Dear Friends,
We would like to give you an update and share a few personal pictures so that you can see how things are going in our household. We are all doing well and things going okay in our family life. We are excited about David Kuzey's good health and active lifestyle. He is a very happy boy and loves to drag people into his room. Once he gets you there, you are done for the day. He won't let you get out of his room. To keep up with him, Buse must run behind him all day long. She is so happy to see his energy. David influences us and helps us to be more active and cheerful as well. Josiah has started his school once again. He loves school but not homework. I guess he takes after his father because I can relate to that for sure. This year he has a mandatory Islamic religious class for 2 hours every Friday. We decided that we didn't want him to join this class (and requested that he not participate). We think that we are in a better position to teach our children what to believe. So now he is separated from his classmates for 2 hours every Friday. It is a different challenge for sure, but so far things are going okay for him. He is enjoying being able to join other classes during that time. Please check some of the pictures below. These are mostly from our summer. Once again, we are so thankful for your love, prayers, and continued support and care for our family. Kerem for the Koç family Dear Friends,
I would love to update you about our recent Academy Lecture Series. As many of you know, the desire to start a Bible Academy for leaders in Turkey has been one of my most exciting goals. We had our first (trial) lecture during the Fall of last year. This year we provided two courses: the first was a study of Hermeneutics, and the second, was on Biblical Theology. Our Biblical Theology class was held between September 12-16 and was taught by Dr. Tim J.R. Trumper. The course of study was rich in theology and practical applications. We have learned a lot and it was a great time spent time in fellowship with one another. We had 14 students (unfortunately one couldn't attend the entire class because of family health issues) from 8 different cities (7 Turkey and 1 Bulgaria). All of these people are involved in various ministries in their cities. Most of them are pastors or pastors-in-training. Our academy lectures took 4 days to complete, with a total of 20 hours of study. This allowed us some extra time for prayer, devotional, and spending time with one another. We are now planning and looking forward to our next lecture series in April, 2017. Thank you for all your prayers. After I published my first book a commentary on Jonah, we have received so many great feedback. This book was the first commentary on Jonah in Turkish language and entire copies finished in 5 weeks. Because of great feedback and need for better books, we decided to add 'publication leg' to our Via Christus Ministries. And when I visited US last summer, I told many of my friends about the publication company we wanted to start. Soon after we partner with Christian publication company called GDK. They helped us forming a publication company after their own main brand. After we worked about 9 months, we have published our first two books. As you can see in the picture, both title has the word 'MUJDE' because we are all about MUJDE. This word simply means gospel and we feel that the need for gospel in this land is indescribable. So we hope that these two books will help us bringing gospel to this land. First book is a little booklet called 'What is the Gospel?' by Bryan Chapell. In english it is published by The Gospel Coalition (one of our partners) and simply explains gospel in a easy language. Great for people who just came in to our churches. Our second book is a larger book and it focuses gospel on a deeper level. This books also shows us what gospel is not and explains how watered down gospel methods can harm the Word. This book written by Paul Washer. We are so excited that we will be able to provide both of these books to all of the churches in Turkey for free of charge. It is a privilege to bring these resources to turkish and we are so thankful for your prayers, care and support. Here is the link of e-books, please feel free to share this link with your turkish friends https://yayinlar.viachristus.com |
About This BlogPictures and News from Archives
October 2019
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