Travelling to Van with Hope

I had been thinking for some time that I wanted to start blogging again and started writing this blog from my lovely hotel room in Van, Turkey, and then life happened as I returned home! So it is time to tell a bit of the journey.

Lake Van 

For years, I have looked forward to travelling to East Turkey with a friend who I worked with on the Reconciliation Walk. As the director of the Lutheran Orient Mission Society (LOMS), he has developed programs for the Kurds over the last twenty – five years that I have always wanted to visit. In a region of political instability, LOMS work has developed the lives of Kurdish families and especially young women through the arts and various traditional handicrafts coops. 

I arrived in Turkey on the 19^th and heard on arrival that President Erdogun had declared a state of emergency in the country. So the backdrop of the trip was this amazing time in Turkey's history and seeing the streets filled with followers of Erdogun waving Turkish flags and beeping their horns until late in the night. Even as we arrived in Van, there were daily and nightly demonstrations of allegiance. Besides this, we heard about the ongoing destructive work of the PKK trying to stir up war with the Turks despite most Kurds in the area wanting to be at peace and having seen life improve under President Erdogun. With the war in Syria and Iraq not too far away, it made me want to know how are these people dealing with life.

Main Street

In the midst of this uncertainties, what has struck me the most was how life just went on as if all was normal. There was bustling commerce and building going on, and we attended a beautiful wedding event. They have had political struggles for 40 years and yet they have seen a steady growth of more freedom and less violence until recently. 

But with all of that happening around them politically, we visited two LOMS projects that inspired me. We met young musicians and singers working on their artistic skills led by a woman singer who is famous in this region for her Kurdish folk songs..songs mainly sung by men.  Eating dinner with her and her extended family, we heard stories about the battle for more freedom to express her craft. The next day we visited her music school across the street from our hotel, and met about 10 young musicians, male and female who spontaneously started performing with a young woman who was travelling with us. She is a musician and had been working with LOMS teaching music and English for the past year. Like all musicians, it wasn't too long until they were jamming together with different voices and instruments leading the way. Wonderful.

We also visited a woman’s coop where the women learn traditional carpet weaving skills and they make the pieces into purses that are exquisite. LOMS website  http://lutheran-mideast.org/ ) shows the bags that one can purchase and tells a bit about the women. Click on the tab "Girls Believing in Themselves". The coop also runs sewing classes to help the young women develop their sewing skills as well as running a variety of life skills courses that help them improve their lives. The money earned from these crafts helps raise more income for their families and often then it allows them to send their daughters to school.  In a region were the percentage of illiteracy for women has been high, LOMS has documented how more young women are going to school and are marrying at an older age with more choices in choosing who they want to marry. It has been the steady investment of a Christian organization helping Kurdish Muslim families that just inspires me.

As I have walked through these days discovering the beauty of the people and their land which sits on roads leading to Armenia, Iran, and Iraq, one feels the weight of history. The words of Isaiah’s vision for God’s Kingdom filled my mind. “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of Jacob’s God. There He will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths....The Lord will mediate between nations and will settle international disputes. They will hammer their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer fight against nation, nor train for war anymore. Isaiah 2: 3 – 4

This was my prayer for this region where the scars of war and ethnic divides have destroyed so many lives, and yet there is hope in the midst of darkness. God's ways of peace are being learned as young people learn to develop their talents, and young women design purses and crafts that show the beauty of a tribal craft. Lives being built up instead of being torn down. God is good!

Packing Up and Memories

The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too.

Saint Teresa of Avila

In 2004, after eagerly anticipating a new accommodation at Highfield Oval, I moved into my wonderful home in Building 7. Little would I have imagined how many friends would enter the doors of that house from so many different nations over the last 9 years. And now it is time to move on to a new home down the road.

Tomorrow a few friends and myself will load up my furniture and a huge chapter in my life will be transitioning to start a new chapter in Luton. The house is being worked on so we aren’t quite ready to move in, but tomorrow is a big step of closing out my home at the Oval.

As I have been anticipating this next season, I have been reminiscing about all the special times, I have had at Highfield Oval. I first visited the Oval in 1994 to attend a UofN event where I first heard Lynn talk about his plans for the RW and where I went and talked to him about what I had been doing with my DTS from Lausanne, Switzerland. I eagerly told him that I wanted to be involved and the rest is now history. My next visits to the Oval would come as we began to plan the RW and then during the RW, as I flew in to meet with Lynn and the team. The beauty of the Oval and the surrounding countryside would bring rest to a weary soul each time I came. I would walk along Cooter’s Lane just enjoying the quiet and the beauty of the rolling hills (and maybe eating wild blackberries) as I prepared to return to the Middle East and that wonderful world of diversity. But in those years, I never anticipated living in this beautiful spot, but God had other plans.

So when I first moved to the Oval in 2003, I thought I would return to Beirut in a year or two, and instead the Oval has been my home for the last 9 ½ years. I’ve lived in Building 7 and so enjoyed it with all the changeable conditions of a transient community. In my first year at the Oval, my niece Meghan and her brother Adam both worked at the Oval, and I had such an incredible time being able to have part of my family close at hand. And then a couple years later, Meghan and Victor were married at the Oval since our whole family had fallen in love with England.

 I’ve seen old friends leave and new ones arrive, and so there are so many stories to cherish. I can’t help but remember all the late night discussions of students’ dreams and outreach plans, theology, politics, future dreams, prayers for seeing the world impacted by God’s love, the planning of new schools and new adventures, the drumming, dancing and singing praising God (my neighbors heard this too)….and the eating of a lot of meals around a table that can hold a few or many.

In this room, I heard God urge me to volunteer to lead the first DTS on the Next Wave, to join with Peter Adams on a journey to China, to continue to build the School of Reconciliation and Justice and to believe God for all He wanted to accomplish at the Oval. It has been a rich time and so all those memories are going with me to a new neighborhood and a new chapter of this wonderful journey with God. Life has not been dull as we all sought to understand our part of building God’s kingdom. I am grateful for all who have so enriched my life and helped teach me in so many ways what it means to be a part of the family of God.

Here are a few snapshots of life over the last few years...randomly chosen and arranged!!! Enjoy the journey of life..even the bumps have so much to teach us! Thank you all for helping me move along through life!