There are many reasons people love this magazine. Among them is that, after reading a story about a missionary pickup truck stuck in waist-deep leech-infested mud on the way to church, or reading about eight-foot-long snakes winding around a missionary’s bathroom rafters, or about voodoo dolls hovering by demonic power over a steaming pot of chicken broth, the frustrations of the aluminum foil sticking to the cheese on your potluck lasagna or the head deacon forgetting to turn on the heat in your church Sabbath morning seem so much more manageable. A dose of Adventist Frontiers helps the reader think, “Yes, I can manage what is in front of me today,” or, if you’re a pledged supporter, “Thank heaven I pay that guy $50 a month to solve those problems!”

I do the same thing here in Turkey. After reading a mission story about a pastor having his bottom nearly bitten off by a hippopotamus at a baptism, I take courage. I say to myself, “I sure am glad we only have Muslim radicals to worry about!”

As exciting as it is for you to read about all the unusual problems we missionaries encounter trying to bring the gospel to unreached people, the reality is that we out here in frontier land have ordinary problems, too. We just don’t write about them as frequently because, well, they’re boring. Did you want to read about how I vacuumed water out of my leaking basement with an aquarium pump, or how I thoughtlessly left an uncapped pen on my bed, and all the ink leaked out and formed a black spot on our sheets the size and shape of a squid? Didn’t think so. Nobody reads a mission magazine to hear about shopping for corn chips, Q-tips, wool socks and bedroom clocks. I never write about our boys chasing our rooster all summer to keep him from eating our tomato plants. What you get in this magazine is sort of real life and sort of not. You get to read the best of the good stuff that happens to us and the worst of the bad stuff, all packaged neatly with a point.

After typing those first three paragraphs, I laid my head on my pillow to figure out exactly what extraordinary thing I could neatly package with a point. It was nighttime, and I had been lying on the bed and thinking for about half an hour when suddenly someone began banging on our door. I bolted out of bed. The doorbell rang with impatient buzzing, followed by more banging. I rushed to the door. A loud voice from the other side of the door barked, “It’s the Gendarmi (military police). Open up!”

As I fumbled with the door, Esther said, “You are in your pajamas! They can wait. Get some clothes on.”

Esther opened the door and greeted the two soldiers. They called my full name and said, “We must talk to you. Come sit in our Jeep.” We’d had an experience like this before, and I knew that following them to the back seat of the “investigation mobile” was the wrong thing to do, so I said, “Why don’t you come in here where it’s warm?” They weren’t opposed to the idea and stepped inside.

In Turkey, no one ever enters a house without first removing their shoes. But these soldiers didn’t pause even a moment to consider taking off their polished boots. They strode right in. Unfortunately, I knew this was a clue about how the evening might proceed. I led the soldiers to our dining room table where my son had been working on a thousand-piece puzzle for several weeks. The captain took his arm and swept the puzzle aside, annihilating a whole section of blue sky that had taken my six-year-old days to complete. I was not happy.

My quick-thinking wife immediately began to play an Abigail role. She brought the men tea and cookies and engaged them in cheerful Turkish banter. The captain was about 30 and brutish in his manners. He was big and seemed to calculate every move and every terse word to intimidate. The other soldier behaved professionally but seemed more like a kid in an army suit. Upon learning we had children, the captain barked to my wife, “Bring them here.” She didn’t appreciate the order and said, “They are sleeping. You can see them in their beds if you like.”

The captain began questioning me, which led to some polite conversation about Turkey. I love Turkey, and I can go on and on about its beautiful countryside, warm and hospitable villagers, delicious food and amazing history and culture. The soldiers began to loosen up and laughed and joked with me as I talked. The captain knew a little English. His course manner, harsh voice and choppy sentences made him sound very much like an indian chief in a spaghetti western. “You—American—like—me—good—country—Turkey?”

He started down a list of questions typed on a piece of paper with my name on the top. It became obvious that the intent of the visit was to discover my work intentions. The men plied me a dozen different times from different angles, trying to dislodge some secret they thought I possessed. After a while, as I was running low on interesting answers, my eye caught two photo books sitting on my mantle. “You men will like to see these books of my home state in America,” I said. “And this other book is about my wife’s homeland.” They loved them. The two soldiers melted like candy bars in a child’s hand.

Now relaxed, the captain leaned back in his chair and began looking around our home. Spying the piano, he went over to it and opened the lid. I beckoned for Esther to play the men a song. From her memory she pulled a crescendoing love song that danced up and down the keyboard with fluttering glory. Their surprise was a delight to watch. Mouths agape, they watched my wife in total amazement. They were like jungle tribesmen hearing a radio for the first time. Eyes popping, the captain watched one of Esther’s hands and then the other. Then he bent over and looked at her feet going up and down on the pedals. His mouth hung open during the entire song.

At the end of the song, they gave Esther a hearty round of applause. Then they asked if she could sing. That being my wife’s specialty, she opened the hymnal and played and sang Joy to the World. The captain translated the title into Turkish. The men were delighted as she followed with an encore performance of There is Sunshine in My Soul Today.

The captain then asked if he could try it. He sat at the piano and stretched his arms over the keys, seeming to believe that the same melodious strains would flow out of his hands, too. A few tinkling tones tumbled out of the piano. He looked disappointed and challenged—how to get that thing to do what he had just heard it do for the lady? His fingers frolicked up and down the keyboard making trills and runs. As if entranced, he sat there and poked at the keys for about 15 minutes. He was in a different world, unconscious he was in someone else’s house. The other soldier stood beside him and tried to plunk out a few base notes, but the captain would briskly flick his hands away with an air of “how dare you interrupt the artist at work.” Of course, I didn’t interrupt the Gendarmi. It was 11 p.m., but this man had a gun and a piece of paper with my name on it. Let him play on!

Finally, his talent show came to an end, and so did the visit. The captain gave me his phone number and told me to call if I ever wanted to hunt wild pigs with him. We bade them farewell and closed the door. Esther and I shook our heads in amazement and laughed at the adventure of the evening. Smiling, she pointed at the dining room table. Another giant puzzle, this one completed, lay in plain view next to where I had seated the soldiers. In huge letters it read, “Great Events of the BIBLE.”

It was now nearly midnight, and I was very ready for bed. I lay on my pillow, thinking about those three paragraphs I had written about ordinary life. “Who would care about what is ordinary around here anyway?” I thought about the next day’s to-do list: buy bags of coal for our stove, solve our cat’s flea problem, and all sorts of other very ordinary things. As the last flickering thought of the evening’s inquisition floated through my sleepy head, I reflected for a moment on my work. Yes, I did work in Turkey, but not a work the captain would understand or appreciate. I thought about the extraordinary event that lay just two weeks away—our team’s first Turkish baptism. Christian baptism is a rite that sets the baptizer and the baptizee in contention with this Islamic society and is a bane to this secular Islamic state. I will be the baptizer. I rolled over on my pillow and took courage: “I sure am glad we don’t have any hippos around here.” 

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