Hello Everyone,
I thought I would take a few minutes and let you know what
is happening in Istanbul.
Life here is never boring, it is interesting when you
consider how much there is to learn
and how little time we really have to do it in.
We have recently finished Ramadan, (the Muslim month of
fasting during the day), at the end of
Ramadan is a festival that lasts for 4 days, called Bayram.
The first Bayram is a sugar festival.
They celebrate the end of Ramadan by eating and giving sugar
treats to friends, and relatives,
much like Halloween, but without the masks and
commercialism. Nancy and I learned this first hand.
The final day of Ramadan we were at the spice market in
Eminönü, and a big truck pulls into the vendor
area and begins to unload big gunny sacks. The truck was
loaded with these gunny sacks at least six feet high. I watch as they carried
these sack to flat bins and opened them revealing bright colored individually
wrapped candy wrappers. As I watched to see what these sacks were full of, we
just about got run over by all the women coming to purchase the delights of the
sacks. That is when we realized the contents were candy. Not just any candy, it
was chocolate covered candies. The wrappings are in bright colors, orange, red,
purple, lime colored. I can't name them all. They are really quite pretty to
look at. The Candy is only available once a year at the end of Ramadan, and
there must have been a thousand women jostling for a big bags of these candies.
We later found this same candy piled quite high at the Migros shopping market where
we buy most of our food. We shop about every three days, so by the third day it
was all gone.
Now we are going to have the second Bayram. This festival
comes 40 days or so after Ramadan, and is in remembrance of the sacrifice
Abraham made with Isaac. (the Muslim believe that it was not Isaac who was to
be sacrificed, but Ismael). This brings everything to a halt in Istanbul, all
shops, grocery stores, tourist shops and venues, and the metro slows to only
one bus per hour, and this continues for four days. We will buy our groceries
in advance knowing this. During the sugar festival things got a little lean in
the Ercanbrack home because we did not know everything would be closed for 4 days.
This second Bayram brings live animals into the city, and
into neighborhoods. Then they slaughter them in the streets. We are told that
the gutters run pretty thick with the blood of all the animals killed. Then
they give away the meat to the poor and needy, and to the old people who don't
eat very much meat. It has been suggested to us to avoid certain neighborhoods
during this period. I can just imagine every household in some of these devout
Muslims will be slaughtering a sheep or cow. This could be an interesting week.
It begins September 4-7th.
On the weather side of things, we are seeing a little cooler
weather now. In July it was very hot and humid. The heat is ok for me, but the
humidity is like having your very own sweat maker that is not only invisible
but never goes away.
I walk from our apartment to the church, takes about 12
minutes, and I am wet, I mean very wet. Like I have been sprayed with the hose.
I get a pile of paper towels and begin dabbing my shirt and head to absorb the
water. I go througha pile of towels and then stand in front of the air
conditioner until I am getting chilly, then resort to more dabbing until
my thermostat lowers. This has pretty much become a ritual
for me. I see some of the Elders doing a similar thing, but they don't seem to
be affected quite as much as I am. Nancy
has even helped me dab the back of my shirt, to catch the stream running down
my back, bless her for that. She looks at me and says you are wet. Something's'
in life just have to be endured.
We are getting into the comfort zone of our mission I would
say. We have multiple callings, each of us, and we seem to have had our
capacities to do these callings expanded. We both spoke in church Sunday on
topics requested from the Branch President. Nancy's topic was "How to
prepare and give a talk in Church", mine was "how to bear Testimony
in a Testimony meeting". Very basic, but very informative for these
members who have never been in a fully working Ward or Branch of the Church. It
is very instructional to me to see the curious nature of new members of the
Church. They have
minds like sponges, they absorb the details of talks and
conversation in the Gospel with amazing accuracy. The Turkish people are bright
and intelligent and engaging. They are a joy to be with.
We do have a mailing address that is we can receive mail. At
least we have received some letters and packages from
the USA. It is: Yasli Terry Ercanbrack or Kiz Kardes Nancy
Ercanbrack
Levent Mah. 4, Gazateciler Sitesi
Ülgen Sokak, B8 Blok No. 8/6
Beşıktaş, Istanbul 34330
Turkey
Thanks for all your prayers and support, and all that you
are in your lives.
We are always thinking of and thanking our Father for you.
Elder Ercanbrack
No comments:
Post a Comment