Dear friends,

This past week has been filled with much sorrow. Many of you have heard by now of our devastating loss here in an event that took place in Malatya, a Turkish province 300 miles northeast of Antioch, the city where believers were first called Christians (Acts 11:26).

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On Wednesday morning, April 18, 2007, 46 year old German missionary and father of three Tilman Geske prepared to go to his office, kissing his wife goodbye taking a moment to hug his son and give him the priceless memory, “Goodbye, son. I love you.”

Tilman rented an office space from Zirve Publishing where he was preparing notes for the new Turkish Study Bible. Zirve was also the location of the Malatya Evangelist Church office. A ministry of the church, Zirve prints and distributes Christian literature to Malatya and nearby cities in Eastern Turkey. In another area of town, 35 year old Pastor Necati Aydin, father of two, said goodbye to his wife, leaving for the office as well. They had a morning Bible Study and prayer meeting that some other believers in town would also be attending. Ugur Yuksel likewise made his way to the Bible study.

None of these three men knew that what awaited them at the Bible study was the ultimate testing and application of their faith, which would conclude with their entrance into glory to receive their crown of righteousness from Christ and honor from all the saints awaiting them in the Lord’s presence.

On the other side of town, ten young men all under 20 years old put into place final arrangements for their ultimate act of faith, living out their love for Allah and hatred of infidels who they felt undermined Islam.

On Resurrection Sunday, five of these men had been to a by-invitation-only evangelistic service that Pastor Necati and his men had arranged at a hotel conference room in the city. The men were known to the believers as “seekers.”

No one knows what happened in the hearts of those men as they listened to the gospel. Were they touched by the Holy Spirit? Were they convicted of sin? Did they hear the gospel in their heart of hearts? Today we only have the beginning of their story.

These young men, one of whom is the son of a mayor in the Province of Malatya, are part of a tarikat, or a group of “faithful believers” in Islam. Tarikat membership is highly respected here; it’s like a fraternity membership. In fact, it is said that no one can get into public office without membership in a tarikat.

These young men all lived in the same dorm, all preparing for university
entrance exams. The young men got guns, breadknives, ropes and towels ready for their final act of service to Allah. They knew there would be a lot of blood. They arrived in time for the Bible Study, around 10 o’clock.

They arrived, and apparently the Bible Study began. Reportedly, after Necati read a chapter from the Bible the assault began. The boys tied Ugur, Necati, and Tilman’s hands and feet to chairs and as they videoed their work on their cellphones, they tortured our brothers for almost three hours*

[Details of the torture--
* Tilman was stabbed 156 times, Necati 99 times and Ugur’s stabs were too numerous to count. They were disemboweled, and their intestines sliced up in front of their eyes. They were emasculated and watched as those body parts were destroyed. Fingers were chopped off, their noses and mouths and anuses were sliced open. Possibly the worst part was watching as their brothers were likewise tortured. Finally, their throats were sliced from ear to ear, heads practically decapitated.]

Neighbors in workplaces near the printhouse said later they had heard yelling, but assumed the owners were having a domestic argument so they did not respond. Meanwhile, another believer Gokhan and his wife had a leisurely morning. He slept in till 10, ate a long breakfast and finally around 12:30 he and his wife arrived at the office. The door was locked from the inside, and his key would not work. He phoned and though it had connection on his end he did not hear the phone ringing inside. He called cell phones of his brothers and finally Ugur answered his phone. “We are not at the office. Go to the hotel meeting. We are there. We will come there,” he said cryptically. As Ugur spoke Gokhan heard in the telephone’s background weeping and a strange snarling sound.

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Every time my baby gets hungry, she panics, like babies do, as if I were not going to feed her unless she cries as hard as she can, as if I do not always feed her every time she is hungry.

She does not understand that her parents love her unconditionally, that they live for her and would die for her, that her father goes to work every day to care for his wife and daughter, that her mother is always with her when she’s awake or asleep.

And when I hunger, I panic, stricken with fear and doubt, miserable in my ingratitude towards my Father. All the while, He is protecting me with His “mighty hand and stretched out arm,” and giving me what I need and more.

For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for peace and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11

… weeping may endure for a night, but joy (rinah) cometh in the morning. Psalm 30:5b

When I was little, I used to wonder why Grandma Smith would start all her letters telling us about the weather, about the birds chirping, about going shopping … it was all boring and I didn’t know why she wrote that way. Now I do. It was her life. Now it’s mine.

Today is a dismal, dreary, rainy day, quite unusual for this part of the country, really, because it hardly ever rains here. The refrigerator is empty. The birds are quiet today. Baby is sleeping. It’s a Sunday morning, but I am in bed all warm and woozy.

