FAMILY / After 9 weeks in US

Dear Friends,
We would like to share some of updates that what was going in our lives and how the ministry is going in Turkey and what we do during these times so you can know where we are. We wanted to give this update especially after our trip as family to USA for 9 weeks. Starting from Orlando till Seattle we had long road trip as a family. We visited our friends in different places and churches that prays for us. It was a blessed time but also really tiring for all of us especially with little kids. I had privilege to speak in many different churches and had opportunity to share what is going on in Turkey and in our church.

We came back to Turkey 5th of September, it is great to be at home and with church family. While we are away Hakan was leading our church really well, one young man who is engineer and also working as soccer referee came to Christ and attending our church every week and started his doctrinal studies with Hakan before his baptism. Another young man that studies gastronomy in university who came to Christ six months ago is growing in faith and keep studying word of God, pursuing to be better follower of Christ. Our friend Oguz joined our team; after his graduation he moved from Istanbul to Antalya and started working with us. He was working with us part-time before as translator, editor and proofreader for our book project, now as he continues to those works he will be doing internship with us. He will be assisting me on all of our ministries. So you will likely hear his name often.

We are planning to have another Via Christus Academy in between October 2th-6th, this term we are going to learn Pastoral and Practical Theology and Dr. John Tweeddale from Ligonier Ministries will be teaching Turkish pastors all around Turkey and this region.

If you would like to pray for us here some of our prayer requests;
- Pray for our family that we started to get back to our own routine.
- For Hakan, as he leads people in doctrinal classes before their baptisms and his visit to members of our church and his meetings with people who are interested in Christianity and looking for some answers to their questions, may God use him and give him wisdom to be able to share the gospel in this land.
- For Oğuz, he started a new life in a different city as he started working with us, may God give him patience and strength for this new start. And pray that he would be a blessing for us, for church and for our ministries.