His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower.
-William Cowper
One thing you must know about Turkey are the relationships. Life here is not so much about productivity, being "on-time", or earning your place in society; it's about relationships. This is not to say that relationships are not important in America or the West. Of course not! How many lattes have you listened over or late night telephone calls have you made to use the "free" minutes? Of course relationships are important! What I am speaking of is the day to day lifestyle of the Turkish people. It's more like this, we are concerned about what we do and how well it's done, here the concern is about who does the work and how well the time is spent together. Or perhaps, we are concerned about how much is accomplished in an afternoon, here the concern is how much everyone benefited from the time.
In reality, we're still figuring this out. What does that mean for our English class? How should I go about tutoring in English? How shall I best serve tea all afternoon? Is it still OK to plan out my day by time or should I just "be flexible"? These are questions we're wrestling through right now. When feelings of uselessness arise or the urge to get out and "do" something takes over we have to ask, "is this the Spirit of God or just my cultural upbringing?" When the day has passed and you can barely point back to anything accomplished is that entirely wrong? Really?
We're living in that limbo now and wanted to clue you in to our struggle. We know that for the present we are meant to be here, meant to be learners, meant to be servants...but after that it's still quite a mystery. We're being available, we're learning about how we fit in here, and we're serving as opportunity arises.
May we all keep a learning ear heavenward lest we forget the mystery of our God!
