazes me that, from a motley assortment of Adventist families, something is brewing that wasn’t here five years ago.

Last week at our home church, 26 people were present. As I watched them talking and praying and singing in our home, I thought, “Look what the Lord has done! From where has this group come?” I thought about a Sabbath not many years ago when it was just the Smith family and us.
So, with a bit of sentimentalism, I preached last Sabbath to the group of 26 about the family of God. I concluded the message with a twist on the old story of stone soup:

“A poor traveler came to a village hoping for a meal, but the villagers said they had nothing to feed him. So he took out an old pot, and, as the villagers peeked from their windows, he put some water and a large stone into it. The curious villagers came out and peered into the pot. ‘What are you making?’ they asked him.

“‘God can make soup from nothing, you know. So I am making stone soup,’ the man replied, dipping his spoon into the pot and offering it around the circle.

“After a taste, the villagers looked thoughtful. ‘I think it would be a wee bit better if it had an onion,’ one said. ‘I’ll fetch one.’

“‘That stone soup has potential,’ another said, ‘but in my opinion it could use some cabbage. I can remedy that.’

“Yet another said, ‘I think a potato would make the broth heartier.’ And so was added a bit of salt, a handful of dill, a cup of cream. Each put in what he had, and soon that poor man in that poor village had soup enough to feed himself and a dozen others.”

Many a moral can be drawn from that story. But I see one clear parallel to our life here in Turkey. From what wasn’t, suddenly there is. Each has brought something that wasn’t enough by itself, but together we are making stone soup. A church is brewing—a truth movement for Turkey. I am witnessing that, with God, nothing is impossible.

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