Last Tuesday, I was supposed to be on a plane to Tokyo. On Monday, I woke up with a backache and a few hours later, I couldn’t move at all. I couldn’t walk. When Ben came home, we went to the ER. We waited almost 3 hours before the doctor came in for a few seconds. We waited some more, and finally, after hours and hours of crying, moaning, and trying not to cry, and crying some more, I got some painkiller.

After we got home, I spent an hour and a half on the phone, and due to the kindness of a travel agent who worked 40 minutes overtime for me, I was able to postpone the trip for a week.

It’s been a good few days, drifting in and out of sleep all day in a drug-induced stupor, church friends supplying food, and Ben doing the laundry and dishes. I am supposed to fly out tomorrow morning, registered as a handicapped passenger, so I get to ride those cool little car thingies all over the airport and be wheeled to my seat. Yay!! I hope I get to Tokyo OK. *sigh*

This sort of thing has happened a few years ago, last time I was living in America. Y’know one reason it happened? Because of cars!! If I had been walking around for the last year instead of sitting around in cars to get places, then my back wouldn’t have gotten so weak and this wouldn’t have happened.

I’ve been on painkiller on and off for almost a week now, taking half doses instead of full doses. It makes me sleepy but doesn’t seem to be affecting my milk supply at all because she’s been exceptionally active all week, reaching for things and grabbing things. She really likes playing with her green lion, cloth blocks, and rattling ball.

She sucked her thumb for the first time this week.

She is getting quite demanding, making her desires perfectly clear but in such a perfectly cute way. This is her Ralph Lauren dress that I found for her just before she was born.

So, I got up on Saturday morning, nervous, full of dread and a sick sort of excitement. It was a dismal, cold, rainy day, but I thought maybe that was a blessing because it would mean less traffic for me to drive through. I look like crap on the last two pictures they took of me for my permits. Tired, pregnant, fat, dark circles under my eyes. So I showered and carefully put on makeup in case I passed and they had to take a picture of me to put on my brand new licence.

On the way, my hands kept shaking and my breathing was shaky, too. I kept praying as I tried to keep myself oxygenated. When we got there, the woman who gave me the test last time started walking towards me. I didn’t recognize her at first, because she had her hood on and looked like a man. When she got to my car, she stared at me for a couple seconds.

- Is this your first time taking the test?
- No. I’ve taken one before.
- I didn’t think so. Do you want the other girl to take you?
- Uhmm. Sure.

The “other girl” was a big, jolly young lady. As she came near the car, the rain stopped, the clouds parted, and a ray of sunshine shone around her. I took it as a little present of encouragement from God. She checked my papers and the lights and climbed into the car.

And then I failed … in less than a minute.

She wrote “Dangerous Action” in big letters with a cute little five pointed star above the the i and underlined the whole thing twice. The rain started pouring again.

I had turned left onto a big road without leaving enough room for a car that was coming. The thing is, when I’m “practicing” driving I’d turn left with that much room all the time so I didn’t know it was a Dangerous Action.

I cried all the way home and then some. I am so sick of driving. I want to move back to civilization and never leave.

Emily and I talking about Berek.

- You mean he’s going to become celibate?
- Well … he’s celibate right now ….

Right now, I hate driving more than anything else … even more than taxes. I am hating driving way more than all kinds of evil things I ought to be expending more energy on eradicating from my life and from this world.

A society that relies on cars to function is inherently selfish and individualistic, impersonal, non-communal, and ultimately, evil, because it isolates people thus making it untrinitarian.

When the world becomes a perfect place, everyone will walk to their friends’ houses and walk to the grocery store and walk to church. They will take trains or solar-powered buses to work.

Too many Americans grow up having too much personal space, abandoned from birth to their own bedrooms to cry themselves to sleep, driving alone from the age of 16, their whole lives spent moving from house to house, job to job, church to church, never learning to live perichoretically. Getting accustomed to having overly large boundaries for “personal space” leads to having overly large boundaries for other kinds of space as well.

So what happens to people who drive alone, every day, every week, for so many hours, year after year? They become emotionally distant and lose track of their own feelings which causes them to be unable to pick up on the feelings of others … but that doesn’t matter because most of the people they know are drivers, too, and don’t have any feelings left. Only listening to their own music, radio shows that they enjoy, they become increasingly narrow-minded and mind-numbingly ignorant. Looking at themselves in the rear-view mirror for so long makes them narcissistic.

Thou shalt not drink and drive … right? Right. What does this mean? Cars being the only mode of transportation forces people out of communion or forces them to drive drunk and be irresponsible and even murderous.

I can’t drive. I can’t parallel park. I have a driving test on Saturday morning and I just know I am going to fail it … AGAIN. I just hope the person testing me isn’t that nasty unhappy Mexican woman.

There are no cars in heaven. If God wanted us to drive, there would have been cars in Eden. I can’t wait to get to heaven.